Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Inspire And Engage Their People

At times, people tend to misunderstand why Emotional Intelligence is so important. The bottom line is that the way you ‘show up’ (how you behave and interact with people) determines how they feel (think of that person you know who brings the atmosphere in the room down just by showing up) and the way people feel determines how well they engage with you. Which in turn determines the outcome of that relationship. Simple…Basic… And you already knew that, right?  It’s logical.

The above should matter to leaders in particular, because a large part of our success is dependent upon our ability to engage people to get the results that only engaged people deliver.

Emotionally intelligent leaders inspire and engage their people and, as a result, they achieve results from their people that are superior to the results achieved by other leaders. This is a key point: you are only as emotionally intelligent as people experience you being.

You can have the highest EI ability on the planet and, if you ‘show up’ and don’t demonstrate that EI ability, then you don’t get that payback. It all comes down to behavior – which means that any leader who cares to understand what behaviors constitute emotional intelligence, and to take the time to learn how to make those behaviors part of their day to day leadership style, can become a more engaging leader and get better results from their people.

The organisation I work for, Genos International, invested 20 years of research in identifying a specific set of 42 behaviors that are responsible for driving an emotionally intelligent impact. The good news is that pretty much every leader ALREADY has many of those behaviors as a standard part of the way they behave day-to-day. In all likelihood, it is these behaviors that got them into their leadership positions in the first place. So, every one of us already has many of the behavioral seeds in our default behavior.

But equally, none of us are perfect, and we all fail to demonstrate some of the behaviors that would dramatically improve our impact.  But don’t worry: our experience shows that it is not necessary to assimilate every one of those emotionally intelligent behaviors to raise the level of our impact upon the people who work for us. Even changing one or two of these key behaviors can have a dramatic impact.

Think of emotional intelligence as being like a kaleidoscope. In a kaleidoscope, a series of mirrors set at angles to one another create fascinating fractal patterns when they reflect the tiny colored beads that share the tube with them. Each bead is reflected by each of the mirrors and each of the mirrors also reflects the reflection of the reflection, and the reflections of the reflections of the reflections and so on. So, if you turn the tube and even one bead you change its reflection, and the reflection of its reflection and so on – then the entire pattern changes dramatically.

Your working environment is just like that. Each of your behaviors is like one of those colored beads, and each of the people who work for you are like mirrors: they are affected by every one of your behaviors. And how they are affected by your behavior is reflected back to you and to every other member of your team that they deal with day to day. The reflections, and the reflections of the reflections of your behaviors are felt throughout your team (to understand more about the way everything you do and say affects EVERYONE around you should read ‘Connected’ by Christakis and Fowler).

If you change even one small thing about the way you behave in your interaction with your team, it is reflected all around the team (and the world at large) – having a dramatic effect on the way you are perceived. Assimilating even one or two of the emotionally intelligent behaviors uncovered by 20 years of our research could have a dramatic effect on the impact you have on your people and the extent to which they engage with you and their jobs to contribute superior results.

But how do you know which of those behaviors are already part of the default way in which you show up,’ and which you need to work upon?

You must ask those who work for you to tell you what behaviors you demonstrate with them day-to-day.