Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Development
Leaders and aspiring leaders can use emotional intelligence to further their growth and development as leaders. Through improving emotional intelligence, they can become more effective and more successful leaders.
They can do it by improving six emotional intelligence skills:
- Self-actualization: operates with a connection to a greater plan and sets inspiring goals.
- Reality testing: grounded, fair, and unbiased.
- Self-regard: confident and aware of personal strengths and limitations.
- Emotional self-awareness: mindful of their emotional impact on the performance of others.
- Social responsibility: team player who models and supports company culture, norms, and rules.
- Independence: decisive, accountable, makes decisions aligned for the good of the overall organization (Hennessy, 2015).
Luckily, emotional intelligence fits right into ideas surrounding leadership development: EI/EQ provides leaders and aspiring leaders with the tools they need to be better leaders, including:
- Full commitment
- A “people” orientation
- Education and love of learning/open-mindedness
- Willingness to take on challenges
- Effective communication
- Ethics/acting with integrity
- Dedication to personal growth
- Willingness to provide and accept feedback
- Commitment to skill-building (Sadri, 2012).
Clearly, those looking to develop their competencies as a leader would do well to pay attention to their emotional intelligence!
EI Training for Leaders
Speaking of enhancing emotional intelligence, there are some training opportunities out there for those who would like a leg up on boosting their EI/EQ. Check out the following resources for EI/EQ training for leaders and aspiring leaders.
Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP)
This institute is a global research, leadership, and learning and development organization that aims to raise awareness and boost the emotional intelligence of teams, individuals, and leaders. They offer training on building EI/EQ and applying it to leadership, some paid and some free, but all based on the most up-to-date science.
You can learn more about what they have to offer here.
Training Industry
The Training Industry website offers a search function to look through their many different training programs, and several of the options are centered on emotional intelligence. To learn more about what is available, click here.
American Management Association
The American Management Association offers a course called “Developing Your Emotional Intelligence” and promises to teach you how to leverage emotional intelligence training to position yourself for personal, team, and organizational success.
Click here to learn more about this learning opportunity.
Skillsoft
The training and business solutions company Skillsoft emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence through their courses on the subject. The course topics include:
- Leadership Essentials: Leading with Emotional Intelligence
- The Emotionally Intelligent Leader
- How High Is Your EQ?
- Emotional Intelligence at Work
- Emotional Intelligence: Owning Your Emotions
- Emotional Intelligence: Building Self-Management Skills
- Emotional Intelligence: Applying EI at Work
- Emotional Intelligence: Being Aware of the Emotions of Others
To learn more about these courses, click here.
Using Emotional Intelligence to Improve Leadership Effectiveness
If you don’t have the time, money, or inclination to send yourself or your employees to emotional intelligence-based leadership training, not to worry!
There are some methods, activities, and resources you can use to work on your emotional intelligence outside of a classroom.
69 Emotional Intelligence Leadership Exercises
Feedback Exercise
First, one of the most important exercises to boost your emotional intelligence in the context of leadership is to actually get an idea of your EI/EQ level in the first place.
To get started, all you need to do is print out the questions you can find here:
- Think of when you were a leader and you took a stand and made sure everyone followed.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- Think of when you were a leader and took a stand on an issue and then backed down.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- Think of when you were a leader and didn’t take a stand on a particular issue when you should have.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- Think of when you were an employee and took a stand on an issue and did not back down.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- How did your boss feel?
- Think of when you were an employee and took a stand on an issue, felt forced and backed down.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- How did your boss feel?
- Think of when you were an employee and didn’t take a stand on an issue and then later strongly regretted that you should have not backed down.
- How did you feel?
- How do you think others felt?
- How did your boss feel? (Questions from Skills Converged, found here)
Your answers to these questions can help you realize where your emotional intelligence is at, how much farther you have to go, and in which area you could do the most work.
The “I Did It!” Exercise
It might surprise you, but improvisation is a great way to work on improving emotional intelligence! Here’s a group exercise that incorporates improvisation:
In this exercise, you and your group will:
- Reflect on a personal experience with “following the fear” that turned out well which demonstrates one of the tenets of both improvisation and emotional intelligence;
- Build up group cohesiveness through personal sharing;
- Experience the group support and the “music” of an interaction, which is central to understanding emotional intelligence.
Start off by reviewing the theme song or hook from movies, television shows, focusing on those that feature heroes doing incredible things (e.g., Mission Impossible, Superman, Rocky) or managing relationship and interpersonal issues (e.g., The Odd Couple). Sing the chorus or hook a couple of times to practice.
Next, take 5 minutes to review something you have accomplished in life that you never thought you’d be able to accomplish. Identify the goal, the obstacles and challenges, and how it felt to finally overcome them and achieve your goal.
Finally, have each participant choose a theme song from the ones you discussed and share it with the group. As the participant takes center stage to tell their story, instruct the group to sing or hum the song the participant chose, as a representation of their struggle and ultimate victory.
This exercise not only feels great but it also actually helps boost emotional intelligence! Click here to see it at the source.
If you’re looking for more ways to boost your own emotional intelligence and become a better leader, try any (or all!) of the following exercises identified by consultant Iliyana Stareva (2016):
- Ask yourself why you do the things that you do
- Visit/revisit your values
- Reflect on how you feel right now
- Make a list of your daily emotions
- Breathe—deeply and regularly
- Count to 10 when in stressful situations
- Reframe your situation
- Set aside time for problem-solving
- Fix up the bad hygiene (e.g., taking the laptop to bed with you)
- Really live in the moment
- Tour around your home, office, wherever for 15 minutes
- Go people-watching
- Develop a back-pocket question for potentially awkward situations
- Remember the little things (e.g., saying “please” and “thank you” and using peoples’ names)
- When you care, show it
- Explain your decisions, don’t just make them
- Tackle tough conversations with an easy formula (agree, hear them out, active listening, describe your side, find common ground again, then keep in touch and check in on progress)
These EI exercises can help you become adept at using your emotional awareness, regulation, and management to your benefit and being an all-around better leader.
