What is the need to develop emotional intelligence in the workplace? Corporate culture makes a strict separation between what is allowed and what is not accepted in the workplace. Traditionally, it praised rational behaviour and banned emotional behaviour. This dynamic has been shifting in the last two decades. We know we carry our emotions to work and expect to have room for them. So we better learn to cope with them constructively, for ourselves and our professional performance as top managers in leading positions. You'll find a breakdown of the five foundational human emotions - anger, fear, sadness, disgust and surprise - and examples of how to shift poor emotional reactions into constructive responses. Understanding the language of emotions can lead to practical benefits such as improved team dynamics, better decision-making, and enhanced leadership.

1. What is emotional intelligence in effective leadership?
2. Why is it important for top managers and CEOs to understand the language of emotions?
3. Understanding and managing emotions: Examples in the workplace
4. What can you do to develop your emotional intelligence?
5. Are you an HR Manager promoting emotional intelligence? Use this tip to overcome employee resistance.

1. What is emotional intelligence in effective leadership?

Emotionally loaded situations happen to all of us. A person with high emotional competence has the capacity to sense, name, understand, and have constructive conversations about conflicting matters that are constructive for them, the situation, and others.

Emotional intelligence refers to one's ability to recognize, understand, and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.

2. Why is it important for top managers and CEOs to understand the language of emotions?

The dominant culture considers business as a place to be logical, rational and objective. There's an unspoken policy in the corporations of normalizing rotten behaviours and a strict limitation about how we are expected to express (or silence) emotions, to such an extent that most people believe that emotions don't occur at the workplace.

What effective leadership looks like today?

As a business professional in a top management position, it's important to understand that emotional intelligence is a key factor in your daily performance. For instance, emotions can significantly impact:

• How you perceive
• How you make decisions
• How you respond to situations
• The basics of your behaviour, personality and communication style.

Are emotions driving your performance?

Yes, they are. Emotions are part of us as human beings. We can't detach from them - nor should we, as they carry vital information: emotions keep you alive and make you thrive. The pivotal point is whether you're aware and able to turn valuable inputs into regulated performance, constructively using unpleasant emotions.

How skilled are you at navigating uncertainty and leading others through their fears, anger, or disgust?

Emotions are part of who we are. They are a very important part of understanding ourselves, understanding others, and connecting and communicating individually and in teams.

We can't stop feeling them - nor should we as they carry critical information for survival and thriving. How we relate to that part of ourselves depends on our awareness of feelings, personality, and education to express or suppress emotions.

How aware are we of the impact of emotions on our behaviour?

Emotions are not positive or negative. They carry critical information we need to know, understand, and respond to. For instance, anger is a compelling emotion. You can use it constructively to fight for fairness or destructively to disempower yourself—harnessing your capacity to analyze, act, and cultivate healthy relationships within your team and business partners.

When you learn the language of emotions, you have a helpful map to understand and appreciate:

• Making decisions
• Taking risks
• Managing relationships with employees
• Self-motivation and the motivation of others
• Promoting change

As I coach executives, I notice an ever-growing need for resilience and emotional intelligence that supports them in dealing with solitude, reaching for help, handling pressure, and gracefully navigating uncertainty.

3. Understanding and managing emotions effectively: Examples in the workplace

We're all emotional beings.

Behind every emotion, there is a universal human need. We experience pleasant sensations when the need is fulfilled and unpleasant when it's unfulfilled or violated by others.

ANGER

Cause of Anger: Anger is often triggered when we perceive a situation or someone's behaviour as unfair, obstructing our goals, or treating us unjustly. This understanding is crucial as it forms the basis for effective anger management.

Motivation and value: Anger motivates us to fight for fairness and what is right in our eyes. It's important to understand that emotions are always valid, including anger. I make this explicit because anger carries a cultural load of unpopularity and wrongness that encourages us to repress it and miss the vital information it holds when it arises. Whether anger is valid or not, reading the signals and adequately managing the situation is critical.

Workplace situation: Eroding authority and competency. You lead a presentation for an important customer, your colleague asks questions you must prepare for, and you come across as incompetent. You get angry because you interpret their behaviour as undermining your authority. Is this true? If you stick to your interpretation of what would have been right, you will likely attack your colleague, fight back - or another short of unconstructive response - and go into conflict. However, there may be a different story to it. It may be your colleague was noticing something in the customer response you were unaware of, thus missing the point; they were trying to bridge the gap and help the situation by asking you questions. Did you get the problem wrong?

Managing anger: How can you use this emotion constructively that is not harmful for you, the other or the situation?

Acknowledge the feeling: "I feel something unpleasant". Name the situation. Connect it to the basic knowledge, "I'm feeling a threat or an injustice". Deep inquiry: "Is my perspective all there is? Is there something else going on? Am I 100% certain that the other person is going hard on me?" If I'm not sure, the best response is to provide / offer a constructive conversation with my colleague.

You have high emotional intelligence when you understand the messages of emotions.

Without a strong grasp of our emotions, we may resort to passive-aggressive communication styles. This can be damaging in a professional setting, not only eroding trust, but also undermining leadership and jeopardizing customer relationships.

Executive coaching will help you identify, inquire and create positive communication styles.

FEAR

Cause of fear: Fear appears in situations of uncertainty and ambiguity. When we can't project the outcome of a situation, we perceive that something bad can happen to us or that the outcome will not be something we like.

Motivation and value: Fear serves a crucial role in our lives, acting as a protective mechanism that steers us away from danger, threatening situations, and even death.

Workplace situation: High-stake decision-making. You can use fear to prevent mistakes by thinking further, reviewing the situation, finding more evidence and running scenarios. Caution is helpful as long as you are the one guiding the situation. As you let fear run the show, drama breaks open, and caution becomes freezing. Then, a myriad of fruitless "What if" questioning and running random scenarios takes over, turning preparation that could be productive into a draining use of your energy and resources.

“When fear takes over, you believe you have rational arguments, but all you have are excuses.”

Managing fear. You can cope effectively with fear when you acknowledge:

1. Your feelings
2. The impact it has on your decisions
3. You can deal with it
4. You can rationalize it
5. You can accept it and move ahead

How to shift from fear to constructive action.

Fear is part of who we are and how we make decisions. You can rationalize fear-running scenarios:

1. Worst case scenario
2. Best case scenario
3. Probable scenario

When fear rises, we tend to overemphasize the impact and probability of the worst-case scenario. You can use that fear to prepare better—make another analysis, check data, do further research, or ask for a colleague's advice.

You shift from fear into action when the analysis helps you to move forward to a point you accept: "There is some fear and risk, but it is ok. I'm going to do it anyway".

SADNESS

Cause of Sadness: Sadness appears when we experience the loss of something that has value and is dear to us. It can be a person or a job, but we can also lose impact, security or an important identity.

Motivation and value: Sandness motivates you to get help.

Workplace situations:

1. Revision of critical documentation. You can find that sadness can positively impact your everyday performance in surprising ways. Unpleasant emotions drive you to focus on details, be more analytical and look for mistakes. When you analyze a situation repeatedly, you are more likely to find mistakes you may have overlooked otherwise. You can use sadness constructively to review a report.
2. Facilitation of brainstorming sessions. However, sadness is a lousy kickoff for creative brainstorming. When we're excited, we may not see what we are missing and overlook mistakes, but we are motivated to envision possibilities, express new ideas, be creative, and proactively participate.

Managing sadness: When you lead (brainstorming) meetings, you must be aware of your emotions and perceive and understand the emotions of other people. If you're trying to improve sales results, it's fatal to open with, "The results were catastrophic; we're going to lose our jobs… Let's bring new ideas to the table". It won't work. People will be more creative when you create an atmosphere of emotional safety and positive emotions. This reassures them and makes them feel secure, fostering a more creative environment. Otherwise, they won't be creative but see mistakes and the negative side of each and every idea.

“As a leader, you're responsible for facilitating an adequate emotional atmosphere in the room.”

DISGUST

Cause of Disgust: As with food, disgust means something is wrong with a situation or an object that you reject, likely because it is misaligned with your values or moral standards.

Motivation and value: The function of disgust is to remove something unacceptable to us.

Workplace situations: Values and company culture. Let's think about that colleague who is always late for a meeting. What's your reaction? How are you judging their behaviour and its impact on you? For you may be disgust; for another colleague, anger; and a third, indifference. You will experience disgust when you find their behaviour unacceptable because it collides with your behaviour, values or standards. You will feel compelled to reject the behaviour and the person and to warn others against it - as you would with poisonous food: "Caution, don't eat it. It's unacceptable!"

Managing disgust: How do you interpret their behaviour? You judge the behaviour of others as adequate or inadequate against your behaviour, values and standards. Be mindful to distinguish the situation you reject from the person. A person is not their behaviour. Instead:

1. Self-regulate: Acknowledge your emotions and calm down.
2. Understand the root causes: Communicate and assess situations
3. Set clear expectations: Reiterate policies and define consequences.
4. Develop an action plan
5. Monitor and follow up

Your rejection points out your values and needs.

SURPRISE

Cause of Surprise: We feel surprised when something happens that we did not expect.

Motivation and value: Surprise, when managed effectively, can be a valuable learning experience, helping us pay more attention the next time we see it coming.

Workplace situations: Managing employees. As a business unit manager, you trust your team's daily performance to hit monthly goals. You don't check partial results, ask for data, or be informed. On the last day of the month, you realize some individuals underperformed, and that is an unpleasant surprise that can have negative consequences. Did you overtrust them?

Managing surprise: Surprise propels you to learn and provide solutions for this problem; it also sets systems to prevent unforeseen situations. It will help you anticipate. Surprise invites you to:

1. Pay attention
2. Reorient
3. Gather more data
4. Learn from the experience
5. Adapt and respond with flexibility.

4. What can you do to develop your emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is part of my executive coaching practice for top managers and CEOs at Simona Spilak. At my HRM agency BOC Institute, we run national and international workshops that integrate emotional intelligence for:

• Conflict resolution
• Stress management
• Change management
• Building resilient individuals, teams and organizations

Are you an HR Manager promoting emotional intelligence? Use this tip to overcome employee resistance.

You may come across people's opposition - open or not- to attend emotional intelligence workshops. The reason behind this is that most people get upset with your suggestion. They interpret that you see them as "not emotionally intelligent"; whereas they think of themselves as: "I'm empathetic" and "I take care of people".

“Being emotional and caring for people do not equal being emotionally intelligent.”

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Besides, we are unaware of the vast possibilities ahead when we dive into understanding our emotions and building our emotional resilience, especially for managers who deal with crises, challenging situations, and change all day long, often alone and often under enormous stress.

Do you need support? You can book a (free) consultation with me or my team. When you briefly review your challenges, we can create a development plan for you and your organization.

To your success,
Simona

Authors: Simona Špilak and Mojca Balanč

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I'm the founder of BOC Institute, one of the renowned consulting agencies for international companies operating in Slovenia and South-East Europe.

I coach CEOs and top managers 1:1 worldwide. I'm here to save you time, energy, and money through your objectives, decision-making, and leadership development. I understand we can change the world one coaching session at a time!

Do you feel like having a call? You can reach out here and let me guide you from there.

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Simona Špilak www.simonaspilak.com