Building Emotional Intelligence part 3 – Social Awareness & Relationship Management Skills
Would you like to influence better and have a greater impact on your team, colleagues and business. Developing a broad range of Emotional Intelligence skills is key to success here.
Firstly, let’s look at ‘social awareness’. What is this? It is understanding what is going on around us, on a micro and macro level. There are two key aspects to this at different ends of a continuum:
🧠 Empathy
How are people feeling? How are they responding - to us, to a challenging situation, an issue with a colleague, some change or uncertainty? Empathy involves understanding how it is for them. We don’t have to agree with them.
What are the benefits of showing empathy? It helps people feel understood. And when we feel understood, barriers tend to decrease. There are no magic bullets here.
Certainly the reverse is true, when we don’t feel understood, barriers tend to increase. So empathy can be really useful when having a potentially tricky conversation, giving feedback or trying to influence and negotiate.
🏛️ What is Organisational Awareness?
This involves seeing the bigger picture, the reasons why our organisation does certain things, e.g., makes certain decisions, implements changes, introduces new systems, etc
We do not always agree with these decisions, and may challenge them behind closed doors.
As leaders, we are often balancing empathy for individuals and the organisation’s priorities, which can be tricky.
For example, someone in our team may disagree with the new system that’s being introduced. We may listen to their concerns and empathise. ‘I can see that you think it’s a complete waste of time and money that would be better spent elsewhere.’ We then move onto the bigger picture, ‘The reason the organisation is implementing this new system is because it will ultimately enable us to give our customers better service and reduce errors and complaints.’
Questions to consider:
Which of these two aspects comes more naturally to you as a leader?
In what situations could you use the other one more?
How would you do this? What could you do/say?
5 Ways to Build Effective Relationships
In recent posts, we’ve been understanding more about the essential leadership currency, Emotional Intelligence (EI). In our final post we’ll put this together with the last domain of Relationship Management. It involves 5 key areas:
1️⃣ Influence: I like the acronym called ‘WIIFM’: ‘What’s in it for me?’ What does the other person get out of the conversation or suggestion?? How does it benefit them? Lead with this. See also the blogs on Communication Skills.
2️⃣ Coaching: The key to building a high-performing team is investing time to build competence and confidence. How much do we do this? It can be quicker to just do something yourself, but coaching your team to do it will free you of that task forever, saving time in the long run (and developing them). Coaching and mentoring our team equips them to take on more, freeing us up to lead and manage.) See also blogs on Free Up Time to Lead by Empowering your Team and Empowering your Team using Coaching skills.
3️⃣ Conflict management is a vital skill. How often do we delay difficult conversations? How can we approach them with more confidence, often leading to a more positive outcome? Empathy, clarity of expectations, and giving and receiving feedback often all contribute to building effective relationships.
4️⃣ Teamwork: we talk about leadership, what about ‘teamship’? Being a great team member involves being reliable, getting our work done, supporting others, showing respect, valuing difference, training and coaching others, and offering our strengths and skills to the team.
5️⃣ Inspiring Leadership: is not about grand gestures; it’s about connecting with our team: understanding them, setting clear expectations, providing support, and giving feedback And it’s not just about what we do, it’s about how we do it. Think about a leader who you admire. Which behaviours impress you? How could you emulate them?
Emotional intelligence is often a theme in executive coaching and effective leadership training. If you’re interested in how to increase emotional intelligence, either for yourself or colleagues, please do drop me a message.
Kate Jennings