Through our work at Transforming Solutions, Inc. (TSI), we believe that understanding critical aspects of emotional Intelligence and applying them to our work with clients and other parts of life is essential to achieving goals and realizing one’s potential in many areas. In addition, leading organizational research on emotional Intelligence and effective organizational management shows a strong relationship between emotional Intelligence and effective organizational management. Leaders who have high emotional Intelligence are more likely to be effective in their roles and are better able to create a positive work environment. Do a Google search “Importance of Emotional Intelligence, and you will see an overwhelming number of articles supported by research that discuss the correlation between emotional Intelligence and success. One recent study, “What matters more for entrepreneurship success? A meta-analysis comparing general mental ability and emotional intelligence in entrepreneurial settings”, was authored by Jared S. Allen, Regan M. Stevenson, Ernest H. O’Boyle, and Scott Seibert; notes Emotional Intelligence has an 89.1% predictive variance in determining an entrepreneurs success with IQ being only 10.9% predictive of their success.

Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist and renowned author, says emotional Intelligence is highly predictive of success. He has also said, “CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise – and fired for lack of emotional intelligence.“. Goleman explains emotional Intelligence can be broken down into the following five categories (pictured in the graphic), as summarized by Andrea Ovans’ 2015 Harvard Business Review article titled “How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill“:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation (defined as “a passion for work that goes beyond money and status”)
• Empathy for others
• Social skills, such as proficiency in managing relationships and building networks

6 ways to practice your emotional Intelligence as an organizational leader

1. Practice empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. As a leader, it is essential to be empathetic toward your employees and their situations. Practicing empathy can help you build trust and respect and foster a positive workplace culture.

2. Practice active listening: Active listening involves hearing what someone is saying and understanding what they mean. As a leader, you should practice active listening to gain insight into your employees’ concerns, needs, and desires. This will help you understand what motivates them and how to best support them.

3. Manage conflict effectively: Conflicts are inevitable in any workplace, but as a leader, it is your responsibility to manage them effectively. Emotional Intelligence can help you understand the underlying emotions driving the conflict and guide you toward a solution that benefits all parties involved.

4. Provide constructive feedback: As a leader, it is essential to provide feedback to your employees. However, the way you deliver that feedback can have a significant impact. Emotional Intelligence can help you frame feedback in a constructive and empathetic way that encourages growth and development.

5. Build strong relationships: Building solid relationships with your employees is critical to success as a leader. Emotional Intelligence can help you connect with your employees deeper, understand what motivates them, and build strong bonds that contribute to a positive workplace environment.  

6. Use tools: Using tools can help you gather input from others to better understand their perspective. While you can use various surveys, check out TSI’s Free (and short) Change Readiness Assessment.

Overall, emotional Intelligence is valuable for any leader looking to improve organizational management. By focusing on empathy, active listening, conflict management, constructive feedback, and relationship building, you can strengthen your emotional Intelligence and become a more effective leader.

If you’ve liked what you read and would like to hear more on this topic or similar topics, feel free to comment or reach out to TSI for more.

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In an effort to achieve your goals and realize your potential, it is crucial that you understand critical aspects of emotional intelligence, as well as understand how to apply them within your organization.

The Five Factors of Emotional Intelligence

1. Self Awareness
2. Self Regulation
3. Motivation (known as “a passion for work that goes beyond money and status”)
4. Empathy for Others
5. Social Skills, such as managing relationships building networks

Daniel Goleman, an American Psychologist, breaks emotional intelligence down into these five categories. In addition to his work, Andrea Ovans’ 2015 Harvard Business Review Article, “How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill”, looks at these five categories in how they relate to being a leader. She addresses cultural intelligence, as well as the connection between empathetic leaders and financial performance.

Let’s Break Down the Five Factors of EQ

Self-Awareness:

Individuals often think of self-awareness as a few physical and emotional practices to regulate mood, body language, and tone. However, self-awareness extends to understanding how all of these factors are impacting others around you. In addition to understanding how to regulate yourself, take a few minutes every day to evaluate who you are working with, as well as the approach you need to take to manage your emotions in the settings you step foot in throughout the day. It can be easy to lose sight of this important practice, as a result of the hustle of work, meetings, and to-do lists.

Self-Regulation:

Self-regulation and self-awareness are a tag team. The actions you take to improve your emotional state are the key components to self-regulation. In order to improve your performance and the overall cohesiveness of your team, practice taking these actions daily. A tangible way to regulate yourself with your awareness is through the concept of ‘thinking before you speak’. It is one thing to be aware of how you may be affecting others, but it is a whole different battle to be able to act on that on awareness. In practice, pay attention to physical and verbal cues like body language, tone, and eye contact. These small adjustments from your team members can serve as hints to adjust your communication style.

As we continue to work with team members and other organizations who operate remotely, these cues remain the same; however, they can be more difficult to spot. Depending on the angle and nature of the virtual call, it may be difficult to read body language, tone, and eye contact. However, these cues are still present in the conversation and serve as your best hints to adjusting your communication style.

