The majority of the leaders that I know, including myself, all have an over-inflated view of their Emotional Intelligence. We all know how important it is to leadership, we have all read the requisite books on the subject leading many of us to believe that we have mastered it.
But EQ takes time to develop, and we need to work on it constantly to get better at it.
It’s not always a comfortable process either, and it can be easy to gloss over EQ and focus on other areas of development, such as technical or managerial.
Here are five signs that your EQ might not be as good as you think it is, and that it needs more work!
People leave bosses, not companies, and the odds are that there is a 50% chance they are leaving because of your management style. If your department has a higher than average turnover, then this is a clear sign that you have some room for improvement in your emotional intelligence.
When you advertise new positions, if there are very few internal candidates, then clearly there could be an issue that your reputation proceeds you and that people don’t want to work for you.
Leadership is a people business, and our teams talk, they let people know whether who are the good bosses and which bosses need to be avoided.
In one of my first leadership positions, I found that my team was reluctant to keep me in the loop, and this was because I couldn’t resist getting involved and looking to make improvements. While this seems like a good idea when you do that you take ownership away from the teams, and you make success more about you than them. We need to be able to delegate and let go, and if our teams are keeping us out of the loop, it’s because we are struggling to let go.
We all want to be praised, and the more we praise people, the more they will reciprocate it back to us. If you are not receiving praise from your team, then they clearly are not feeling the love from you. It’s also the same with trust, if we are not feeling the trust of our teams it’s because they are not feeling it from us.
Most people want to have a good connection and relationship with their boss. They will usually take any opportunity to speak with their boss, whether it’s about yesterday’s game, the weather, a vacation, to try and get to know them better and strengthen the bond. If your team is all business and keeps small talk to a minimum, that’s indicative that they want to keep the relationship on a purely professional level.
Having a high EQ helps us to become better leaders, which then aids improvement in engagement, teamwork, and performance.
We need to have a clear sense of how we are doing, and by taking a check on these five things can help us improve.
Gordon is a Global Gurus Top 25 Leadership Speaker if you would like to book Gordon to speak at your company or event contact us at gordon@gordontredgold.com.
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