Leading With Your Heart: The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

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Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and regulate your emotions, as well as understanding and influencing the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence has four components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

  1. Self-awareness is the ability to know yourself as you really are. This is more than having a basic understanding of your personal preferences and desires. As a leader, you need to be conscious of your thoughts and feelings – even the negative ones. It is easy to disregard feelings, but you can’t properly lead others without first understanding yourself. Tools to gauge self-awareness are DISC and “360 Feedback,” which means getting feedback from the people around you … your direct reports, your supervisor, your peers and others with whom you interact.
  2. Self-management is your ability to use your awareness of emotions to actively choose how to behave. Self-management is different from self-control- it is more than keeping your feelings in check. It builds on Self-Awareness in that you must recognize an emotion as it arises and manage it appropriately. In stressful situations, it is common to act on impulse rather than being intentional. When you choose how to respond to your emotions, you give yourself the power to take control.
  3. Social Awareness is centered around looking outward and carefully observing behavior. Social Awareness requires you to tune into other people’s emotions to understand them, and to navigate social situations. Without Social Awareness, you can’t accurately assess and respond to others’ behaviorsresulting
    in miscommunication and conflict. Leaders with social awareness are inquisitive and practice empathetic listening which allows for increased collaboration and problem-solving.
  4. Relationship Management is the result of the culmination of the skillful practice of Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and Social Awareness. Leaders with emotional intelligence will better manage relationships, collaborate with others, and problem-solve. With these tools, you can build positive relationships much easier and they last longer.

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