Emotional Intelligence Leadership Development

Boost your EQ. Lead with empathy. Retain great talent and attract better talent.

The pandemic changed the job market in formative ways, many of them permanently. Working from home has shown so many employees an alternative to their traditional office experience. 71% of 18 to 24 year olds said that "if my employer insisted on me returning to my workplace full-time, I would consider looking for another job" (ADP Research Institute, 2022)

Employees now recognize the toxicity of bad management and leadership. They no longer want to work for leaders that are cold, micro-manage their employees, or treat them like cogs in a machine, rather than humans with needs, lives and emotions. 

Humans that want to be empowered.

42% of Gen Z would rather work for a purpose over higher salaries (Lever.co, 2022). They want to make an impact, and they want to be empowered to do so by their leaders.

Furthermore, technology has made entrepreneurship much more accessible to the everyday employee. Great talent will work for a great leader, but if they aren’t feeling empowered, they are more apt to start their own business.

Empowering employees is different than merely managing them. It requires strong emotional intelligence and empathy to do it authentically and effectively.

Managers and Leaders are rarely taught the soft skills necessary to be able to authentically and effectively empower their employees. Most leaders don’t have enough personal emotional intelligence to properly assess and manage their own emotions, let alone those of their team.

My approach to solving this problem is to guide leaders to develop their emotional intelligence on a personal level, before showing them how to apply that methodology externally to their team. Only by doing the work yourself can you authentically do the work with others.

My process:

1. Assess - get to know as much as possible about the leader through:

1. Existing personality profiles

2. Interview with leader’s manager - identify problem areas or gaps that need to be addressed with the leader

3. Initial sessions with leader (2 sessions minimum)

2. Level Set

1. Initial feedback sessions with leader’s manager to confirm or edit the problem areas and gaps

2. Provide feedback on what has been learned in initial sessions

3. Create a plan for development to achieve the needed outcomes

3. Work the Plan

1. How much needs to happen to achieve desired outcomes depends on the leader and how much work they need to do to meet the goals

2. Generally looks like a weekly or bimonthly session with the leader and ongoing feedback sessions with the leader’s manager

3. Once the main problems/gaps have been worked through, the plan shifts into less regular sessions as needed

My methodology is simple, and adapted from the same systems that produce the world’s greatest actors. By being vulnerable myself, by approaching each person without judgment and finding ways to relate to their struggles from my own past experiences, I can properly contextualize them as people and help them do the same.

Good employees leave companies because of bad managers. Keep your good employees and attract more of them.

Let’s talk now to help your leadership improve.