For many more exercises on how to develop emotional intelligence in and for a leadership context, check out Adele B. Lynn’s resource 50 Activities for Developing Emotional Intelligence for – you guessed it – 50 more ways to improve your EI/EQ.
These activities are categorized by EI/EQ competency and risk/difficulty, so it’s easy to pick out an exercise that fits your unique needs. The competencies listed and some sample exercises within each category are listed here:
- Self-Awareness/Control
- – Ask for Feedback
- – A Grateful Heart
- – I Value, We Value
- Empathy
- – Adding Fuel to the Importance Meter
- – Music of Our Workplace
- – Open and Friendly vs. Friendship
- Social Expertness
- – Picture Yourself
- – Tuning Into Our Employees
- – Visions Apply to People Too
- Personal Influence
- – Common Mistakes with Gratitude
- – You Expect Me to What?
- – Lessons from Low Points/High Points
- Mastery of Vision
- – Yes, but…
- – Doing a Fair Share
- – Today’s Actions Toward the Vision
56 Ways/Tips to Improve Leadership Skills With EQ
If you like the idea of those exercises but also want some practical tips on how to make this work, you’re in luck! Here are six of the most vital pieces of advice to keep in mind when working on your EI/EQ:
- Name your emotions (accurately)
- Surround yourself with positivity
- Take responsibility for how you treat others
- Don’t take others’ feedback personally; it doesn’t define you
- Sharpen your awareness of daily developments, partially through a bottom-up approach with your employees
- Never stop working on your EI/EQ, no matter how high you think it gets (Perkins, 2018).
If that wasn’t quite enough, you’ll love this list of 50 tips on building EI/EQ and becoming a better leader. It comes from emotional intelligence and leadership experts RocheMartin (2017). The tips are split into 7 categories, which you can see below with a few example tips:
- Emotional intelligence (overall)
- Practice observing how you feel
- Take responsibility for your feelings
- Take time to celebrate the positive
- Self-awareness
- Learn to look at yourself objectively
- Keep a diary
- Acknowledge your emotional triggers
- Self-management
- Maintain a schedule (and stick to it!)
- Be interested
- Don’t expect people to trust you (if you can’t trust them)
- Motivation
- Set personal goals
- Be realistic
- Be prepared to leave your comfort zone
- Empathy
- Try to be approachable
- Open yourself up
- Acknowledge what people are saying
- Social skills
- Wear somebody else’s shoes
- Social media cold turkey
- It’s now what you say, it’s how you say it
- What to avoid
- Complaining
- Dwelling on the past
- Being overly critical
9 Recommended Books
If you’re interested in learning more about the applications of emotional intelligence to leadership, there are some great EQ books that can help:
- Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee (Amazon)
- Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman (Amazon)
- Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for Students by Marcy Levy Shankman, Scott J. Allen, and Paige Haber-Curran (Amazon)
- The Power of Perception: Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and the Gender Divide by Shawn Andrews (Amazon)
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman (Amazon)
- Leading with Emotional Courage: How to Have a Hard Conversation, Create Accountability, and Inspire Action on Your Most important Work by Peter Bregman (Amazon)
- Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (Amazon)
- Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness by Annie McKee, Richard E. Boyatzis, and Frank Johnston (Amazon)
- The Leader’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence: Understand and Develop Your EQ for Maximum Leadership Impact by Drew Bird (Amazon)
8 Videos on EI and Leadership
If you’re more of a watcher than a reader, these YouTube videos and TED Talks might hit the spot instead!
What our readers think
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This is the best article I have come across on Emotional intelligence as a success tool for leaders.
Well done.
Thank you
Hi Hope,
That’s fantastic to hear. Thank you for the lovely feedback. If you’d like more resources on emotional intelligence, we offer a pack of exercises which you can download for free at this link if you are interested.
Thanks for being a reader.
– Nicole | Community Manager
No words for this priceless content thanks a tons I am doing PhD on same topic it’s very helpful to me.
A very enjoyable read!!
The EQ and IQ ‘intersection’ is a very interesting proposition ?.
Observing some of my own character-attributes, and further researching and thinking on how some beliefs, and intellectual and emotional habits could have been formed, and certainly reinforced. Could it be that there is clear suggestion of primary base- point that greatly influences the outcomes of these 2 said variable quotients’? I believe so based on my life experiences thus far!
The human-mind development is an exciting adventure and experience, perhaps one that sometimes envokes ‘homunculus’ thoughts, generalities etc. all relevant perhaps. However, there does appear to be compelling reason for us to have a steady foundation to build-off and some would suggest, maintain a ‘principles’ based approach in our endeavours.
Fantastic compilation. Looking forward to more such articles.
Brilliant compilation.
I ma based out of India and looking forward to collaborate.
Great article, Courtney. You did a amazing job exploring this topic. I believe EI is closely linked to metacognition. I recently commented on an article in Psychology Today discussing EI, mindfulness and leadership. Victor Lipman shared my comments on Forbes.com.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2019/01/08/how-mindful-behavior-can-lead-to-better-manager-employee-relationships/#6085d01f2efd
Donald D. Matthews, PsyD