The case for emotionally intelligent leadership
Last week Lattice invited me to speak about emotionally intelligent leadership. I was so inspired by the smart questions from the Lattice community and the great conversation with Lattice Head of Content & Community Annette Cardwell (video), I wanted to share some of it here with you:
As a Chief Culture Officer, how do you define "culture" in the workplace? And how does that guide how you approach your role?
I think about organizational culture as an ecosystem. Imagine a coral reef: countless organisms acting, reacting and interacting together, each contributing in its own way to the richness of the whole. It’s infinitely complex. When the conditions are right and everything is in balance, a healthy culture will sustain growth for everyone, including the environment (or organization) itself. But when the conditions aren’t right—when the water is too warm or there isn’t enough movement—it yields a toxic culture where there is no hope for growth. Everyone’s just trying to survive.
Leaders set the conditions for their culture. That’s not to say they control all the factors and forces at play but they do determine the temperature of the water with how they act, react and interact. So the role of the leader is essential, and that is where I start in my work: helping leaders understand the impact they have and approach this responsibility with awareness and intention.
How does emotional intelligence (EQ) factor into leadership? What does it mean to be a “high EQ leader?”
Technically there are 4 dimensions to emotional intelligence:
But it may actually be more useful to consider these skills in context. Modern leaders need to have three core skillsets:
High-tech is what people mean when they talk about “hard skills.” This is our expertise, what we know how to do. It’s our experience, it’s based on what we’ve done before. And that’s when high tech skills serve us best, when we’re in familiar territory.
High-concept skills include strategic and systems thinking, flexibility and creativity.
High-touch skills include all the emotional intelligence components, and overlap with high-concept in additional areas like growth mindset, balance and decisiveness.
These two categories are what we rely on in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments like the one we’re living in today. Looking back over the past year, we can clearly see the ways we’ve leveraged our high-touch and high-concept skills to navigate this crisis. And one thing is certain: The need for these skills is only becoming more urgent.
Is high EQ leadership more likely in certain types of leaders? Or can that look like different things in different people?
There are people who start out with more emotional intelligence for whatever reason: how they were raised, what life experiences they had, who their role models were, etc. But it’s important to remember we cannot lead with EQ alone. We need to aspire to balance our high-tech, high-concept and high-touch skills, authentically in our own personal way. We all have different roles and different ratios, so it’s going to look different for everyone. That’s a good thing. The best leaders are continually working to strike a balance, and it’s a continual practice. We are never done.
To what degree is EQ changeable? How do you develop EQ in yourself?
The research tells us that, unlike basic intelligence (IQ), emotional intelligence can be cultivated. Everyone can develop their EQ.
Here’s the thing: it isn’t easy. It’s actually very difficult, and involves a tremendous commitment. We face discomfort that arises as we reckon with just how little awareness we might actually have, then there’s all the defense mechanisms we’ve established over the course of our lives to avoid that discomfort. You have to really want it. Maybe you have to need it.
To develop your emotional intelligence (or any aspect of your leadership, for that matter), you have to start with cultivating self-awareness. You can do this by seeking feedback from trusted sources, working with a therapist or coach, taking on an awareness practice like meditation or journaling, etc.
When it comes to helping leaders develop their emotional intelligence, is this something you can train people on? And how do you build a training program across different manager styles?
That’s exactly what we’re doing at BCW. We have a 12-week leadership development program called Leading Above the Line that uses mindfulness meditation as our mechanism for developing self-awareness and the other factors of emotional intelligence, along with growth mindset, creativity, flexible thinking and more.
Each quarterly cohort includes 30 leaders from all over the world, and the Leading Above the Line curriculum is based in what we all have in common: the human brain. Every practice we share with our leaders is validated by neuroscience, developmental psychology as well as progressive business and management models.
The program starts off simple with awareness of our breathing and expands to include body awareness, mindfulness of emotions and thoughts (including our biases), mindful speaking and listening, skillful decision-making, and leading change. We complement biweekly cohort meetings with three 1:1 coaching sessions in which our leaders identify and discard old behaviors, fears and assumptions that are holding them back, to make room for the new ways they are being called to lead today.
To date, 120 leaders have gone through the program and our pre- and post-assessments show exciting results:
+12% increase in emotional intelligence
+14% increase in morale & engagement
+11% in creativity
+10% in focus and concentration
And remember, this has all been during the chaos and strain of a global pandemic. I’m incredibly proud of this work, and excited to see how it continues to grow and evolve.
