1       INTRODUCTION

What is leadership to me, and what type of a leader do I want to be? This question has been in my mind since I started Proakaktemia. I’ve always been a natural-born leader. Since childhood, I have been in leadership positions in sports, choirs, and events. I feel like my entire life has been me being in the spotlight for some reason. I’m sure it’s an aura because I stand out from the crowd even though I try to be lowkey. Something else that I manage to be naturally good at is communicating with people. Since a kid, I’ve always been that person who people come to talk to. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m the master of advice, but people feel safe, and I’m easy to open up to. I always have strangers open up to me. I don’t mind it. If talking to me and me listening helps the person in any way, I’m glad I could help. Because of this unique gift, I needed to learn to set boundaries at a young age. Back to the main question. What type of leader do I want to be? Before I go into the question, thank Christian Burr Raty for pointing it out  something that  I did not realize it until he mentioned it. And he told everyone to go on a self-discovery journey. During this self-discovery journey, I discovered many things about myself. Still, the most significant discovery of them all was that I wanted to be a leader that leads with empathy and an open mind.

A lot of times, when you ask people to describe what a leader is, they describe a boss. I don’t want to be known as a boss. I want to be described as Annabell, the leader who leads with feeling and empathy. I want to invest in my talents and use them as an asset to inspire, encourage and help others. Besides training in something you already have, it’s easier than becoming something completely new. For this essay, I read Leading with feeling! Nine strategies of an emotionally intelligent leader by Cary Cherniss and Cornelia W. Roche. I will be breaking down the strategies and sharing my learning and experiences.

1       WHAT IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional Intelligence definition

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to interpret, control, perceive, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively. This ability to express and control emotions is essential, but so is the ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the feelings of others.

Emotionally intelligent people can control their own emotions and others. It’s also an understanding of how and when to react.

1.1       DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

According to research their four levels of emotional intelligence It understands emotions accurately, understanding nonverbal communication, such as body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and social cues.

1. Reasoning with emotions:

The next step involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. For example, emotions help us prioritize what we pay attention to and react to; we respond emotionally to things that garner our attention.

3. understanding emotions:

The emotions that we perceive can carry a wide variety of meanings. If someone is expressing angry feelings, the observer must interpret the cause of the person’s anger and what it could mean. For example, if someone lashes out at work. It could tell that they are mad about something that happened at work or something that made them frustrated at home, like a fight with their partner, but you just happened to be in the crossfire.

4. Managing emotions: The ability to manage emotions effectively is crucial to emotional intelligence and the highest level. Regulating emotions and responding appropriately, as well as responding to the feelings of others, are all critical aspects of emotional management.

It’s important to understand that having emotional intelligence is using all these levels of intelligence in conjunction. A good example is achieving levels one and two, but you still need help understanding and managing your emotions.

Only reasoning with your feelings can make a person react to everything rationally, and you may not have the ability to understand when and how to respond.

Times when I’ve had to be emotional intelligence. I had this situation in my workplace where someone lashed out at something, and everyone got mad at her for overreacting to something minimal. I chose not to react emotionally to the outburst but asked them why they needed to respond strongly about this situation. Before that conversation, it turned out that the person wasn’t lashing out over the minor inconvenience she encountered but the build-up of tension she had been having from her private life. Reasons like this make me resonate with the saying be kind to everyone because everyone is going through something. Even in my day-to-day life, I’ve encountered a situation where I’ve had to be emotionally intelligent. Especially as a person of color, when I experience racism, I’ve always had to have solid emotional managing skills. Because I would want to react with anger, but I chose not to, and it’s not easy. Most people would respond with anger in situations like this which is valid, but it takes some level of managing your emotions to not react with anger.

(Kendra Cherry 2022)

1.1.1     IMPACT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN WORKPLACE

As the workplace evolves, so does the body of research supporting that individuals (from interns to managers) with higher EI are better equipped to work cohesively within teams, deal with change more effectively, and manage stress – thus enabling them to pursue business objectives more efficiently.

The importance of EI should be appreciated; the ability to understand and manage your emotions is the first step in realizing your true potential. How can we achieve meaningful progress if we don’t recognize and acknowledge the point from where we’re starting?

The blog that I read about the importance of emotional intelligence. Listed are a few reasons why emotions can help you in the workplace. Some things that came up have been recorded, but the biggest thing that stood out to me is.

It improves efficiency in the workplace and enhances decision-making.

Emotional intelligence and leadership skills go hand in hand. Actively displaying abilities such as patience, active listening, positivity, and empathy can help you advance to leadership. Likewise, emotional intelligence can encourage others and help others develop interpersonal skills. These skills are the skills I want to bring into my team and nurture in my future career path. Therefore, I actively research ways to improve my emotional intelligence in the workplace and how to put them to practice.

(Jamie Birt 2023)

2       STRATEGY 1. MONITOR THE EMOTIONAL CLIMATE.

One of the first strategies from the book was becoming aware of the teams’ problems and emotional climate. When you can do this, you will quickly sense up coming conflict and if there is tension in the team atmosphere. Monitoring the emotional environment has helped me solve and prevent conflict In the team.

How do leaders monitor the emotional climate?

The tips in the book whereby monitoring people’s body language, tone of voice, and passive aggression toward a topic or person. Active listening. You are seeing people put energy into something, for example, being excited and a specific topic. Last and foremost, pay attention to your gut.

I decided to put the strategy into practice, so I monitored one of Trames business meetings with the book’s guidelines.

• What type of nonverbal behaviour did you notice?

