How many people do you know who are highly intelligent and brilliant but have not succeeded in their professional or personal lives?
How many times have you come across an employee or co-worker who has excellent technical skills but is incapable of listening or communicating effectively?
So, why are some people so successful and others are not? What is the secret to their success?
Often, the answer is linked to emotional intelligence.
In particular, research has found that people with strong leadership potential tend to be more emotionally intelligent, suggesting that a high EQ is important for business leaders and managers. Time Magazine notes that, in the corporate world, personnel and human resource executives hold the opinion that IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted.
While your technical skills may get your foot in the door, your soft skills are what open most of the doors to come. Your work ethic, your attitude, your communication, interpersonal, conflict management, and stress management skills, are some of the soft skills that are crucial for career success.
Why is emotional intelligence so important?
People with high EQ scores are more aware of themselves, are motivated, better able to regulate their actions, better at taking responsibility, and have more empathy for others. An increased level of emotional intelligence can help you manage stress better, have stronger, healthier relationships, be more effective and successful at work and happier and more fulfilled in general.
Senior people may know their jobs as far as the technical aspects go, however, they often do not have the skills to get the best from the employees who report to them or from other team members. Therefore, it is important to focus on the skills of working with others to increase the effectiveness of organizations.
Leadership is about inspiring, motivating, and igniting passion in others so employees want to work for your organization (attraction of top talent), are energized and make their best contribution (employee engagement), and stay for their entire career (retention of top talent).
Why aren’t schools emphasizing these emotional intelligence skills in the classroom?
As a university professor, I am sure I am not alone when I say, we instructors give students so much stress, but we don’t teach them how to deal with that stress. We put students in teams; but rarely teach them exactly how to work within those teams – working with others who have different personalities, communication styles, and cultural differences.
As well, for some reason, corporations seem to expect people to know how to behave on the job. They tend to assume that everyone knows and understands the importance of being on time, taking initiative, being friendly, thinking clearly when under pressure, and producing high-quality work.
As a self-development professional, I have seen hundreds of organizations undervalue the importance of these soft skills, and have seen there is far less training provided for them than for hard skills.
Assuming that soft skills are universal leads to much aggravation. That’s why it’s so important to focus as much on soft skills training and development as you do on traditional hard skills.
How can you develop these skills?
So just where does one go to learn how to develop and hone these vitally important soft skills if schools or workplaces aren’t focusing on them?
Right here. Right now.
My Leading with Emotional Intelligence program is an essential leadership course, which helps students, corporate professionals, and entire organizations, realize their full potential and improve their relationships with others.
This emotional intelligence training program will show you the key things that you need to know to become a more effective leader and more successful and happier, not only in business, but also in all areas of life – as a parent, spouse, friend, and human being, and we will do it in a fun, interactive way.
In this Leading with Emotional Intelligence program, you will learn to develop and enhance all of your 15 emotional intelligence competencies and learn how these competencies impact your professional and personal lives. This program provides/offers some very practical strategies and techniques to help master the challenges you face throughout your everyday life.
For more information, please check out my courses here!
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