As a business owner, CEO or senior executive, you probably have high intelligence or IQ, but to be an excellent and effective leader, you also need to develop and exhibit your Emotional Intelligence or EQ. This is one area in which a well-matched business mentor or business coach can help you develop.
Emotional intelligence in leadership was once scoffed at as being soft or weak in the workplace. Today, a high degree of Emotional Intelligence is recognised as one of the vital ingredients for successful leaders, who use their EQ to further enhance work cultures and produce better performing individuals, teams and workplaces. Furthermore, once EQ is adopted and embraced, additional benefits can be realised, such as improved decision making,boosted employee productivity, and better retention and morale of people, all of which improves the basis for a more successful business.
How Business Coaching Can Help
Business mentors and coaches can assist with identifying and assessing opportunities and strategies to develop business growth. Business growth strategies have many influencing factors, such as market potential, customer satisfaction, products or services delivery, sales capability, competitor strength, supply, possible alliances and acquisitions, appetite for risk, investment requirements and available funding, expected profitability, returns and net cashflow, performance culture, and organisational capability and development requirements. EQ isalso a vital component which if improved can leverage up an organisation’s overall performance. Business coaching can help you to identify and develop individual leaders’ EQsso you can improve your business performance.
So, What Exactly is EQ?
People possessboth IQ (intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional intelligence). It is very good news that EQ (unlike IQ) can be developed in all individuals.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor your own and other peoples’ feelings and emotions, to distinguish among them, and to use this information to guide your thinking, management and leadership actions and approaches. EQ is essentially a measure ofanindividual’s interpersonal and communication skills.
Emotionally intelligent people don’t just understand emotions; they know what they’re good at and what they’re terrible at. Having a high EQ means you know your strengths and you know how to lean into them and use them to your full advantage while keeping your weaknesses from holding you back.
In the workplace, attitudes towards employers and employees have dramatically changed in the last few decades. For example, diversity has been identified as a positive contributor for business success. Leaders cannot rely on emotional intelligence or their intellect alone when it comes to motivating a diverse workforce. Business organisational structures have evolved, and strict hierarchies are making way for more distributed forms of leadership with greater flexibility in workplace models. Research in this space has found that one substantial quality required of successful leadership performance is EQ.
Business coaches and mentorscan, in an independent and confidential environment, assist business leaders to further develop the four major competencies associated with EQ – self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and relationship management.
Improving Your EQ
How great is your own EQ? Your answer in part depends on your level of EQ! For example, many leaders lacking high EQ think that they are emotionally intelligent, but they are not, andthey lack empathy. This is where an impartial, motivated and experienced business coach or mentor can help, by providing honest and private feedback to support and facilitate needed developments in EQ.
So important is the rise of EQ, it has been recognised by the World Economic Forum as a crucial skill for the fourth industrial revolution, namely as a vital component for effective leadership. Once enabled and understood, EQ not only empowers you to understand your own modus operando, but appreciate how other people differ from you, allowing you to best work together with other people and bring out their best.
A business coach or mentorwho is well versed in developing EQ will use objective criticism, impartial feedback and support to help you enhance your self-awareness and improve your leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, business coaching can help you construct, lead and operate teams that are better aligned and understanding of each other, which in turn leverages better business success through higher productivity, working relationships and retention.
Ultimately, a successful leader who is proficient in EQand is better aware of themselves and others will be better able to deliver good leadership. This will assist leaders to create a more optimal business organisation and enable more productive workplaces in which people and business success can thrive.
