Time for soft skills

Hiring and retaining talented employees is at the heart of today’s successful businesses. Leaders whose sole focus is the bottom line need to make sure they have the right people in place to produce the sought-after results, and having employees with high emotional intelligence (EI) is one factor that can help make companies more prosperous.

We are in the centre of one of the most productive and valuable workforces and it spans several generations. As such, leaders are challenged to motivate and understand how these different generations can work together toward a common goal, which often requires striking a balance between traditional leadership styles and softer skills.

Companies are recognising the importance of hiring managers and leaders who can behave in a collaborative and agreeable manner. Whereas intellectual aptitude and technical ability used to be the defining characteristics of successful leaders, EI is now coming to the forefront as a desired skill.

EI is the set of abilities, competencies and traits that enable a person to communicate effectively within various interpersonal relationships. The effective use of EI helps a person better perceive and manage their own emotions and the emotions of others, which is an invaluable trait for leaders who desire to understand their teams and how to work with them.

In practice, there are five key categories of skills that leaders should look to develop: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

Self-awareness is the ability to recognise emotions so that they can be evaluated and managed in real time to prevent distress or unrest. For some, it can provide invaluable insight and allow them to modify the unhelpful behaviours of others. By starting to notice their own emotions, leaders can better recognise the emotions of others.

From self-awareness, self-regulation develops, which enables individuals to manage emotions. Developing self-regulation involves techniques that alleviate negative emotions and maintain motivation. By doing this, leaders demonstrate self-control, trustworthiness and adaptability.

Motivation, one of the most important traditional skills, remains important in EI. Leaders who motivate successfully have the ability to deliver clear goals and maintain a positive attitude. To develop this skill, leaders must learn to observe negative thoughts as they occur and reframe them into more positive goals for success.

Once leaders can recognise and understand the feelings of others they can empathise. This involves being able to discern how other people’s feelings are communicated so they can shape the emotional signals they send to others.

For leaders to be able to influence, build bonds and collaborate with others, they must develop and nurture important relationships–not only within their own teams, but also within their external business networks.

It is important to understand that EI can be enhanced and developed throughout a person’s lifetime. For leaders to truly strike a balance between the traditional leadership skills they know so well and the increasingly important softer skills, they must seek ways to develop their EI. In doing so, they can improve the well-being and productivity of any business’s most valuable asset – its people.

Lori LaCivita is the programme director for the MS and PhD in Industrial and Organisational (I-O) Psychology programmes at Walden University