Motivation:

According to Daniel Goleman, motivation is “a passion for work that goes beyond money or status,” (Ovans 2015). This passion is important in terms of improving your position in the working world both short and long term. In an effort to maintain this passion, keep your goals (90-day, 12-month, 5-year, etc.) in mind. This will only serve to improve your position inside and outside the office. As you lead within your organization, don’t be afraid to share your passion behind these goals with others in your team. A shared level of awareness and drive will help realize personal and organizational performance metrics.

Empathy:

Empathy is the ability to identify with another person’s emotional state at a given moment and then react accordingly. However, this is easier said than done. The connection between emotional intelligence and empathy benefits both you and others simultaneously, with the right intentions behind it. For example, barriers in terms of authority, resource availability, and other factors can affect overall mood and willingness to perform. However, the ability to identify and name these barriers can benefit both parties involved. This concept extends beyond your immediate team. Empathy is also strongly correlated with how your organization understands customer service.

Social Skills:

Social skills can make or break your organization’s performance. In service-oriented organizations, beneficial social skills look like engaging on LinkedIn, networking with your community, and stepping outside of your comfort zone. Beyond extending your network, the people you surround yourself with will impact your everyday life. This impact stretches beyond your physical workspace or your organizational team. In a largely virtual and remote world, you also surround yourself with individuals online. The individuals who you follow, interact with, and build connections with will impact what you see on your feed. This, in turn, affects your everyday life.

So Now What?

This was a brief overview of emotional intelligence, as well as the five factors. However, there is so much more to understand and learn! If you are interested in continuing to explore this topic, we encourage you to dive deeper into the work of Daniel Goleman and others to learn more about your EQ.

Our Top Tips to Honing Your Emotional Intelligence Toolkit:

1. Pay attention to those communication cues we discussed earlier and then adjust accordingly
2. Consider how you are delivering your message, as well as what you are saying
3. Aim to understand others’ motivations and goals through asking good questions
4. Work to empathize with others and offer help if they want it
5. Network with others and recognize that every person you meet may benefit you in ways you couldn’t imagine (or vice versa!)
6. Use tangible tools and assessments to understand others’ perspectives even better. Check out TSI’s free and short Change Readiness Assessment to get started!

Emotional intelligence is a key player in not only our work lives, but our personal lives as well. Through these five factors, your organization has the opportunity to thrive. If you are wanting more guidance on what this could look like for your team, let us know!

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Transforming Solutions Inc. (TSI), was engaged by the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) to create an organizational culture of continuous improvement. As background, UNTHSC is one of the nation’s premier graduate academic medical centers, with five schools that specialize in patient-centered education, research and health care. They are part of the University of North Texas system. 

Spearheaded by the Chief People Officer, the UNTHSC sought to explore new ways to address problems and continuously improve through guidance and training to transform the institution into one that embraces LEAN and Agile in an employee-centric and pragmatic way. 

Starting with pockets of exposure to Agile and LEAN methodologies, UNTHSC wanted TSI to help the overall organization take this, along with other cultural attributes (such as their vision, mission and values) and transform the culture to improve quality and gain efficiencies. 

TSI’s Approach and Role

Approach

To accomplish the identified goals, TSI engaged in the following:

• In the initial phase, UNTHSC sought to develop and prioritize processes for improvement and initial process improvement implementation for critical need areas to help build a business case with proven effectiveness and value for further buyin. This work intended to implement and share best practices and training with internal LEAN coaches and key stakeholders for process improvement, establish a usable, sustainable communication plan, evaluate improvements through metrics, and estimate return on investment for the improvement initiatives.
• In the second phase, TSI was asked to develop a Continuous Improvement methodology to be shared with UNTHSC staff through training with follow up coaching. This methodology was intended to be sustainable and usable for improvement initiatives across UNTHSC. 

TSI collaborated with the UNTHSC Leadership Team to identify and prioritize business processes to implement a practice-based training and mentoring program to enhance LEAN and Agile understanding and development of implementation skills. TSI created a training program for continuous improvement and led a cohort of leaders through process improvement methodology using critical processes including Budgets, Contract Administration, HR Hiring, and UNTHSC Leadership as a pilot. Once the pilot was complete, phase two was implemented that provided full training and mentoring to the cohort for implementation of business process improvement and other continuous improvement strategies throughout UNTHSC and coaching for growth and development for future Continuous Improvement sustainability at UNTHSC.

Role

TSI served as a methodologist, project manager, continuous improvement leader, trainer, coach, and facilitator throughout this project. TSI provided and tailored its methodology as the basis for the methodology that is currently in place. After that, TSI evaluated trainees and quality of deliverables after they were trained and did a variety of “hands on” activities to get familiar with the tools.

Results

This project was viewed as a huge success. Based on TSI’s involvement the UNTHSC achieved the following:

• Developed and used a repeatable methodology to use on areas deemed “ripe for improvement”
• Took dozens of areas through the methodology which resulted in hundreds of improvement ideas implemented
• Trained over a dozen practitioners thus improving their skillsets
• Realized tangible savings, from the improvement ideas mentioned above, that resulted in hard dollar savings of over $1 million dollars annually.

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