The best leaders aim to influence and inspire others with their emotional intelligence. Leaders with high emotional intelligence are trustworthy, show empathy, and can overcome resistance to change.
A leader’s ability to lead their teams and achieve goals is derived from their emotional intelligence. It acts as one of the most important qualities of leadership; it improves the ability to understand and manage your emotions, as well as recognize and influence the feelings of others. An emotionally intelligent leader can create a positive work environment, enhance collaboration, and bring productivity to the workplace.
 

Five major techniques that can help to grow emotional intelligence in a leader:
 

Self-awareness: It's the ability to monitor your emotions and understand how your feelings affect people around you. Self-awareness can be improved by better understanding our strengths and weaknesses and by undertaking reflective exercises such as journaling.
 

Self-Regulation: It's the ability to control and manage your emotional reactions in various situations. One of the most effective ways to improve self-regulation of emotions is by using breathing techniques. It's worth knowing and practicing a couple to see what works best for you, and if you are still trying to figure out where to start, you can send me a message here on Mukooza.com.
 

Motivation: Motivation is the key component of emotional intelligence. Leaders with high emotional intelligence are driven by motivation to achieve their goals, not just by external rewards. They mostly maintain a positive attitude, even when they face setbacks, and inspire their teams to aim for excellence.
 

Empathy: The ability to identify and understand the feelings of others is crucial for effective leadership. To improve empathy, you can start working on your listening skills (practice giving someone your complete attention without interrupting), and understanding your body language can also help you with empathy. An empathetic leader can build better relations, manage conflicts, and create a collaborative work environment by understanding the needs and viewpoints of their team members.
 

Social Skills: Social skills are also critical to building emotional intelligence in a leader; they're required to interact well with others. Social skills generally depend on building rapport and can be improved by focusing on communication skills, including conversation or public speaking.

Almost all emotionally intelligent leaders should have five basic competencies that can enable them to recognize, understand, manage, and utilize emotions effectively. These competencies help them gain results and build healthy organizational cultures. The five basic competencies include:
 

Personal Influence: A leader should be able to influence his team and followers by inspiring them. Emotionally intelligent leaders build strong relationships, guide others, and align group members with the organization's goals through their influence.
 

Inspiration: A good leader always understands the power of inspiration and a positive attitude in the workplace. Emotionally intelligent leaders motivate and energize their teams by using their leadership stories.
 

Collaboration: Emotionally intelligent leaders foster a cooperative environment where team members work together towards common goals. They encourage their teams to open communication, respect each other, and promote teamwork to achieve big goals.
 

Healthy Conflict: Conflicts are a natural part of all teams; they keep happening in any workplace, and an emotionally intelligent leader understands well how to resolve these conflicts healthily. They tackle conflicts with empathy by maintaining open communication and understanding.
 

Team Leadership: Monitoring the team's stress levels and maintaining optimism is important. An emotionally intelligent leader builds trust within the team and helps to create a positive work environment. Effective team leadership involves mentoring and motivating the team to boost their morale and enhance their performance.
 

Ending Thoughts
Emotional intelligence is a sum of various skills, including- Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skills. While some people have these qualities naturally, others have to work hard on them. The good part is that we can improve our emotional intelligence through mindfulness, education, and proper exercise. Higher emotional intelligence leads to professional success. Peter Salovey (an American social psychologist and academic administrator) concluded, “People in good moods are better at inductive reasoning and creative problem-solving.”
It is necessary to build and maintain strong relationships to work happily & productively with the people around us, and only an emotionally intelligent leader can help produce all these benefits for their teams & organizations.