Improve Your EQ (OPINION)

As an executive coach, I spend a great deal of time talking to my clients about their “EQ,” or their emotional intelligence. Research indicates that leaders’ effectiveness and their teams’ performances are directly impacted by their EQ.

A leader with a high EQ manages his or her own emotions and moods and understands how those attitudes and the connected behaviors impact others. EQ also involves a leader’s ability to read the emotional cues of others and manage relationships for the greatest effectiveness.

The first step in improving your EQ is self-awareness. Being able to know the impact you have on others is critical to your success as a leader. This is probably the most challenging stage of improving your EQ, because how a leader thinks he or she is coming across is often very different from others’ perception. 

Sometimes, egotistical blindness leads people to believe that they are better than they are.

However, this is not the primary problem I encounter in executive coaching. Companies tend to be pretty good at spotting this sort of issue quickly and purging it from the system — unless the fault lies in a CEO who does not have an objective board of directors, or a board who is not afraid to speak the truth. (That is a worthy topic for an entirely different discussion.)

I have found the best way to help a leader increase his or her self-awareness is to solicit feedback from staff. Without feedback leaders continue to do what they have been doing, even if it has been ineffective, demoralizing, or contributive to a toxic work environment.

In some environments, direct feedback works great.

However, sometimes people are afraid to tell their leaders how they actually perceive them, how they are coming across, or how their behaviors are impacting the team. Sometimes that’s because the leader is so admired that no one wants to tell him or her the truth, and sometimes it is because the leader has a history of quickly defending or dismissing feedback altogether.

In these situations, anonymous, 360-degree feedback can be most helpful. This can be gained through qualitative interviews as well as through the administration of an objective, online assessment that allows the leader to hear from his or her supervisors, peers, direct reports and others. This feedback, in the hands of a competent executive coach, can be powerful.

Another means of improving self-awareness is through psychological assessments that help leaders identify the internal drivers of behavior and how those drivers may or may not be working for them.

These assessments, combined with the 360-degree feedback, can lay the groundwork for incredible change. Once a leader is aware of how he or she is impacting others, it is possible to build a plan for sustaining behaviors with positive effects and managing those few that tend to have a less than desirable impact. Most leaders I work with only have two or three issues they need to truly modify to become more effective. 

Now, those behaviors or issues may be the most difficult to change, because they have been ingrained as deeply held beliefs or long-term habits. They might even be the behaviors that the leader believes led to his or her past success, so modifying them may seem a little risky. 

As you launch into the New Year, take some time to think about the impact of your leadership. 

Are you seeing your effect on others clearly? 

Are you getting the truth about your leadership? 

What negative habits could be contributing to the challenges you are facing?

Are you making the few critical adjustments that will have the greatest impact on your effectiveness and the performance of your team? 

And, finally, what outside resources do you need to help you identify and make the changes you and your team need to make? 

Tony Hawk is an executive coach and owner of Resources for Leading, (www.resourcesforleading.com) an organizational development firm in Bentonville. He can be reached at [email protected] or by calling 479-366-7692.