Emotional intelligence for well-being & leadership
I recently presented to the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative about the connection between emotional intelligence, your well-being, preventing burnout and leadership capacity. You can see the slide deck here.
Emotional Intelligence, Well-being, Burnout Prevention and Leadership
All of these are relevant in the remote work era just as they were when we worked in the office. Some of them may be more relevant now (e.g., burnout prevention, alignment with your purpose, doing what's meaningful to you) and how you lead may need adjustment (e.g., communicating and connecting with colleagues virtually).
Emotional intelligence is defined as a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.
EI is like the hub of the wheel. To do the work you want to do and have the impact you want to have, you need well-being and capacity to lead. EI helps you with that. EI relates to how well you handle stress. It relates to your wellbeing, to the strength of your relationships, all of which relates to your leadership. EI can help you identify your purpose and find meaning in your work because you know yourself better and you can communicate with your employer about your needs. And knowing yourself and your emotions can give you a heads up that you are close to burnout and it's time to make change and advocate for yourself.
Well-being
Wellbeing is the experience of health, happiness, and prosperity and includes:
Good mental health
High life satisfaction
A sense of meaning or purpose
Ability to manage stress
--Davis, Tchiki, Psychology Today, January 2, 2019. What Is Well-Being? Definition, Types, and Well-Being Skills
There is a correlation between four specific EI skills and your wellbeing.
Self-regard: Ability to respect and accept yourself, strengths, weaknesses and all. For wellbeing, this includes believing in yourself and living according to your values.
Optimism. Ability to to look at the brighter side of life and maintain a positive attitude even in the face of adversity (while not being naive). For wellbeing, it includes ability to recover from setbacks and claim a happy state.
Interpersonal Relationships. Ability to establish and maintain mutually satisfying relationships that include trust and compassion. For wellbeing, these relationships serve as a buffer from negative events.
Self-Actualization. Ability to realize your potential capacities. For wellbeing, this includes willingness to learn and grow on a journey aligned with personal values.
Purpose and Meaning
When it comes to purpose, the idea is similar to values. If you are not working in line with your purpose or living according to your purpose, it could impact how you lead because you might not feel authentic. I could also impact your wellbeing.
Connecting EI to purpose and meaning: if you know yourself better through EI, then you can sense when you are not in alignment with your purpose. You may feel uncomfortable and EI can help you notice this. You will feel more empowered to make changes that put you in alignment.
Leadership Capacity
What distinguishes outstanding leaders from average ones? Emotional self-awareness and stress management.
Emotional self-awareness is the ability to recognize your feelings, differentiate them, know why you are feeling these feelings, and recognize the impact your feelings have on others around you.
Stress-management refers to the ability to manage your emotions, particularly in stressful situations, and maintain a positive outlook despite setbacks.
Other EI skills that are particularly important for leadership are: social awareness and empathy, interpersonal relationships, effective communication and self-expression.
Social awareness is your ability to recognize others’ emotions and the dynamics in play within your organization, to "read the room".
Empathy goes hand in hand with social awareness. Empathic leaders strive to understand their colleagues’ feelings and perspectives, which enables them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
Interpersonal relationships: no leader accomplishes great things on their own.
Effective communication and self-expression: how you communicate and how you express yourself are critical leadership skills.
Burnout Prevention
Burnout occurs when the demands we face on the job outstrip the resources we have to meet them. Because it is more serious than job stress, the best solution is prevention.
Burnout is the purview of the employer. This is because the causes and the best solutions to burnout are related to your work environment. According to a survey of 7,500 full-time employees by Gallup, the top five reasons for burnout are:
Unfair treatment at work
Unmanageable workload
Lack of role clarity
Lack of communication & support from manager
Unreasonable time pressure
As you can see, these are within the control of the employer. But employees can take steps to prevent burnout using EI. By understanding your emotions, you can identify when you're starting to burn out before it happens. And using your empathy, you can sense when others are on the verge, too. With that information, you can have conversations with leaders in your organization about preventing burnout. And as a leader, empathy is important to connect with others and understand what your team needs.
According to responses during the presentation, most in attendance found that they either had too much work, too little communication with their supervisor and colleagues, or both and this was impacting their wellbeing. Not everyone felt that they could have conversations with their bosses about this. For those reading this who are in leadership roles, please reach out to your people. Ask them how they are and find out what they need. And then act on what you learn. Asking how someone is and then doing nothing about it is hollow. They need to hear from you. They need to know that you care. Flex those EI muscles!