Being a leader means you need to achieve results through others. While your subject matter expertise and IQ are important, a leader’s main role requires them to lead other people—and communicate, coach, provide feedback, empower, inspire, collaborate, and manage stress. This requires the ability to interact effectively with others and to be attuned to others’ needs then respond effectively to those needs.

Additionally, it means managing oneself effectively. Emotional intelligence is about how you manage yourself and how you manage your relationships with others.

Being an emotionally intelligent leader includes managing your emotions in the moment. It also means responding in a productive way, instead of flying off the handle or shutting down completely. Emotional intelligence is our ability to accurately perceive and interpret our own and others’ emotions and includes our ability to manage our own reactions and behavior.

The Key Emotional Intelligence Competencies for Leaders

But how can we demonstrate emotional intelligence? In DDI’s leadership development course, Mastering Emotional Intelligence, leaders learn to develop these emotional intelligence competencies:

• Building self-insight and self-awareness

• Earning trust

• Continuous learning

• Building executive presence and disposition

Daniel Goleman who popularized emotional intelligence through his book, Emotional Intelligence, identified 12 emotional intelligence competencies—self-awareness, emotional self-control, adaptability, empathy, and more.

Similarly, Adele Lynn, author of the EQ Difference, identifies self-awareness and control as the first ingredients critical to emotional intelligence. In a podcast with DDI, she said, “To me, to have self-awareness and not have self-control is kind of senseless. I mean really, what's the purpose of being aware if you don't do something about it.”

And this is where many leaders fail from not doing something about it. The good news is, regardless of your current level of awareness and control of your emotions, it is possible to develop and improve emotional intelligence through deliberate practice.

How Leaders Can Get Better in Key Emotional Intelligence Competencies

In my role as a coach, I often “prescribe” leaders two things to help make improvements in key emotional intelligence competencies:

1. Use DDI’s key principles. Practice using key principles every day. They help manage the other person’s emotions while building trust and a stronger relationship.

2. Use mindfulness techniques. Matthew Lippincott’s research in 2016 looked at the influence of mindfulness on leadership effectiveness and revealed impressive results. Leaders who had mindfulness training and incorporated this into their daily lives reported that it helped them recognize how their emotions influence their mental performance and behaviors. Results also revealed that 98 percent of participants described a transformation of their fundamental understanding of what effective leadership is, with 79 percent of participants reporting stronger interpersonal relationships.

Learn more about emotional intelligence and leadership in DDI’s blog.