Everyone was seated in their seats, but people seemed tired. The energy was a bit hostile today, but I assumed it’s because everyone was hungry and was excited to eat with the team for valentines.

• Do people seem distracted and uninterested? Positive and engaged.

Everyone seemed engaged in the meeting, but I did notice some individuals getting distracted or seemed like they were in a rush.

• Is there anything that feels different than the previous meeting?

It was different from the other meetings because we decided to have dinner with the team afterward.

• Who is there and not there? This could be related to how they feel in the team, who arrives early and late. Where do people sit and with whom?

Everyone was early for the meeting, but we had this meeting right after our learning session.

• What is being spoken about and what is not?

We spoke about updates and our plans for the next couple of weeks.

After the meeting, speak to someone and get feedback about your observations. I mostly do this with my coach or anyone from our team.

(Cary Chermiss 2020)

2.1       STRATEGY 2 & 3 EXPRESSING YOUR EMOTIONS AND INFLUENCING OTHERS.

It’s stigmatized for some leaders to show emotion, but every emotion should be normalized because leaders are people, too.

,

The book discussed a person who had to lay off some of her employees because of the pandemic. The biggest takeaway is that she was as authentic as possible about how she felt about it and empathized with her employees. This book puts in a perspective of emotions. I am willing to show in my Teams and the motions. But I need more time to be ready to show up on my team, which made me question why. And for me, the emotion I am more scared to showcase is the emotion of sadness or people seeing that I don’t have things under control. This comes from the fact that in my culture, if you showcase a sign of sadness is usually a sign of weakness, so sadness = weakness.

But this is not true for you to be able to showcase that you feel sad, uncertain, or anxious usually means that you’re powerful.

The most significant way to influence others with emotions is through storytelling. Storytelling has always been a part of people. If you want to influence others, storytelling and relating to people are among the most significant ways you can affect someone.

Here are some insights into how feelings and actions can influence others’ emotions in the team.

1. Being positive can bring and radiate a positive atmosphere in the team.
3. 2Being open about your feelings increases the team’s loyalty and trust toward you.
5. If the leader “loses it,” the rest of the team will also.
7. Email messages are not an excellent way to communicate about stuff that might be emotionally charged.

The moral of the story shows your emotions be human. But remember that your feelings can influence others just as much as your actions.

(Cornelia W. Roche 2020)

2.2       STRATEGY 4 PUT YOURSELF IN OTHER SHOES.

Putting yourself in people’s shoes is an excellent talent, especially when talking about other people’s experiences or talking to someone about something serious.

For example, if someone says something to bother them at work and you cannot comprehend why the situation bothered the person so much, putting yourself in that person’s shoes and understanding her emotions at the time helps you put perspective on many things.

Putting yourself in the other shoes also means listening to what the other has to say and asking the right questions. Your opinion doesn’t necessarily play a big part. Instead, what plays a significant role in how you can fill and express the situation through another person’s eyes?

The instructions on how you can communicate when you’re trying to put yourself in another person’s shoes.

• ask how they feel about the situation and how the problem made them
• during the conversation, try to focus on what the other person is saying,
• What is that like for you?
• Tell me more.
• I’m interested to hear what’s going on for you when that happens.
• What’s your perspective on that?
• I understand what you’re saying.

Putting myself in someone else’s shoes is one of the things I frequently do. Understanding and seeing things from other people’s perspectives says a lot about the person and gives you a deeper understanding of the situation they’re talking about.

Being in an international class and putting yourself in other people’s shoes is very important because of how different everyone is and how different cultures and backgrounds affect how people think and act.

(Cornelia W. Roche 2020)

3       HOW TO COMBINE ALL THE EMOTIONAL IN WORKING ENVIRONMENT.

A method of how a leader named Karen talked to her employee, who made her furious. Instead of giving in to her anger, she used EI to resolve the situation. Using this method made her understand her employee and determine the workplace situation. Not only did she fix the problem with her employee, but she also built trust and honesty with the person.

Tom, a young engineer and a new team leader, used this method. He just got terrible feedback and was disappointed in his team because they didn’t do anything. He became very stressed and angry. He also had the fear that he didn’t know what to do. How did he manage to solve this problem? This is the method Tom used.

Because Tom could manage his own emotions, he could control other people’s emotions. Tom quickly realized that his actions and feelings towards a problem or situation significantly affect how the team acts.

These two strategies by Karen and tom stood out most for me because they were more team related.

(Cary Chermiss and Cornelia W. Roche 2020)

4       CONCLUSION

In conclusion, emotional intelligence and business skills go hand-in-hand together. I learned a lot by reading this book, and I will put many things into practice in my team and as a team leader.

There are other strategies in the book that I did not disclose in my essay only because I want the person reading my article also to read the book. The book is precious, and it brings a lot of different perspectives and situations that leaders face daily.

In conclusion, I want to be the type of leader that listens to people, understands people, and is approachable, so people feel safe communicating with me. I also want to be a leader that encourages people and motivates them to do their best and become better versions of themselves.

I always want to grow as a person, so I want to be able to learn from others, as well.

5       REFRENCES

Cary Chermiss and Cornelia W. Roche Leading with feeling! Nine strategies of emotional intelligent leadership

Jamie Birt 2019 The importance of emotional intelligence in workplace The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace | Indeed.com

Kendra Cherry 2022 What Is Emotional Intelligence? (verywellmind.com)

Elaine Huston 2019 The Importance of Emotional Intelligence (Incl. Quotes) (positivepsychology.com)