#emotional intelligence program

Can great leaders be made? Yes, leaders can become great, but this requires acumen, expertise, and soft skills. Known as emotional intelligence (E), these soft skills are beneficial in motivating people, navigate through challenging situations, and deliver their best performance.

Companies lose money due to poor communication, lack of trust, and low employee engagement. Only 21% of employees are engaged and approximately 60% feel emotionally detached at their workplaces. This results in a loss of productivity exceeding $7.5 trillion, which is roughly 11% of the world’s GDP. So how can companies overcome the massive cost of low engagement and emotional intelligence?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

EI is the ability to manage, recognize, and understand other people’s and your feelings. This is important as effective leaders must manage not only their emotions but empathize with their people’s feelings too. First introduced in the 1990s by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, the concept of EI has since become an essential leadership trait.

The behaviors shown by emotionally intelligent leaders include:

Self-awareness This ability allows you to recognize and comprehend your drivers, emotions, strengths, and limitations. Self-awareness helps leaders to sustain a positive outlook even in difficult situations. While 95% of people think they are self-aware, in reality only 10% – 15% show real self-awareness.

Self-management It showcases how leaders manage their behaviors and emotions practicing restraint and focus. Self-management comprises four competencies, which include self-control, achievement orientation, adaptability, and positive outlook.

Social Awareness Empathy and organizational awareness are two competencies under this leadership trait. The former enables you to recognize other people’s emotions, display an active interest in their concerns, and recognize cues about their feelings and thoughts. The latter is the ability to comprehend group feelings, identify influencers, and understand its dynamics.

Relationship Management The competencies that motivate others to deliver their best performance include coaching and mentoring, conflict resolution, influencing, inspirational leadership training, and teamwork. These traits positively impact team members and encourage them to work towards achieving the organizational goals.

Importance of EI on Leadership Effectiveness

Great leaders develop robust relationships, foster a collaborative work environment, and promote a positive organizational culture. Emotional intelligence is important for:

Conflict Management Conflicts happen and effective leaders should manage these constructively and positively. Leaders with higher EI remain calm and composed in conflicts and empathize with others thereby de-escalating the situations. Additionally, they use their soft skills to find a win-win solution to develop stronger relationships and teamwork.

To help understand, here is an example. Assume that there is a conflict between two of your team members Sudha and Radha. Radha thinks that Sudha is not doing her share of the work and Sudha feels that she is not receiving necessary guidance from Radha. After hearing from both, you will derive a solution that is beneficial to both and suggests a structured plan or clear division of roles and responsibilities thereby eliminating the conflict and developing a positive work environment.

Develop Robust Relationships Robust relationships are crucial for organizational success. Leaders having higher EI build rapport and trust by being empathetic to their team members’ emotions. Additionally, their team members feel appreciated and valued thereby increasing engagement, job satisfaction, and motivation. According to a study, employee engagement and creativity when teams are led by empathetic leaders increase by 76% and 61%, respectively.

Efficient Decision-Making Emotionally intelligent leaders use their soft skills to recognize and understand their feelings to make rational and informed decisions. Additionally, they consider the feelings and perspectives of their team members to make inclusive decisions, which are aligned with the overall organizational goals and visions. Companies that prioritize EI are likely to perform higher than others by almost 22x.

Inspiring and Motivating Teams Effective leaders use their empathy and EI to foster a positive and supportive organizational culture. Using their communication skills, they can bring clarity, inspire, and motivate their team members to deliver their best performance.

To understand, consider that you are leading a software development team that is demotivated and overwhelmed amid a highly complex project. As an emotionally intelligent leader, you would recognize the challenging situation while providing encouragement and support to your team members. Throughout the project, you would be empathetic and understanding while appreciating, recognizing, and valuing their efforts. Using EI skills, you will boost their morale and increase their productivity to successfully deliver the project.

Unfortunately, only 36% of people are emotionally intelligent. In 2021, the EI market was valued at $868 million, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 25% until 2030. The demand for EQ is expected to grow by 6x in the next five years and emotional intelligence training programs will play an important role in creating great leaders.

Being a parent is not an easy job. Whether you are parent to a toddler or to a teenager, your responsibility is no less in any case. It gets more difficult when you try to discipline your child. All parents have their own style of parenting but still the commonly searched topic on internet is ‘How to Discipline Your Child in Healthy and Friendly Way’.

Positive Discipline

It is a common belief that a child’s first school is their home. They gradually inculcate the behaviour of their parents. Parents who are being harsh on their children in order to discipline are passing toxic stress to their children which is doing no good to them rather it can adversely impact the child’s entire life. It can do more harm than good. There is more likelihood of witnessing negative outcomes than positive.

Parents need to modify their approach of parenting and little changes in their day-to-day encounters with their children can create a big difference in the attitude of their children. Recently UNICEF has published an article on Positive discipline for better mental and physical health and a happy childhood, wherein they consulted Lucie Cluver, Oxford University professor of Child and Family Social Work to explore how the approach can help parents build positive relationships with their children. Based on the said Article following are the suggestions for the parents who are surfing internet for ‘How to Discipline Your Child in Healthy and Friendly Way’:

    1.      One on one chat

One on one chat is basically to promote your child to talk to you. This activity could be as small as of 5 minutes.You may have one on one conversation with your child while playing some game or working together. Be a good listener. Allow your child to put across their thoughts. Do not judge your child and give your suggestions only when it is extremely necessary. It is the best activity to build trust and good relationship with your child.

    2.      Compliment is the key

Everybody loves compliment and so do our children. Compliment is the key to make your child feel special. Parents often focus on correcting their children and thereby paying all their attention to weaknesses of the children. Children prosperon praise. It makes them feel special. This can help in encouraging positive behaviour and self-discipline.

    3.      Chalk down expectations

Instead of telling your child what they should not do, make it effective by telling what they should do. Give your child a clear instruction about what you expect from them. But make sure your expectations are realistic and achievable for your child. Remember you are not here to fail your child but to introduce them to the joy of achievement. It will eventually help the child in self-regulation.

    4.      Distract innovatively

The time when you feel your child is getting difficult for you to handle, instead of lecturing or punishing, distract them creatively. Give them a time-out may be by changing the topic or going for a walk and channelize their energy towards positive behaviour. If the situation gets difficult give some space to the child to settle down and then propose your thoughts.

    5.      Use calm consequences

Every action has a result. Mostly we tag the children based on the results of their known or unknown actions. First of all, do not jump on conclusions and come up with punishments for your child.Do not judge your child on the basis of their action rather encourage them for better behaviour. Give them an opportunity to explain their action and you can explain the consequences of the bad behaviour or incorrect actions. Instead of shouting or using physical violence for the mistakes of your child, correct them by taking away their favourite activity like taking away their phone or not allowing the play time.

But discipline should not be something which is forced upon any child, but it should be the one which a child decides for themselves. A child who is Socially and Emotionally Intelligent can easily check their behaviour, habits, responsibility, thoughts, and actions.

At yomindz- enroll and join Emotional Intelligence Learning Program especially  designed for Children to help and improve their behavior and life skills.