One of the major concerns of the organizations today in this competitive era is to make teams more productive, regardless they work together in one place or they are scattered across the world. Research shows that lack of trust is a major concern in organizations. The reason for mistrust is a lack of emotional intelligence in the leaders. Leaders today are very transactional and task focussed. They fail to encourage teams, do not give positive feedback and do not empower teams. As a result, teams fail to perform.  

Organizations today should work on growing the emotional intelligence of the leaders and the management team. Emotional intelligence is a natural trait but it can be improved if worked upon. Leaders should learn to talk less and listen more. They should keep observing what is going on in the team. They should not be biassed towards any of the members of the team. Leaders should work towards improvement, empowerment, and encouragement for all the members in the team.

All this is not as easy as it seems since the members of the team are culturally diverse, they are from different generations, different genders and have different perspectives. Also, in some organizations teams are working from home. It is difficult to manage members when they are working remotely because you cannot see what they are doing. To manage this, leaders first need to work on their emotional intelligence. It is fundamentally made up of 4 factors:

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  Consciously understanding the self

  
  

It is the ability of the leader to understand his/her strengths and weaknesses. Beyond this leader also needs to understand his/her emotions and their effects on the team and its performance.

Research suggests that 95% of people think they are self – aware, but only 10-15% are. Working with teams where there is a lack of self – awareness can lead to increased stress, reduced motivation and thus leading to half chances of success. Leaders should bring out the best in themselves to bring out the best in others.  This can be done by getting feedback from peers, reporting managers and direct reports.  This will help to gain an understanding of the self-behavior.

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  Managing your Emotions

  
  

Leaders need to manage their emotions in situations of stress and always maintain an optimistic outlook despite obstacles. Leaders who cannot manage their emotions find it difficult to manage stressful situations and have a hard time to keep their impulses in check. Such leaders tend to react. But leaders should respond and not react. If they are more aware of their emotional intelligence, then they will respond to the stressful situation and manage teams to overcome stress.

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  Practice Empathy

  
  

While it is equally important to understand and manage self, leaders also need to look beyond the self. They need to be aware of others at the same time understand the dynamics of the organization. Leaders who practice empathy strive to understand the feelings of their peers and teams which helps them to work together and communicate better. The research marks empathy as the number one skill any leader should develop. If leaders perform with empathy, then teams will perform better as well as the individual performance of the leader will improve.

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  Be a coach/mentor

  
  

Leaders with high emotional intelligence have to ability to coach, mentor and influence others and identify better leaders for the organization. Leaders should be good at conflict management. Research shows that every unresolved conflict wastes 8 hours of organization’s time in non-value adding work and gossip. It also affects employee morale and productivity. Relationship management and conflict resolution are a few of the most important skills that a leader should work on.

Emotional Intelligence is important. Leaders set the benchmark for the employees. If they lack emotional intelligence, it will result in low employee engagement and higher attrition. There are cases where the leader is technically very strong but if he/she cannot effectively communicate and collaborate with others, then those technical skills will be ignored. By working on improving emotional intelligence leaders will help both the self and the organization to grow.       

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Written & Compiled by Faber Mayuri