Everyone has come across a great leader at some point in their lives. A great leader is essential to get things done in any field of life. Great leaders not only get the work done, but they also set the path for the future and help realize it.
Leaders with high emotional intelligence can perform their tasks on time and perfectly. They are well organized and work efficiently. They allow their team members to share their ideas and take part in making decisions freely.
By doing this, the leaders gain complete trust from their team members. You gain a major advantage in building a good team when you relate emotional intelligence behaviour to your workplace performance.
A web development company leverages a program that tests its employees’ emotional intelligence and provides them with guidance to strengthen the areas in which they lack.
Here are 5 components of emotional intelligence for a great leader:
Self-Awareness
Most teams become victims of leaders that focus too much on their team members and not much on themselves. This can cause those team leaders to become overconfident and make poor decisions, which results in the teams doing poorly. That’s why it’s important for leaders to be self-aware.
Being self-aware allows you to focus on your weaknesses, feelings, morals, behaviour, and strengths and how they can affect the people around them. You are able to improve yourself as a leader, and it also helps you gain the trust of your team members.
When you understand your strengths and limitations, you are able to develop better leadership strategies and tactics. It ensures that your team will deliver excellent performance in their work as well. Here are some points that you can use to become more self-aware.
- Ask for feedback from your team members and compare your performance accordingly.
- Practice mindfulness
- Keep an open mind
Empathy
Empathy means understanding the needs of others and understanding their feelings. In order to have a relationship based on trust with your team members, you need to be empathetic towards them. Your team members should feel comfortable in sharing their doubts and worries with you.
Therefore you should listen to them and be understanding, and give advice not just as a leader but as a member of the team. In case you realize that a team member has been performing poorly in their tasks, by being empathetic, you can find the root of the problem and help your team member solve that problem.
Because of this, you can help your underperforming team members to improve. Below are the following points that you can focus on to become more empathetic:
- Appreciate your team members’ efforts to increase their self-confidence
- Understand their situation and don’t overwork them
- See things from their perspective
Social skills
This is one of the most important factors of being a good leader. As a leader, you need to interact and socialize with your team members. With good communication skills, you can easily translate different ideas for projects to your team, and you can build and improve your relationship with your team.
Otherwise, cooperation between colleagues deteriorates rapidly due to miscommunication. If you’re not able to communicate your message to your partners, confusion may arise, which may cause them to perform poorly in their work. Such problems can be prevented with the help of good communication.
Leaders need to be able to take both criticism and appreciation. The best leaders are those who listen to every issue in the team carefully and try to solve it accordingly. Here are a few ways you can build and improve your social skills:
- Improve your non-verbal and verbal communication
- Have the ability to solve problems outside of work
Self-Motivation
If you want your team members to feel motivated to work, you need to motivate yourself first. Self-motivated means that as a leader, you are dedicated and passionate about achieving your goals instead of running towards fame, money, and promotions.
It’s also good to remind yourself why you love this job every once in a while as it will help you in keeping a positive mindset while working. This helps you to perform well in your work and makes your team members feel motivated to do well in their work as well. Here are some methods to enhance self-motivation:
- Overcome obstacles by viewing them as opportunities and solving them.
- Understand how your emotions affect your team members and what you can do to make them feel motivated.
- Remember the reasons as to why you chose this job and why you love it
Self-Regulate
Self-regulation means to manage and control your emotions based on the situations you are put in. It’s an important component of emotional intelligence. After you become self-aware and understand your emotions, you need to govern yourself and your emotions.
In order to handle potential disputes and challenging situations, a good leader needs to have self-regulation. Team members feel more comfortable sharing their worries and ideas with a self-regulated leader.
If the team comes across a problem, the team leader must maintain a calm exterior and solves the problem carefully. This creates a positive and healthy work environment.
Here are some points that you can use to improve the ability to self-regulate:
- Keep a cool mind when facing stressful situations
- Take responsibility for your actions
- Keep your moral values in mind when leading a team
Conclusion
No individual is born a leader. However, one can become a leader through learning, collaborating with others, and stepping out of their comfort zone. Grabbing opportunities for group learning is what helps people to acquire the important components of emotional intelligence.
A great leader will make sure to bring the best version out of each member of their group. They play a role in establishing an environment that will make employees perform better in their work.
If you want to become a better leader, then begin by evaluating yourself on these 5 components of emotional intelligence. Then, based on these evaluations, work on improving your collaboration and management skills.
This article is submitted by guest author, Arslan Hassan.
He is an electrical engineer with a passion for writing, designing, and anything tech-related. His educational background in the technical field has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Dynamologic Solutions.
