MORE Supportive Leadership

In our post last week, Supportive Leadership, we talked about some great leadership skills that can help you connect to your team – especially during stressful times.

Today, we’d like to talk about the role of Emotional Intelligence (also known as EQ) in your leadership. Research suggests that EQ makes a significant difference in whether you are a stellar leader or an average one.

The goals of Emotional Intelligence are to:

• Reflect on your emotions, other’s emotions, and the situation, and then use that information to adjust your behavior accordingly.
• Understand the need for and value of a variety of responses.  
• Adapt your approach to best meet the needs of different situations.

Asking questions that can help you understand and better read multiple emotions is critical as a manager and leader today.

We’ve identified three questions that are very powerful in helping you connect with your employees and to connect with their emotions. These work well for people in your personal life too.

• Can you tell me what a recent success looked like? (Listen for excitement and/or joy.)
• Can you tell me about a recent challenge? (Listen for anxiety and/or fear.)
• What are your thoughts on how you’ll move forward? (Listen for conviction, angst, or confusion.)

As you think about ways to connect with your team in a supportive way, see if a version of these questions might work for you and your team.

Let us know what you come up with!