Tumultuous times call for balanced, emotionally intelligent leaders for the very reason that being emotionally intelligent helps us steer through the ambiguity and potential loss that comes with a crisis. At this instance let’s talk about an example which shows Emotional Intelligence showcased by a leader.
A US-based company named Gravity Payments created a wave of social media interactions in 2011 , so much so to cross over 500 million interactions, when they established a US$70,000 minimum income for their workers. He said “I want the scorecard we have as business leaders to be not about money but about purpose, impact, and service,”.
Now , in this Coronavirus pandemic, the company’s profits have halved. Price was faced with a critical decision, and had two choices either to go bankrupt or to lay off 20% of his employees. But an exceptional level of emotional intelligence was displayed by Price when he decided to stay in the business and seek the help and opinion of his employees. And thereafter a lesson of true leadership was imparted to the world as a whole.
Price and Gravity COO Tammi Kroll planned lengthy meetings of about 40 hours with people in small sections of employees to check in and gather ideas.
When the condition was put forward to their workers, the group on their own put across the proposal of having a pay cut so as to help the company and their fellow colleagues tide over around an year , with no one losing their jobs. All higher-ranking cream of the crop did the same.
This action of the worker and their influential displayed a strong EQ among the staff of the corporation.
Emotional Intelligence is a must for healthy working of an organization, its employees and the leaders.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to interact effectively with other humans. Yes, EQ has quite a lot of components, such as self attentiveness, social responsiveness, drive, self directive and societal skills, but at the heart of all this lies the fact that how collaborative, influential and empathetic your approach is.
Daniel Golman’s, various components consist of Self Awareness – Knowing oneself, ones desires , ones value system, ones emotions, expression of those emotions etc. The second component consists of Self regulation , which means that , after knowing your emotions how well you tend to control your emotions, so that they act in favor of you rather than acting against you. The third component consist of Self motivation, how can an individual keep oneself motivated and keep on moving towards his/her goals consistently with the same zeal and enthusiasm. The fourth component is Social awareness, which includes knowing the behavior of others, being empathetic to people around you. And the last component is Social Regulation, which means how you tend to develop good interpersonal relationships.
EI considers around 90% of the intelligence apart from similar technological skills and awareness as per researches.
We can equip our EQ through training and development. Excluding the crises , the things in normal circumstances also, apart from the coronavirus pandemic has pressurized personal and professional life. In that context, the best leaders are those who act with composure and exceptional self-control. You might be a extremely talented and bright leader, but if you wilt under the stress and strain of a crisis, you can’t lead anyone.
Following are some take always to improve upon the Emotional Intelligence of professional in particular :
- Self restraint
- expend time on self- measurement and self-knowledge
- harmonizing the thoughts and sentiment components
- regulation
- Interpersonal association
- Effective communication
- Empathetic approach and removing the risk of ridicule
- Creating psychological safety
- Labeling the fear and not ignoring them
- Be real and avoid faking
- Take care of yourself by creating some me time
- Change your internal thoughts and create a positive thinking process
At JIMS Kalkaji we take care of Emotional Intelligence of our students. We organize various guest lectures on these topics from eminent corporate speakers who share what steps are taken to handles such issues and keep their employees motivation and morale high.
JIMS, Kalkaji
For more information visit: https://www.jagannath.org/
