2.1 Why developing emotional intelligence?

Outcomes for you

Developing emotional intelligence goes well beyond the basic idea of empathy: there are clear, measurable results you can expect as you develop your ability to positively influence your emotions and the ones of people around you.

For example:

1.   You will develop a stronger ability to understand what’s going on around you

2.   You will be able to gain skills and knowledge faster

3.   You will gain more support from others[1]

4.   You will be seen as a better performer by people above you in hierarchy [2]

It’s all very tangible and real, and the way it works has to do with how able you are to control your emotions and influence them.

The more you are in a positive emotional state and experience emotions like gratefulness, the less your brain is under strain, and the more space it has to explore new thoughts, establish relationships and experiment.[3]

The more you follow on that, the more relationships you will build thanks to it, and the more skills you will learn.[4]

Basically, you’d be building a safety net of new resources you can rely on, which will then allow you to perform better.

Plus, studies[5] show you will not just perform better, but actually be seen as a better performer by whoever is above you in the hierarchy.

Outcomes for your team

You will see your team’s performance increase, and you will see your team be more motivated, independent and resilient. You will perform at a higher level, be more efficient and work in a reliable climate of trust. [6]

Outcomes for your team will be slightly longer-term, but as they learn to communicate at a deeper level with you (and with each other in turn) they will find a psychologically safer and healthier place to work in.

And because of that, they will want to invest more energy, be proactive and be more willing to take competent risks.

Emotional intelligence helps understanding others and communicating better with them. It helps teams and leaders stick together and be healthy and resilient, even under uncertainty and pressure.

If you are going through some rough waters, you’d appreciate someone noticing, offering a helping hand, or just in general caring. If someone does that for you, you’d be thankful, and will like that person more because you know he or she is someone you can count on.[7]

Not only that, you’ll also want to reciprocate: you’ll be thankful for what he or she has done and will feel that it’s right to be as supportive and caring in his or her regard.

And if you put this dynamic at a leadership and team level, you can see how people in a team with a good dose of emotional intelligence will support each other, stick together, understand each other and motivate each other. That’s why EI is such a key factor at work.

SOURCES

Dutton, J. et al. “How to be a positive leader” (2014)

Fredrickson, Barbara L. ‘The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions.’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 359, no. 1449 (29 September 2004): 1367–78. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1512.

Sadri, Golnaz, Todd J. Weber, and William A. Gentry. ‘Empathic Emotion and Leadership Performance: An Empirical Analysis across 38 Countries’. The Leadership Quarterly 22, no. 5 (2011): 818–30.

Stephens, John Paul, Emily Heaphy, and Jane E. Dutton. High-Quality Connections. Oxford University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199734610.013.0029.

[1] Fredrickson, B. (2004)

[2] Sadri, G. et al. (2011)

[3] Fredrickson, B. (2004)

[4] Fredrickson, B. (2004)

[5] Sadri, G. et al. (2011)

[6] Fredrickson, B. (2004), Dutton,J. et al. (2014)

[7] Stephens, J. et al. (2011)