“Think about your best boss,” I ask the people in front of me. “Get one person in mind and now think of all the reasons why you chose this person as your best boss. The big reasons and the small reasons.” This is how I begin many of my executive programs.
And what happens after this demonstrates an important point about leadership.
After thinking through all the reasons for choosing that person as their best boss and then narrowing that list down to their top three reasons, we begin to classify these reasons. Were their top three reasons related to how smart this boss was? Or how good they were at whatever “hard” skills they used on the job? These skills could be anything from architectural design, data science, search engine optimization, or surgery. Or was it something else? It turns out that most of the answers fall under this “something else,” and relate to that boss’s soft skills, relationship skills, their interpersonal skills — also known as emotional intelligence (EI).
I’ve run this exercise with thousands of people from all over the world, in different industries, and at different levels in the organizational hierarchy and the results are always the same. In each audience, the reasons for why someone was our best boss relates more to their EIthan their intelligence or their technical or functional skills. By a wide margin.
Several years ago, I started keeping track of responses to this exercise and found that about 85% of the reasons people give for why someone was their best boss have to do with EI. The remaining 15% is split relatively evenly between intelligence and “hard skills.”
This doesn’t mean that intelligence or technical or functional skills are not important in a boss, or to making them successful in their career and, in fact, it’s often those factors that helped them in school and their early career, and likely what got them promoted. However, what makes the difference between a good boss and a great boss, or leader, has more to do with emotional intelligence than it does with high intelligence or excellent technical or functional skills. intelligence and strong technical or functional skills are the table stakes, and it’s emotional intelligence that makes the difference between a good boss and a great boss.
The most common reasons people give for someone being their best boss? Across the thousands of people who I’ve done this exercise with, a few key behaviors emerged as most frequently mentioned for a best boss, including that the boss:
- Gave autonomy/independence in how to do the work
- Cared about them or their career
- Challenged them to be better – and supported them in doing so
- Engaged in clear, open communication
- Coached or mentored them
- Found or brought out the best in them
- Were good listeners
All of these behaviors would be classified under EI skills, and all of them are learnable behaviors.
Emotions
EI is about being intelligent about our emotions. So, what are emotions? They are a response to a specific situation or stimulus. While some emotions may be more pleasant, and others more challenging, no emotion is either “good” or “bad,” or “positive” or “negative.” All of our emotions give us data and are there to help us. For example, anger helps us take action when our path to a goal has been blocked, a boundary has been violated, or we (or others) have been wronged. Fear alerts us to potential danger so we can take action to avoid that danger. Sadness helps us slow down to feel our losses, connect with others, and show them that we need support. And happiness helps us notice and move toward who and what provides us pleasure and gives us a sense of well-being.
What Do We Mean When We Say “Emotional Intelligence”?
Emotional intelligence was first introduced by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in a 1990 academic paper and later popularized by Daniel Goleman. Although the concept has been around for many years, there is often a lot of confusion about what we really mean by the term emotional intelligence. Is it just being nice? No. Is it something innate and fixed, so that you either have emotional intelligence or you don’t? No. So what is it, then?
Emotional intelligence the ability to recognize, understand, and use your emotions effectively, including the ability to pick up on others’ emotional state and use this awareness to respond to them successfully. There’s a lot packed into this definition, and each component is important. First, being emotionally intelligent means that we can recognize our own emotions in the moment and then be able to regulate these emotions and channel them effectively. It also means that we are able to understand the emotional state of others, picking up on their body language, facial expressions, or tone of voice, and then use this awareness to successfully interact with them. It’s all of these components taken together that lead us to say that someone has emotional intelligence.
While many of us strive to have high EI, it turns out that many of us are low on the emotional intelligence scale. And how would you know if you’re one of these people? There are several signs, or “tells,” including that people with low EI tend to:
- Be easily angered – it doesn’t take much for them to “spark”
- Strive to prove that they are right, often focusing on winning an argument, even at the expense of the relationship
- Have difficulty admitting and owning their mistakes – they are likely to blame circumstances or other people, or to hide the mistake from others
- Be highly opinionated, and its close cousin, judgmental
- Blame others for how they make them feel
- Have difficulty controlling their own emotions
- Have poor listening skills – they may interrupt, listen half-heartedly (or distractedly), listen only for how to respond, rather than understand, or refuse to listen to other points of view
- Often feel misunderstood
This last one, feeling misunderstood, is perhaps the saddest of them all because these people often have very good intentions, but their lack of self-understanding and self-management means that their behaviors don’t match their intentions. When we lack EI, it’s hard to understand how we come across to others and interpret their behaviors toward us, which can lead to us feeling misunderstood.
A lot of high-achieving people can relate to these signs because they quite often have very good intentions for being a great teammate, boss, or leader, but their behaviors get in the way. And what they may not understand is that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but others judge us by our behaviors.
So, if you are one of those high achievers that can relate to these signs, I say Congratulations! Now you know where you’re starting from. Because awareness is the first step.
The Components of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence has four components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skill.
Self-Awareness is the ability to recognize and understand our own emotions, as well as know our values, have a realistic sense of our strengths and weaknesses, and understand how our behaviors impact others.
Self-Management involves regulating our thoughts, emotions and behaviors so that we can respond to people and situations intentionally, rather than simply reacting. The ability to self-manage helps us to work toward personal and professional goals, be more adaptable to changing circumstances, and overcome obstacles and setbacks.
Social Awareness is about understanding the perspectives, emotions, and needs of other people.
Social Skill relates to our ability to effectively interact with others and includes the ability to manage relationships and navigate social situations. Social skills involve the ability to cooperate with others, build teams, influence people, develop others, take charge and lead effectively, and manage conflict.
How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
If you would like to enhance your self-awareness:
- Pay attention to your emotions; learn to label (and accept) your emotions
- Journal about how you feel
- Understand your values
- Observe others to better understand your impact on them
- Ask for feedback
- Practice mindfulness, which can help you become more aware of the emotions you are having in the moment
If you would like to enhance your self-management:
- Engage in the foundations of self-care: eating well, getting enough sleep, and exercising – all on a regular basis
- Be clear on your goals and the behaviors that will help you reach these goals
- Practice mindfulness, which can help you be more aware of your intended behaviors – those that will bring you closer to your goals
- Identify a range of behavioral choices (and consequences) for how you might respond in difficult situations
- Learn to relax
If you would like to enhance your social awareness:
- Read good literature, which helps you better understand, and even “inhabit,” someone else’s perspective
- When in conversation with others, pay attention to the feelings behind the words
- When in conflict with others, work to understand their perspective
If you would like to improve your social skills:
- Show genuine interest and curiosity in others and their perspectives
- Actively listen
- When disagreeing with someone, hold that person in high regard and assume positive intent
- Remember that you are one half of any relationship
Emotional intelligence is a set of important life skills that helps us to live and work with people more effectively, build and maintain long-term relationships, and even recover from setbacks more effectively. makes us more effective human beings and more effective leaders. It also, generally, makes us happier, more productive people.
About the Author:
Margaret is a speaker, author, and educator with over 30 years of experience at the highest echelons of business and higher education. Margaret has taught on four continents and held multiple key leadership roles at Harvard and MIT. She is also the founder of The MYLO Center, a leadership education and professional development firm.
