Are you a high EQ leader? 5 questions to ask yourself.
If not, you need to become one--and fast. In study after study, emotional intelligence, or EQ, is shown to be the No. 1 predictor of leadership success. Think about it this way:
Your technical skills may get you the job, but it’s your emotional intelligence skills that allow you to perform on the job.
Why is EQ the differentiator? Because it creates psychological safety, which is the foundation of a high performance environment in any organization. The logic is simple: Emotional intelligence leads to psychological safety which creates business impact.
Are you a high EQ Leader? If not, you can be. Get out a mirror, hold it up, and take a look. What is the unedited truth?
Ask yourself 5 key questions:
- Do people believe they can trust me?
- Do people open up and express their honest thoughts and feelings around me, or are they guarded, stressed, and withdrawn?
- Do people believe that I have a genuine interest in them?
- Do people want my feedback?
- Am I comfortable in allowing people to challenge me?
Every person creates a psychological zone around them based on their emotional intelligence. The kind of psychological zone you create may well be the single most important factor in your personal and professional success.
What is a psychological zone? It’s the vibe, feeling, tone, and energy you convey. Most importantly, it’s a measure of the psychological safety you create for others. It can range from extremely inspiring, warm and inviting at one end, to completely disengaging, cold and repelling at the other.
Why should you care about becoming a high EQ leader? The answer is simple: It's absolutely critical for your career success.
A high EQ leader accelerates performance, attracts top talent, fosters innovation, expands engagement, and inspires loyalty. Conversely, a low EQ leader creates an unsafe, toxic psychological zone, craters morale, and shuts people down--especially millennials. This stark contrast translates into enormous differences in business impact of every kind—beginning with retention and extending to all forms of innovation and productivity.
Today, successful organizations compete more on the basis of innovation and employee engagement than ever before. A low EQ leader is at a distinct disadvantage compared to a high EQ leader.
Through their emotional intelligence, high EQ leaders create astonishing levels of psychological safety and sustainable business impact in their organizations.