How can we more effectively coach/develop EQ in our people leaders besides just saying “lead with empathy”? How do we make the concept of EQ "sticky”?
This is a huge challenge we’re taking on, so best keep our strategies simple and concrete. Instead of telling people to “lead with empathy,” consider: What does empathy look like in your workplace? Maybe it’s a shift from criticizing people for making mistakes to leveraging mistakes as a growth opportunities. Or a shift from having all the answers (aka assumptions) to asking more questions. Maybe you work to improve the emotional intelligence of your team’s feedback conversations. Find one or two concrete behaviors and work to instill those in your ecosystem.
It’s important to connect these desired behaviors back to the work (and ideally to the vision and/or strategy) at every opportunity. Show how these shifts will not only make work more pleasant, but also more effective, more collaborative, more creative. When we are explicit about these efforts and people see them working, they take root.
One of my favorite ways to do this is to seize on tough moments in the rearview. After your team has faced a big challenge, come together and debrief: “That was hard. What can we learn from it? What did we do well? What will we do differently next time? How do we want to show up differently for one another?”
Simply asking these questions inspires reflection and can spark awareness, connection and understanding.
How do you encourage executive leadership to prioritize time and emotional investment in their own personal growth and development, amidst all their other competing and equally important priorities?
With executive leaders, it’s vital to show them not only the business case but also the greater context. Point to the changes happening in the industry, in the zeitgeist: Change is underway, the world is moving forward at light speed… are you coming?
That said, we also need to recognize and respect the fact that many of our leaders are not particularly comfortable in this territory. They may see leadership in terms of their high-tech skills, maybe some high-concept skills, but many haven’t considered (or have actively avoided) the high-touch skills. Meanwhile, the more senior they get, the more pressure there is to be perfect, to have it all figured out. The idea of working on oneself isn’t just a matter of priorities—for many it’s a terrifying proposition. We can seek to understand any resistance or uneasiness they may feel about developing (emotionally or otherwise) and then make it as safe for them as possible.
Simultaneously, it’s important to be investing in the next level down. If the C-suite doesn’t take emotional intelligence seriously, you might find more success at the VP level. Experiment with the folks who are hungry for this—they’re out there! Start with those early adopters, those who already see the value, and work with them to prototype and test some new behaviors together. Get some results and use that data (along your early adopters’ natural energy and enthusiasm) to carry these behaviors forward into other corners of the organization.
Change doesn’t always have to start at the top. In fact, in my experience it rarely does. Leaders set the conditions for culture, but they’re also the ones who are trying to keep everything stable and secure. It’s not their job to disrupt, and they may resist that which is new or unproven. But if we are consistent and determined, we can find the right ways to effect the changes we wish to see.
That point about consistency is important. We need to walk this walk ourselves. We can talk all day about emotional intelligence and its value to the business, but if we aren’t working on and modeling self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management ourselves, no one will follow us into this work. So let’s start with ourselves, and let our example be our most compelling case study.
Wellness is a huge priority for People teams right now as they address the needs of employees and teams struggling through a number of personal and professional challenges amid remote work, hybrid work, balancing caregiving needs, health needs, etc. How is emotional intelligence related to wellness?
The wellness of our people needs to be a top priority for every business. And yet, corporate “wellness” programs are too often like putting a (branded) band-aid over a wound without addressing the internal bleeding.
For me it comes down to: What issues are you addressing with a wellness program? Are you looking at the ways of working in your team or business that are directly contributing to people’s ill-being? Or are you trying to signal to your people that you care without really changing anything? If all we’re doing is offering a yoga class to make up for systemic overwork, inequity and the rest of what’s wrecking our people, not only will we not make a tangible impact, our employees will see right through it. That’s not to say don’t offer yoga, but be sure to dig deeper too.
That’s why Leading Above the Line is emphatically not a wellness program, though many people associate mindfulness with wellness first and foremost. I urge anyone using mindfulness in a corporate context to push for greater application beyond “stress management” and reach for transformation—of our leaders, our businesses and our ways of working.
Greater emotional intelligence in our leaders will lead to more meaningful solutions. If we are self-aware, attuned to the needs of others and willing to recognize issues and take responsibility for finding solutions, we will be well-equipped to design and build a more sustainable future of work. And if we aren’t, well, we won’t.
NOTE: Hello! We recently wrapped the first Breaking Open course and it exceeded all my hopes. We raised $1850 for The Loveland Foundation and the AAPI Community Fund. Check out these participant reflections and click here to register for the next course, starting July 6.
Recent posts: