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Leading Your Team with Emotional Intelligence
By: Chrissy Carroll, MPH, RD
Anyone can be a great leader when everything is going according to plan. But what happens when there’s a hectic meal service, two of your employees have called out sick, and your administrator has just had a conversation with you about cutting the budget?
If your blood pressure is already rising just reading that, you know how easy it is for frustrating situations to lead to an emotional reaction. The sign of a true leader is the ability to self-regulate your own stress and positively manage your team during these tough times.
Emotional intelligence is the key to developing better reactions in these moments. This refers to the ability to understand, express, and manage emotions. It impacts your ability to lead others and effectively cultivate a great team dynamic.
THE FOUR DOMAINS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Daniel Goleman, one of the pioneers of the emotional intelligence movement, created a framework that uses four domains:
- Self-Awareness: Your ability to understand your own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. If you can’t identify these within yourself, it will be hard to manage your own reactions – and hard to recognize emotions in others. Self-Management: Regulating your emotions, as well as fostering key leadership characteristics that drive you forward in your career (like being achievement-oriented and adaptable).
- Social Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand the emotions of other people and the organizational dynamics of the workplace.
- Relationship Management: Creating and maintaining positive workplace relationships that strengthen performance and teamwork. This includes motivating team members and effectively managing conflict.
Let’s look at five tips to enhance your skills within these domains.
NAME IT TO TAME IT
If someone asked you how you were feeling right now, odds are you might have a surface level response – perhaps “fine,” “good,” or “tired.” But there are so many more emotions that you may be experiencing! You might feel joyful and valued because an administrator recognized your hard work. You might feel overwhelmed about hiring a new team member. Perhaps you’re feeling nervous because you heard budget cuts are coming down the pipeline.
Naming the emotions you’re experiencing is incredibly valuable as a leader, and reflecting on them provides helpful information. For example, for each emotion below, you could ask yourself the following questions:
- Joy: What is going well? What do I want to do more of? Who do I want to spend more time around? What brings out the best in me as a leader?
- Fear: What am I worried is at risk, and what is actually at risk? Is there any way to mitigate that risk?
- Anger: What is getting in the way of progress? What is leading to inefficiencies in my team? What are the obstacles we’re facing?
- Shock: What unexpected thing happened? What is different than my assumptions? Could I have been prepared for this?
- Sadness: What feels disappointing? What is being lost or damaged?
For example, let’s say you leave today’s weekly team meeting feeling energized and happy, while in the past you’ve left feeling drained. Reflect on that! What was different about today’s interactions? Maybe you delegated more. Maybe the conversation focused on a new change. Maybe there were fewer fires to put out. Whatever it was, this can reveal tactics to continue moving forward.
RECOGNIZE TRIGGERS
In addition to the emotions themselves, try to recognize triggers that lead to counterproductive reactions. For example, are there certain situations that tend to always make you frustrated or angry? Perhaps every time service falls behind, you start snapping at people. Or if an employee says something that you feel is rude, you immediately get angry and want to yell. Reflecting on these situations allows you to see patterns.
It’s completely normal to experience certain emotions in these situations, and the goal isn’t to eliminate them. Instead, the goal is to recognize them early enough to allow you to self-regulate, gather more information, and choose a productive response.
Let’s say you watch an employee leave a task unfinished and the anger bubbles up immediately. You might find yourself thinking, “Why don’t they ever care about finishing their work?!” This is a time to pause and assess. What is getting in the way of finishing it? Do they really not care? Or are they unclear about expectations? Is the workload realistic? Is the process confusing? Is there equipment missing or malfunctioning? That anger emotion is a signal to gather more information first, rather than react impulsively.
USE SELF-REGULATION STRATEGIES
One of the reasons that self-regulation is so important in the workplace is a concept known as emotional contagion. This is the tendency for people to unknowingly mimic and experience the same emotions as others around them.
You’ve probably felt this at some point in your career. Think about a past job where your own manager was consistently irritated or hypercritical. You may have noticed yourself tensing up during your shift or dreading working with them. Others on the team may have felt similar, leading to a situation with collectively low morale.
And this doesn’t just impact the team’s mood. A study in Current psychology research & reviews found that contagion of anger at work led to health and sleep problems, and these issues contributed to more accidents and injuries on the job.
Peer-reviewed research supports a dual model for emotional contagion, with an impact from both leaders and peers. Negative attitudes from leadership or fellow team members can lead to poor group coordination and the issues noted above. But just as stress can spread through a team, so can enthusiasm. Studies show that a manager’s passion and optimism can positively influence their employees, and that this process is linked to overall leadership effectiveness.
