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The Power of Leadership
We’ve looked at a variety of emotionally intelligent organizations, and what really matters is the culture of the organization. And in an emotionally intelligent organization, that means that someone who’s highly influential will say emotional intelligence matters here, set the tone, prioritize this set of human abilities as consequential. If you really want to advance here or if you want to work here, it helps if you’re emotionally intelligent or you want to work on your emotional intelligence. You care what the emotional climate is, and you help manage that. You want to bring out the positives. You want to articulate, for example, a shared mission of the organization that may be meaningful for many people in the organization. You want to do things that let people feel that their work here day-to-day has a higher meaning. I remember years ago at NASA before we put a man on the moon, they asked people in that organization, what’s your job? And one of the janitors said, my job is putting a man on the moon. In other words, the organization’s mission gave meaning to his work.
Setting Expectations
Every organization, every culture, every family has norms for what you can express openly and what you can’t. And an emotionally intelligent organization, will probably have norms that say, you know, you can’t express your upset feelings in a way that’s going to upset other people. You can’t just be enraged at other people. Keep that to yourself. Manage it.
On the positive side, I’d say the norm is get absorbed in your work. Pay full attention to what matters right now. Idle gossip, distractions, looking at your phone, social media, that’s irrelevant to what you’re doing here. That’s another kind of norm that I think helps people get into that optimal state more often. And then for leaders, what kind of leadership do you have? It’s not just did you get the results we need, but what did you do to people as a leader in getting those results? Are you burning them out, or are you inspiring them? An emotionally intelligent organization cares about whether you did it in the better way. All of these things point to norms that are typical of emotionally intelligent organizations.
Showing the Organization Cares
Self-awareness at the organizational level might mean surveying your employees in a way where they can answer honestly anonymously on how they feel they’re doing, how they’re doing every day? Are your people satisfied? Are they saying they feel good at work? One of the best measures is engagement, routine assessment made by companies. People who are in that optimal state are fully engaged in what they’re doing. Another way to look at it is turnover. If your turnover rates are too high, it means that something’s wrong. People aren’t getting into that optimal state. They don’t have leaders that help them get there. They’re burning out. Another indirect indicator is physical health. Do you have a high rate of somatic complaints like headaches, stomachaches? Those should be lower if you have good emotional intelligence in the culture. Your turnover rate should be lower, and your engagement, satisfaction, and subjective feeling at work should be higher.