02 Emotional Intelligence Coaching
Communicating with Emotional Intelligence, or lack of it, can ultimately make, or break, a career. It’s not just about getting the message across: how you get the message across is key; and, extending that, it’s also about other people’s perception of how you get the message across.
Communicating with Emotional Intelligence is important at all levels of leadership from new managers to C-Suite and Boards, and especially so in project management, client-service, influencing-type environments. Nearly every Executive Coaching program we do, at every level, has some element of improving Emotional Intelligence as an outcome.
That said, a large percentage of our Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Coaching is for mid-to-senior level leaders, as this is where EQ becomes a critical factor in a leader’s success. When leaders transition into this mid-senior level, leadership requirements tend to transform. Prior to transitioning, a leader’s main focus is managing their team: managing up is important, but leading the team is usually the more critical leadership metric at less senior levels.
However, at the mid-to-senior level of leadership, the expectations very often shift – leading the team becomes a bit of an expected ‘B.A.U.’ (Business As Usual) requirement. Things change at this level, and managing across stakeholders, peers groups and managing up (often managing up to your boss’ boss, and even a level above that) become the critical metrics of leadership success. This is where leading with Emotional Intelligence becomes the most critical skill – and where not having it can cause a previously stellar career trajectory to crash and burn. Some of Australia’s (and other countries’) world leaders are great examples of how a lack of emotional intelligence can rapidly damage or destroy trust.
Over 95% of the Executive Coaching we do at the mid-to-senior and C-Suite/Board level has Emotional Intelligence development as a critical development component – if not the full focus.
Leading with Emotional Intelligence has a huge positive impact on leadership, sales, relationships, projects, stakeholder management, and more. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous and hyper-connected world with its ever increasing expectations on performance, whether you are in the Private, Not-for-Profit or Public Sector, Emotional Intelligence is an even more essential skill for today’s leaders, influencers, project managers and sales staff.
The Hay Group found in one study of 44 Fortune 500 companies, that salespeople with high Emotional Intelligence produced twice the revenue of those with average or below average scores. In another study, technical programmers demonstrating the top 10 percent of emotional intelligence competency, were developing software three times faster than those with lower competency.
Your staff are your business. Take the people away and all you have is an empty building with a sign on the door. It doesn’t matter if you are a leader in the Private, Not-for-Profit or Public Sector – the same rules apply.
