How to be an emotionally intelligent leader: 7 key ideas

Leading is more than creating the right conditions for the members of a team to make an effort to work. The logic of controlling workers to meet the minimum has become completely obsolete for a simple reason; it focuses on individual work, instead of on the main thing in these cases: the relational processes of a group of people.

That is why emotional leadership is relevant. Instead of relying solely on task completion based on objective criteria, emotionally intelligent leaders they work so that the teams function as a unit in which everyone understands the meaning of what one does and the the rest. After all, putting ourselves to work in an organization does not stop us from being human, and that matters.

In this article we will see a series of key ideas that promote emotional leadership applied to companies, sports or any other field in which teamwork is required.

• Related article: "What is emotional intelligence?"

Keys to being an emotionally intelligent leader

It is increasingly clear that in the world of organizations those who lead best

they always take into account the emotional aspect of themselves and others. Fortunately, the days are gone when being a leader seemed to be synonymous with commanding and enforcing the rules.

For better and for worse, guiding teams towards goals is no longer reaching written objectives, but take into account the objectives and real needs of individuals and groups (or organizational departments).

On the other hand, it is also evident that emotional leadership is not applied by following the theoretical instructions in a book or manual, but that getting to do it well requires practice and filming. However, the foundations of this type of leadership can be summarized in simple ideas so that from them we have some notions about what to do. These basic fundamentals are, broadly speaking, the following.

1. Prioritize assertiveness

There are people who claim to lead by leaving it to the people under their supervision to detect and solve their own problems in terms of productivity and work dynamics. Although this does not sound unreasonable if you only work with certain highly specialized and highly trained professional profiles, it is usually a mistake. Not everyone defaults to such a proactive attitude, and less when giving bad news.

That is why it must be clear that in most cases it is the leaders who must bring up any problems they detect, even though that can lead to some awkward moments until a solution is found. solution. Avoiding these moments when you talk to a team or a worker about things to improve will only cause problems to accumulate.

2. Avoid inconsistencies in communication

In organizations, communication establishes how all the people and teams that make them up should be coordinated. Therefore, it is crucial that there is no inconsistency or contradiction in what is said, which requires putting yourself in the place of others and interpreting what is communicated by putting ourselves in their place.

An error in this aspect can cause dozens of people to work on what they shouldn't or in a way that they shouldn't, which causes tremendous damage to the whole. It is also necessary to take into account word-of-mouth communication and that, when faced with two versions of the same event, people tend to stay with the one that has the most positive consequences for them.

• You may be interested in: "Types of Leadership: The 5 most common types of leaders"

3. Know how to set the limit of informal communication

Emotionally intelligent leaders are distinguished by connecting with the people under their charge taking into account their needs, beliefs, and motivations, but that doesn't mean they should pretend to be everyone's friend. world. In fact, pretending to do so only creates discomfort: overreaching can be seen as an abuse of power.

4. Know how to eliminate unnecessary protocols

An organization cannot be an accumulation of initiatives that look good on paper but do not make sense to anyone or provide any practical advantage. For this reason, it is good to attend to those joint weekly routines that, according to the point of view of the team members, do not make sense for, knowing this, decide whether to better explain their usefulness, readjust their format or eliminate them directly.

5. Convey the values ​​of the organization

Any organization is governed by a series of values, even if there is no Public Relations manual document created expressly to establish what they are. Therefore, you have to try that these values ​​are transmitted through all communication channels, both through joint actions and through the image and aesthetic component that define the team or organization.

• You may be interested in: "The 10 types of values: principles that govern our lives"

6. Don't obsess over mistakes

Mistakes cannot be a taboo for the leader or for the people he supervises and energizes. Otherwise, you will be promoting a culture of idealization and hiding imperfections that will harm the progress of the teams as time goes by.

Also, encourage reporting of issues and bugs makes it possible to create useful diagnoses that prevent the chain of events that have led to this mistake from continuing to negatively affect the group.

7. Getting used to constantly learning

Through emotional leadership you work with people, but also with theoretical and practical content of all kinds that must be learned as the organization or team burns stages of its development. That's why emotionally intelligent leaders must maintain an extremely flexible attitude when it comes to learning. Of course, always taking into account the feasibility of learning certain things and the opportunity costs involved in training in any competition.

How to train in this field?

As we have seen, emotional leadership is much more than following a series of perfectly specified steps on a day-to-day basis and hoping that these will bear fruit without further ado. It is oneself who must promote positive changes in a team, orienting oneself based on the appropriate knowledge.

That is why it is important to gain quality theoretical and practical experience to delve into the art of being an emotionally intelligent leader. The Specialization Course in Emotional Leadership of the Institut de Formació Continua-IL3 (Universitat de Barcelona) is a good way to get hold of the fundamental tools to learn how to promote and energize teams and organizations in the best possible way.

The course, which consists of 3 ECTS credits and begins in Barcelona on October 19, 2018 (ending on November 10 of the same year), has the participation of leadership experts who are dedicated to it in the professional field and is designed to be a practical experience in which individual, team and team leadership tools are internalized and perfected organizations. To learn more about this training program, you can click this link.

On the other hand, any process of perfecting one's own leadership requires frequent practice. Therefore, it is important to surround yourself with the right people and not waste our skills to get the best out of work teams. Only by learning from the mistakes made and coming into contact with everything that makes an organization a complex system, do we come to grasp the dynamics to be applied in each case.