Cultural Implications of a Leader's Level of Emotional Intelligence

Published in the Human Resource of Calgary Perspective newsletter - Jan 2007

This article looks at four important aspects of culture as viewed through the lens of emotional intelligence. Leaders who raise their emotional intelligence will enable a culture that is more engaged, strategic, collaborative and developmentally oriented to thrive in their organizations. These cultural aspects make organizations more successful and relevant in today’s marketplace.

I conducted a number of interviews with individuals that receive my e-mail newsletter. The most important issue for these human resource professionals and CEO’s was that of the engaged workforce. In my reading on leadership topics a successful leader and organization are strategic in their orientation.

Strategy is key to being relevant in the marketplace and thereby being successful. The collaborative leader and organization is more responsive to the needs of their stakeholders and customers. The collaborative organization is needed in today’s global economy.

The need for a developmentally oriented organization or culture came up very frequently in my interviews with Human Resource Professionals. Raising the emotional intelligence of your leaders enables these four important aspects of culture to be heightened.

Engaged: The engaged workforce is one in which employees and teams are freely and fully offering their ideas and energy to the organization and teams of which they are a part. Leaders that are relationship oriented, show concern for others and demonstrate empathy, all aspects of emotional intelligence, are able to know, communicate with, ask for input from and listen to their employees. Leaders with higher emotional intelligence have more engaged employees and teams reporting to them.

When leaders know their employees they also can assign work to them based on motivators, and give them assignments that enable growth and learning to occur. Both motivation and growth lead to highly engaged and interested employees.

Leaders who communicate how work is aligned to the mission and vision of the organization help employees link their work to a bigger picture and enable more meaningful work to occur for employees within the organization. Engaged employees like to know what is expected of them at work and align their work to a bigger vision and mission. Leaders engage employees through their ability to communicate both the vision and what is expected of their employees.

Using the input of and listening to employees helps leaders to know what is doable regarding the employee’s work and what would be a stretch assignment for the employee. Higher emotional intelligence enables greater skills in using input and listening to employees to engage them at a higher level.

Strategic: Strategic behavior recognizes the importance of principles, mutuality; understanding others frame of reference and jointly conducting tasks. A person who is higher in EQ will understand others frames of reference and be more strategic in their orientation. Leaders that have strengths in problem solving, independence, interpersonal relationship, social responsibility and empathy all aspects of emotional intelligence, can be stronger strategically.

The ability to empathize and be socially responsible would enable a leader to act in a mutually beneficial manner. Understanding the importance of holding to principles for the greater good is also a strategic behavior. A person of higher emotional intelligence will perform these strategic behaviors more naturally than a leader with lower EQ.

Collaborative: Collaboration is key to the success of many organizations. Customer, supplier and employee relationships that are collaborative lend themselves to viability and sustainability. A leader’s level of self-awareness, socially responsibility, interpersonal orientation, and empathy, all aspects of emotional intelligence, determine their ability to collaborate with employees and stakeholders.

Interactions of mutual benefit can occur when leaders are socially responsible. The levels of collaboration that are needed to enable responsiveness to stakeholders and employees increases as a leader’s emotional intelligence is raised.

Workplace interactions that emphasize strong interpersonal relationships and empathy to effectively handle differences enable more collaboration to occur. Often leaders need to embrace the importance of interpersonal relations as they move from an individual contributor to a manager who gets work done through others. More collaboration becomes possible when the importance of relationships is internalized by leaders.

Developmentally Oriented: This aspect of culture demonstrates the ability of the organization to learn new things, develop new services and renew itself. Leaders who are higher in self awareness, an aspect of emotional intelligence, enable feedback, and growth and development, and learning to occur more freely within their organizations. A senior leader who blocks growth because of defensiveness blocks others learning and growth which costs the organization money in lost engagement.

A developmentally oriented organization is also often called the learning organization. A leader with more emotional intelligence allows the learning culture or organization to occur more frequently.

Engagement, Strategy, Collaboration and a Development Orientation: Organizations with these aspects of their culture developed would naturally be more successful.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) lends itself to success more than IQ, predicting 27% to 45% success versus 1 to 20% for IQ. Why not raise your EQ and raise your own and your organizations level of success at the same time?

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