The ongoing global pandemic, SARS-CoV2 (more commonly known as Covid-19), has posed the greatest challenge for leadership throughout markets worldwide. Almost every company in the world has faced an extraordinary struggle over the past months.
Healthcare, governments, NPOs, educational systems and so many more setups and administrations have challenged the principles and expertise of its leaders in these times. This is a time of realization for people as well as leaders themselves. That it takes psychological and emotional capacity, bravery, and empathy to overcome such turmoil.
Emotional Intelligence can be looked at as a leader’s skill set that equips individuals with the set of techniques that help to appreciate and balance themselves and handle interactions more smartly and empathetically.
It takes a whole lot of patience, humility, empathy, respect, and focused emotional awareness of self and the dynamic situation that surrounds leadership to be prepared for any uncertainty.
Here are a few traits that emotionally intelligent leaders ought to showcase:
Calm, Composed, and Focused
Leaders need to control their reactions which are based on their habits and try to practice self-management and as well as calm their nerves in alarming situations. They need to use the information at hand to make quick responsive decisions in times of crisis rather than let their emotions get the best of them.
Leaders need to make sure that they are able to maintain not only their own well-being but also those around them. The calm disposition of leaders allows them to be more focused.
Clarity
Being able to differentiate your self-biases when making decisions is crucial. Many times leaders fail in times of crisis because they believe their gut a little too much. But the issue is while gut feelings can be your guardian angel, they also are based on your own beliefs and biases.
Therefore, being aware of yourself is important. Emotional intelligence is premised around mindfulness that involves leaders to be non-judgmental. This helps to build a more balanced point of view.
Flexible and Adaptable
This world is dynamic, ever-changing, uncertain, and complex. Therefore it requires leaders to have adaptive resilience. Any leader who is more focused on his/her image and status quo is bound to lose their reputation and confidence in the eye of the public.
Therefore, setting aside your interests to cater to the masses is how leaders need to be. In order to make difficult choices, emotionally informed leaders display the strength and stamina needed to react to the situation at hand.
Communication and Empathy
Confidence is won by integrity, and excellent leaders trust that the facts will be handled by people. Transparency requires weakness and often, self-awareness to accept what we do not know. They establish a clear medium for trustworthy contact when a leader displays credibility by recognizing what they are unsure about.
A big indicator of the effectiveness of a team is emotional wellbeing because participants should feel relaxed contributing to innovative solutions. The display of empathy is one way of establishing opportunities for emotional health.
Optimistic Future Vision
All is well that ends well. Leaders need to make sure they have a mental blueprint for navigating through obstacles by fostering the capacity to imagine unknown prospects. Being trusted to translate your vision into motion by instilling yourself and your team with hope and determination.
Based on their extraordinary capacity to understand the challenge, interact freely, adapt, navigate ambiguity, and establish psychological protection, emotionally intelligent leaders excel in times of crisis.
