A Comprehensive Guide to the Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

December 23, 2020May 18, 2021 Edward Roesch

Emotional intelligence (EI) and Leadership have recently dominated different world forums-and for a good reason. Research shows the two have lots in common. People who are skilled in both are often successful.

For entrepreneurs or freelancers running freelancer teams, leadership and EI are woven into daily routines. For example, spearheading a team of freelancers working separately to achieve a common project goal takes leadership. It takes EI to respond to performance and tackle any challenges that arise.

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Defined

Emotional intelligence refers to a person’s potential to understand and control their own emotions and the ability to understand and influence others’ emotions.

Leadership on the other hand, is your ability to influence others, which maximizes their efforts towards achieving a common goal.

Essentials of Emotional Intelligence

EI will be a need as long as people live and interact. As a leader, you need a tad more than the average person. These are the hallmarks of emotional intelligence you ought to know.

Self-awareness: This entails a thorough understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, feelings, and how they affect interactions with others. Conversely, when you’re not self-aware, you drag the team down and increase any existing conflicts.
Self-management: It involves your ability to maintain your cool under different circumstances. Poor self-management shows up in impulsive decisions, reacting instead of responding, and the classic ‘my way or highway’ kind of thinking.
Social awareness: Your ability to read moods is proportional to your level of social awareness. Simple non-verbal cues like a creased eyebrow, fidgeting, and so on tells you a lot about a person’s mood.
Managing relationships: Conflict is inevitable in any work setting. It’s easier for you to manage conflict when you approach issues respectfully.

How to Use EI as a Freelancer

Freelancers face a host of challenges. We’ve compiled a list of the most common ones and how EI will help you to conquer each.

Choosing Projects

EI helps you to choose projects depending on more than the money involved. When you’re self-aware, you consider your options, depending on your ability. You’re better off earning less than being stuck with work you can’t complete.

Teamwork

As you grow and hire your own freelancers, team management requires empathy, the ability to read a person’s emotions, and solving conflict when it arises. If your decisions depend on emotions, in this case, you’ll hire and fire people all the time.

Establishing Trust

Psychologists agree that most people would rather get services from a person they trust rather than get a cheaper offer from someone they don’t trust. By establishing trust, you build a solid client base.

Negotiation and Communication

Sometimes projects come with a lower payment than you’d like. EI helps you to negotiate better terms. You start by building a good rapport and explaining your charges in a way that doesn’t dismiss the client. At the end of the day, it’s a win-win situation.

Maintaining and Growing Clients

We all lose clients. Sometimes clients leave for objective reasons like budget shortfall (or a pandemic!). But clients can also just drift away due to neglect. Emotionally intelligent freelancers stay in touch and keep their finger on the pulse of their clients’ needs.

How to Use Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

As a leader, your day job involves managing groups of people from different backgrounds and with temperaments. Good leadership means you get everyone on your team to reach a common goal. As a leader, EI helps you in the following ways:

Controlling Your Feelings

Successful leaders, at their core, are geniuses at managing their emotions. An emotionally intelligent leader recognizes when he/she is angry, sad or happy and regulates those emotions for the benefit of the team. You’ll also be able to recognize them in your team and act appropriately. With time, you’ll build trust between you and your team. Remember to do these additional things to increase trust.

Be approachable. People know the difference between claiming to be approachable and actually being approachable. Stiff leaders make bosses that people have to deal with as opposed to leaders people trust.
Quality time. Go beyond the personality test results on interviews and actually get to know your team.
Empathy. Approach failure on your team’s part with sensitivity. Seek out what went wrong and reach a satisfactory agreement for both parties.

Inspiring Others

There’s more to how people see you than how you dress. Your outward expression of emotions contributes to your attitude. The average person is fairly good at reading attitudes. They may be better at it than you.

For example, people see optimism or the lack of it when you’re introducing a project. EI helps you to express positive emotions, especially when things get challenging. Your team will follow the lead. An inspired team is more productive.

Mentoring and Coaching

You can’t be an effective leader without helping others to improve themselves. As you lead others in any sphere, you need EI to develop common team goals, promote a sense of identity, and to appreciate positive behavior in your team.

Ways to Improve your Emotional Intelligence

There’s always room to improve your EI. We’ve compiled a list of habits you can emulate to better your people skills.

Assertive vs. Aggressive: Aggression breeds bad blood between you and others. Assertive communication, on the other hand, enables you to give your opinions without being aggressive or passive.
Reacting vs. Responding: Reacting is impulsive, half-baked, and often selfish. Responding employs empathy and brings lasting solutions.
Hearing vs. Active listening: Hearing means you’re present for a conversation. On the contrary, active listening means you’re listening to understand the other person. You seek clarity instead of listening just to hit back.
Be Self-motivated: As you motivate yourself to keep going in the face of hardship, you motivate your followers to keep going too.
Practice humility: You don’t need to seek constant applause for your accomplishments. You can celebrate low-key.
Apologize: There’s no better way to nurture positive character in others than apologizing when at fault. It becomes a culture in your circle of influence.