Emotional Intelligence in Practice 2

I coached a group of federal leaders last week on Emotional Intelligence. They were high functioning and rated fairly high on their emotional intelligence assessment. Even with those high scores we had a very rich discussion on how they could continue to hone their emotional intelligence skills to enhance their leadership capacity. Here are a few key areas of focus that came out of that discussion:

• There is a need to relate to each person differently - each employee, peer, and/or supervisor is different. As a result there is a need to understand the motivations, best ways to communicate with, and how to resolve conflict with each person differently. Just as you would relate to each person in your family based upon their interests and needs you need to do the same thing at the workplace.
• Listen to other people so that they feel understood - if people don't feel understood then they don't feel valued. Repeat back to others what you heard them say, take a 10 second pause to really hear what they are saying before responding to them, or ask questions to probe more. All of these techniques are good ways to enhance your listening skills.
• Interact directly with all of your employees - even if you have a lot of employees how can you get in front of all of them? Some of my clients managed many different employees at multiple locations. While they had a lot of interaction with the employees they were co-located with they realized that they needed to go travel to the other locations and hold town halls with the employees so that they could really see the leader in person, understand their vision, and express their feedback directly to the boss.

How are you seeing emotional intelligence play out practically in your organization? In your leadership skills? With the people you interact with?