As we host leaders across the globe to drive transformational leadership with The Magic of Emotional IntelligenceTM in Mombasa, Kenya from June 23rd – 29th 2024 I consider it important to share some insights on some avoidable costs your team and organisation may be incurring due to low emotional intelligence competence on your leadership.
Emotional intelligence has been described by management experts as one of the most important skills in the 21st century. Emotional intelligence is so critical for leaders because human beings are very complicated. Humans are diverse and have dynamic compositions. There is therefore no standard playbook for how to relate with people– everything must be on a case-by-case basis. In today’s world, low emotional intelligence amongst leaders has greater consequences than ever before because, this often talked about but rarely developed performance skill is perhaps more important than having a high intellectual quotient.
When your leaders don’t invest in cultivating emotional intelligence, the organization bears some of the following avoidable costs:
A. Lower Productivity
This is an inevitable consequence of having a leader with low emotional intelligence because one of the most important roles of a leader is to optimize the human and material resources of an organization. Optimization cannot be achieved with the absence of organizational or situational awareness. A leader must know the capacity of the talent pool within an organization and how to best enhance their potential. This means that a leader must know what works best for specific employees; it has to be different strokes for different folks.
Emotional intelligence helps a leader better understand himself or herself in relation to others, so the engineering that unlocks productivity – whether it comes in form of motivation, communication or allocating of appropriate work tools can be deployed. Productivity isn’t determined by aptitude alone, attitude is everything. A leader should therefore have the capacity to read the room and either course-correct erring staff or show them the door altogether.
B. Lower Staff Motivation
A lot of employees resign from an organization mentally before they ever do so physically. Especially for talents that want more for themselves than just a means to survive; they want to work in organizations where their contributions are expected. When an employee is not well-motivated, that marks the beginning of the end – they check out mentally, physically or both. Some employees are just engaged in an organisation to get their pay cheques; subsistence is their major drive. However, for employees who are relatively economically buoyant, they have the luxury of leaving for other organizations, especially when their skillset is highly sought-after in the marketplace. Even when the financial remuneration is fantastic, it’s no guarantee for retaining top talents where there is a toxic workplace environment. In recent times, people are more aware and consequently more protective of their mental health – they see their sanity as being the collateral, a price too high to pay. An emotionally unintelligent leadership is a significant causality for high employee turnover.
C. Lower Sales/Revenue
Private organizations largely exist for maximize profits, this should be easy for everyone except emotionally unintelligent leaders to grasp because their actions suggest they don’t. It is one thing for a leader to fail in effectively manging internal stakeholders such as employees but when a leader fails to effectively manage external stakeholders such as customers, there is almost always direct and immediate consequences – especially in terms of a marked drop in demand. Market intelligence is hinged on emotional intelligence because it requires a leader being sensitive to the needs of customers, whose patronage largely define the fortune of an organization. Where customers complain about high prices, low quality of products, terrible customer service experiences or longer delivery times – it’s a call-to-action for emotionally intelligent leaders but viewed as complaints by emotionally unintelligent leaders. This is why most organizations in recent times, tie the bonuses and other fringe benefits of leaders to their ability to increase sales, expand the market share of the brand or raise the stock value because they realize that there is a straight line between leadership and such outcomes.
D. Lower Empathy
Emotional intelligence empowers a leader to see things from another person’s perspective. In working with people to achieve a goal, empathy is an important trait to have because the most important part of human resources is the humans themselves. This may require that leaders offer more flexible terms of conditions, allow employees time off to grieve with family over bereavement or even provide solutions to recurring issues that impede their productivity at the workplace. Unfortunately, empathy isn’t an automatic complement of leaders with technical expertise, it’s a soft skill that has to be learnt. A lack of empathy can be seen in situations where organizations are maximizing profits but at the expense of the collective well-being of their employees who have to work extended and sometimes, unpaid hours to meet targets. Leaders with low levels of emotional intelligence will mostly focus on quantitative metrics of success, not so much the qualitative metrics. Empathy simply means putting a human face to the relationship between the employees.
Growth Opportunities
To further position your leaders for peak performance, you can download a free copy of the latest edition of The Peak Performer Magazine You can also enrol your Mid-level Leadership Team for the Made4More Accelerator Program and your Senior Leadership Team for the Dr. Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp MOMBASA 2024 We also have an upcoming training for leaders in public service.
About Dr. Abiola Salami
Dr. Abiola Salami is the Convener of Dr Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp and The Peak PerformerTM. He is the Principal Performance Strategist at CHAMP – a full scale professional services firm trusted by high performing business leaders for providing Executive Coaching, Workforce Development & Advisory Services to improve performance. You can reach his team on hello@abiolachamp.com and connect with him @abiolachamp on all social media platforms.
