Leading is more than just creating the right conditions for team members to make an effort when working. The logic of controlling workers so that they meet the minimums has become completely obsolete for a simple reason; It focuses on individual work, instead of on the main thing in these cases: the relational processes of a group of people.
This is why emotional leadership is relevant Instead of relying solely on completing tasks based on objective criteria, emotionally intelligent leaders work to ensure that teams function as a unit in which everyone understands the meaning of what they do themselves and others. At the end of the day, going to work in an organization does not make us stop being human, and that matters.
In this article we will see a series of key ideas that enhance emotional leadership applied to companies, sports or any other area in which teamwork is required.
Keys to being an emotionally intelligent leader
It is increasingly clear that in the world of organizations, those who best lead They always take into account the emotional side of themselves and others Fortunately, the days when being a leader seemed to be synonymous with commanding and enforcing the rules are long gone.
For better and worse, guiding teams toward goals is no longer about reaching written objectives, but about taking into account the real objectives and needs of individuals and groups (or organizational departments).
On the other hand, it is also evident that emotional leadership is not applied following the theoretical instructions of a book or manual, but getting to do it well requires practice and training. However, the fundamentals of this type of leadership can be summarized in simple ideas so that from them we have some notions about what to do. These basic fundamentals are, broadly speaking, the following.
1. Prioritize assertiveness
There are people who seek to lead, generally allowing the people in their charge to detect and solve their own problems regarding productivity and work dynamics. Although this does not sound crazy if you only work with certain very specialized and highly trained professional profiles, it is usually a mistake. Not everyone has such a proactive attitude by default and even less when it comes to giving bad news.
That is why it must be clear that in most cases it is the leaders who must bring up any problem they detect, even if this may generate some uncomfortable moments until a solution is found. Avoiding these moments in which you talk to a team or a worker about things to improve will only cause problems to accumulate.
2. Avoid inconsistencies in communication
In organizations, communication establishes how all the people and teams that make up them should be coordinated. Therefore, it is crucial that there is no inconsistency or contradiction in what is said, which requires putting ourselves in the shoes of others and interpreting what is communicated by putting ourselves in their place.
A mistake in this aspect can cause dozens of people to work on what they shouldn’t or in a way they shouldn’t, which generates tremendous damage to the whole. We must also take into account word-of-mouth communication and that, faced with two versions of the same event, People tend to stick with the one that has the most positive consequences for them
3. Know how to set the limit of informal communication
Emotionally intelligent leaders distinguish themselves by connecting with the people in their charge taking into account their needs, beliefs and motivations, but that does not mean that they should pretend to be everyone’s friend. In fact, pretending that only generates discomfort: overreaching can be seen as an abuse of power.
4. Know how to eliminate unnecessary protocols
An organization cannot be an accumulation of initiatives that look good on paper but do not make sense to anyone or provide any practical advantage. Therefore, it is good to attend to those joint weekly routines that, from the point of view of the team members, do not make sense, knowing this, decide whether to better explain their usefulness, readjust their format or directly eliminate them
5. Transmit the values ​​of the organization
Any organization is governed by a series of values, even if there is no public relations manual document created expressly to establish what they are. Therefore, we must try that these values ​​are transmitted through all communication channels both through joint actions and through the image and aesthetic component that define the team or organization.
6. Don’t obsess over mistakes
Errors cannot be taboo either for the leader or for the people he supervises and energizes. Otherwise, you will be promoting a culture of idealization and hiding imperfections that will harm the teams’ progress over time.
Additionally, encourage the communication of problems and errors makes it possible to create useful diagnostics to prevent the chain of events that led to that mistake from continuing to negatively affect the group.
7. Get used to constantly learning
Through emotional leadership you work with people, but also with theoretical and practical content of all kinds that must be learned as the organization or team goes through stages of its development. This is why emotionally intelligent leaders They must maintain an extremely flexible attitude when it comes to learning Of course, always taking into account the viability of learning certain things and the opportunity costs that come with training in any competition.
How to train in this area?
As we have seen, emotional leadership is much more than following a series of perfectly specified steps on a daily basis and expecting them to simply bear fruit. It is oneself who must promote positive changes in a team, guiding oneself based on the appropriate knowledge.
That is why it is important to gain quality theoretical and practical experience to delve deeper into the art of being an emotionally intelligent leader. The Specialization Course in Emotional Leadership of the Institut de Formació ContÃnua-IL3 (Universitat de Barcelona) is a good way to gain the fundamental tools to learn how to promote and energize teams and organizations in the best possible way.
The course, which consists of 3 ECTS credits and begins in Barcelona on October 19, 2018 (ending on November 10 of the same year), has the participation of leadership experts who are dedicated to it in the professional field and is designed to be a practical experience in which individual, team and organizational leadership tools are internalized and perfected. To know more about this training program, you can click on this link.
On the other hand, any process of improving one’s leadership requires frequent practice. Therefore, it is important to surround yourself with the right people and not waste our skills to get the best out of work teams. Only by learning from the mistakes made and coming into contact with everything that makes an organization a complex system, do we come to grasp the dynamics to apply in each case.