It is thus essential to embrace characteristics like positivity, achievement, and adaptability at work, as well as regulate your own emotions like anger or frustration.
Regulating your own emotions during stressful times can be challenging at first, but there are strategies to help. The goal is to widen the gap between the emotion you experience and an immediate reaction (which can sometimes be a behavior that doesn’t exemplify leadership, like yelling or avoiding conflict). By practicing self-regulation activities, you allow yourself a second to reset and hopefully choose a more productive response. Here are a few options to try the next time you are frustrated at work:
- Box breathing – If you’re feeling overwhelmed, find a quiet space and breathe in for four counts, hold for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold for four counts. Research has shown that this can reduce situational anxiety and improve mood.
- Progressive muscle relaxation – Try tensing and releasing different muscle groups in your body from head-to-toes or vice versa. Studies have found this reduces stress.
- Go for a walk – Physical activity is a known mood booster and stress reliever! If you can’t get outside for a walk, a few jumping jacks or a mini dance session in your closed office (or even the restroom) might be enough for a quick reset.
- Browse a “praise packet” – Save positive emails, thank you cards, photos, or other nostalgia. When you’re feeling upset at work, return to those as a reminder of the impact you’ve made.
- Write in a journal – For some people, the physical act of writing out emotions or frustrations can help you process them and troubleshoot situations.
PRACTICE EMPATHY
Empathy refers to your ability to understand other people’s emotions and perspectives. It doesn’t necessarily mean excusing poor behaviors in the workplace, but it does give you additional perspective and helps you respond more effectively.
Of course, your employees may not directly mention their problems or frustrations. You might be able to pick up on these, though, by listening to changes in their tone, behavior, attitude, or non-verbal cues. These are good times to ask questions.
Let’s say you notice an employee resisting implementation of a new change. Rather than assume it’s a bad attitude, you might ask questions to better understand their perspective.
For example:
- How is this change affecting your work?
- Can you walk me through the challenges you’re experiencing?
- What would help you be more successful in implementing this?
- Is there another plan you feel would be more effective?
Understanding their perspective will help you see if the resistance is truly about attitude, or something that can be troubleshooted – like training issues, workflow problems, or other concerns. These conversations also reinforce that your employee’s perspective matters, which can lead to improved morale and job satisfaction on their end.
EFFECTIVELY MANAGE CONFLICT
Conflict is inevitable in any workplace. Your team is comprised of different personalities and communication styles, and this can be coupled with disagreements over everyday issues like scheduling, workload, and task preferences.
Goleman describes conflict management as “the ability to help others through emotional or tense situations, to tactfully bring disagreements into the open and to define solutions that everyone can endorse.” In other words, effective leaders need to handle (rather than avoid) conflicts, and do so in a way that bridges common ground.
Like much of this article, that can start with questions and gathering information. If you notice conflict between two employees, you can meet with them and open with a simple line: “I’m sensing some tension between you both in the kitchen – what’s up?” Creating a space for conversation can help address the conflict before it becomes a larger problem or starts affecting the rest of the team.
Find out more about each person’s perspective, what they see as the problem, and what they see as a solution. Try to keep the focus on specific behaviors or situations, rather than the other person’s character. Your own empathy and self-regulation are key in these situations – avoid rushing to blame or letting your own irritation override a productive conversation. As the leader, facilitate problem solving and establish a path forward, ideally grounded in a shared goal.
This doesn’t necessarily mean every conflict ends with both individuals getting exactly what they want. But generally, when people feel heard and respected, they are more likely to feel comfortable moving forward, even without the exact outcome they desired. Conflicts may also be brought directly to you, and not all are evenly sided. An employee might come to you and say: “I’m tired of doing all the work while Mark stands around doing nothing all shift.” Your initial thought might be that you’re tired of all this complaining and that they need to figure it out themselves!
But instead, you ask additional questions about the scenarios they’re seeing and conduct your own observations. In this situation, perhaps the complaint is accurate – Mark’s lack of work is negatively impacting the team. You must first assess if this is a failure on your part, due to lack of training or unclear expectations. If so, address that. If not, it is now time to have a conversation that creates effective boundaries and accountability with Mark.
MOVING FORWARD
Emotional intelligence isn’t about becoming a therapist for your employees, nor does it mean you have to be “touchy-feely” or always make your employees happy. It’s simply about becoming more intentional in recognizing your own emotional triggers and responses, as well as those among your team. By doing so, you can foster better communication and more positive team outcomes.
About the Author
Chrissy Carroll, MPH, RD
Chrissy Carroll is a registered dietitian, freelance writer, and brand consultant based in Massachusetts.
