Emotional Intelligence Affects Your Bottom Line
Engaging your staff and rallying your team is critical to the performance of your business. Leadership skills are mostly social skills, but in the context of the modern workplace where leaders need to show care for their staff, emotional intelligence plays a big role.
“People are complicated. They come to work with agendas, anxieties, behaviour patterns and unpredictable personal lives.
“It takes a leader with some finely honed interpersonal skills to be able to manage, inspire and direct a crowd of employees. However, too many of our leaders think the “people stuff” is something they can just tack on to the job when all the critical tasks have been dealt with.”
Full article: Australian Financial Review
Quality leadership is more important today in the minds of workers, and it’s upper-level managers are the ones who most need to step up to the crease.
“Australian workers are more disengaged from work than their overseas counterparts surveyed in a new global study, and are more critical of the leadership of their bosses.
The study found they are weary of constant change in their organisations and want clearer direction and leadership from their managers.”
Full article: Sydney Morning Herald
Retention of top staff is one factor in the growing importance of interpersonal skills to quality leadership. Rightly or wrongly, the way that your staff see your leadership is noticed and judged.
An article by John Elder in Fairfax Media may have sparked some office discussions recently, putting some leading global financial companies on record, stating that emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills are more important than technical ability when hiring new graduates.
It also mentions a push by Melbourne Business School to teach their graduate students how to make connections, build relationships, earn trust and lead with inclusion and authenticity. New learning components are being added in response, they say, to a demand from big employers.
The upshot: “Many graduates can crunch numbers to help make business decisions, but their efforts may be wasted if they communicate poorly.”
Full article: Sydney Morning Herald
Attracting and retaining quality team members is increasingly dependent on a clear, long-term vision for the company and its workforce. This needs to be outlined and exuded by management, so that achieving each short-term goal can then be another turn on the upward spiral.
Winning the engagement of your staff requires boldness and consistency, together with a strong understanding of emotions and inspiration.
HSG has expertise in designing Leadership Development training workshops and annual programs targeting measurable Emotional Intelligence improvements. We offer these in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart, Brisbane, Canberra, Newcastle, Wollongong and other major cities.
