Emotional Intelligence has often been misunderstood as simply being nice. Of course, having a positive attitude towards others can be a driving force for collaboration, but emotional intelligence is so much more than that. It is usually described as having four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social management, and as an Agentic Leader, it is essential that you master all four of them. Why? Because the use of AI will influence the psychodynamics in your organisation, and by that, your ability to operate.
Self-awareness is the ability to identify and understand your own emotions and how they are affecting the way you perform and act. It is important not to ignore your emotions but face them no matter how uncomfortable it feels. The author of this text has, for example, the awareness that when being tired, he has a tendency to feel sad or have anxiety without necessarily being able to name the current source for it. This is most likely caused by a burnout with stress back in 2003, which will be in his backpack for the rest of his time. He seeks to prevent these uninvited feelings by, in general, having eight hours of sleep every night, and when they come, he can name them and by that reduce the impact of them.
This leads to the next domain: self-management, which is about being in control of your feelings, preventing them from doing harm to you and others. It is okay to show your feelings, but as a leader it is important to express your feelings in appropriate doses. Almost nothing is worse than having a manager that is out of control and bursts out with capital-letter vocabulary when something has gone wrong. So self-management is about being in emotional self-control – not neglecting your feelings but using them appropriately to achieve the outcomes you desire. A major part of this is your ability to adapt to what is currently going on and having a positive outlook for how you may influence the situation for the better. Positively reframing negative emotions and thoughts, without being naive, is a key component of emotional self-management.
So far we have addressed Emotional Intelligence on the personal level, and when it comes to leadership, your ability to be the master in your own house is essential for your ability to influence others. But there is more to it, so let us look into the social aspects of Emotional Intelligence.
Social awareness is your ability to read the organisation. To what degree you are aware of what is going on around you. This is about how well you sense the organisational climate: how the employees react to some recent events. What has the introduction of AI caused in the company? Are people concerned about job security? Are people stressed out by the accelerated pace of how things are happening? Do people make sense out of the latest change of strategy? Leaders with high emotional intelligence meet people with empathy. Not in the sense that resistance to change is always appropriate and anything goes, but merely in the way that you ask yourself: "If it makes sense for them to act in this way, and if they do this with the best intentions, what are they then trying to tell me?" Having a curious and appreciative approach to what is going on is usually productive, even when employees seem to act in a counterproductive way.
Social awareness is also about mapping the informal networks in the workplace as well as employees' perception of the power structures of the organisation. Who is influencing whom, and how are decisions being made? It is important to know.
Finally there is social management. This is about how you are able to influence others. Your success in this domain builds on how you master the three other domains as well as how you are able to provide inspirational leadership for the employees. Being visionary, role-modelling and helping people make sense of the mission are things you need to focus on. A leader with good social and relation management skills is a guardian for teamwork as well as confident and competent in managing conflicts. You do not necessarily need to know all the details of what your employees are doing, but your ability to coach and mentor them will be a catalyst for success.
As said, the introduction of AI will highly influence the psychodynamics in your organisation, and as an Agentic Leader your Emotional Intelligence is a great help for you and others to cope with the complexity and anxiety AI will cause. The good news is that Emotional Intelligence can be learned by addressing the aspects shared in this article.
