Emotional Intelligence & Leadership
“Emotional Intelligence is the capability of individuals to recognize their own, and other people’s emotions, to discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, or to manage and adjust emotions to adapt environments or achieve one’s goal” – Wikipedia
I started with this definition because I believe this is what makes a good leader.
We used to call it leadership spirit, then we called it leading or management skill. However, deep inside ourselves, we all know that someone who is in charge and can’t understand their team’s feelings, cannot be called leader. He/She will just be a boss.
In some articles written for the International Day of Happiness 2017 (it was March, the 20th) you can find some paramount tips to feed your colleagues’ happiness and, above all, well-being.
Great suggestions, that I appreciate a lot, are: give, relate, be aware, be resilient, accept and keep learning.
Learning is something that can be seen as useless, time-consuming and stressing, but notice that bilingual people, for example, have more weapons against brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, so why don’t you start learning that language that fascinates you? Or start searching advice to grow your emotional intelligence?
This will also remind you about those who knows something more than you do. Some managers, from time to time, believe to be the best in the world in everything, and act as such.
Well, you aren’t!
There will always be something that you can’t do better than all the others, and this is the reason why you have a team. They should be great in doing their tasks, but you will only need to be good at them, so that there will be no competitiveness, but just mutual admiration.
Your task, as a manager is to lead your people, this is the only thing you should be great at in your company.
However, if you’re aiming to a promotion and aren’t yet a manager, this changes the game and you should become the game-changer. How many times those who are in charge of other people are upset? You can be the person who puts them at ease and let them come out from the meeting room more relaxed than when they entered it. To do so, learn to understand how you can support them, sometimes it’s just enough if you listen.