Why We Need EQ For Leadership

Gone are the days when the metric for success used to be based on the dollar amount in your bank, the achievements won, or the accolades collected. While these are fabulous measures of performance and results, for longer term sustainability, the foundation of a success is built on character.

As leaders, entrepreneurs, icons, and business luminaries, learning to lead with character is imperative, and it’s essentially missing in business schools. Yet, establishing your essence in developing characteristics grounded in emotional intelligence is drastically shaping the way we look at the new era of success.

Topics such as imposter syndrome, selfcritique, mental angst, and internal resilience are typical taboo topics that leaders generally face behind closed doors, but is a fundamental ‘silent disease’ felt among top business executives around the world.

Your emotional quotient (EQ) in managing your internal states begins with your own self-awareness. When you are more aware and accept the variances and uniqueness your greatest value, your navigation through problem solving and making better decisions, comes with ease. Lastly, you can commit to take action: whether it’s expanding your ideas, innovating the company, or planning the next step in your career.

Shaping your emotional intelligence replaces IQ as the new metric for building and scaling companies. Here are four key characteristics that lay the groundwork for your EQ;

Empathy: Embracing what you are building and for whom you are building by being sensitive and open to the feelings of others. Understanding the perception and the perspective of the other person. This is the art of finding the reasons behind the decision making, and thought process of others. With kindness and warmth, this is the new era of leadership.

Vulnerability/transparency: When you are able to be vulnerable and showcase a more “human” and relatable side of you, it offers humility, trust, and respect that is instantly gained. Celebrate flaws and champion some aspects that make you human which is desperately something that offers more collaboration and more cohesion with families, businesses, communities, and societies as a whole.

Curiosity: There is never any judgment in curiosity. To understand why, and to pursue the unknown, gain a different perspective, a different thought process, encourage openness and expansion.

Grit: This is the understanding that adversity is a part of life. Embrace the tenacity and fierce capacity to rise up again and again, in the face of the natural ebb and flow of life. In every single life there will be dark times, and it’s not about avoiding them altogether, it’s about understanding how to navigate through the challenging aspects of life and embrace some of the toughest parts along the road. It is not about being the victim, but rather opening oneself to life’s valuable lessons that strengthen your core as a human as a result. Utilise the silver lining in each scenario, so that you can make better decisions as a result.

Fundamentally, leading with a greater capacity for understanding and strengthening your emotional leadership prepares you and steers you forth in the right direction that will not only empower and impact those around you, but make you a more distinguished human being with boundless success that spills over into different aspects of your life.