Possessing a high level of emotional intelligence involves being self aware of your emotions, expressing them and having control over them. It also includes having the ability to acknowledge and understand the emotions of others. Emotional Intelligence is made up of skills to be able to accurately read and interpret body language, verbal language, facial expressions, and tone. Emotional intelligence is under-acknowledged as an important aspect of a successful, professional workplace.
Keep an eye out for these signs of low emotional intelligence within your team.
Severely Low Levels of Communication Within the Team.
One of the biggest indicators of low emotional intelligence is if there are frequent cases of miscommunication, inappropriate communication or a general decrease in communication amongst your team members or one team member in particular. When there’s little empathy or respect for each other, wedges between people form, and there’s difficulty acknowledging different perspectives or roles. Meetings also become challenging to manage as team members talk over one another, they don’t actively listen or they feel like they don’t have a voice.
A Decrease in Productivity
If people don’t know what motivates them, inspires them, or gets them excited, how can they accomplish good work? Without an understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses and motivators, it’s quite easy to be clouded by a negative mindset or get lost in a world of procrastination – all of which lowers productivity. If you notice a significant drop in productivity, or of new ideas being shared amongst the group, you should invest some time in improving your team’s self-awareness in our Emotional Intelligence course.
Change isn’t Easily Accepted
Another red flag is when change is not widely accepted, rather than it being an exciting journey, you’ll be faced with resistance and negativity. People who aren’t confident in the work they do, or don’t believe in the wider goals, their reactions to new work, challenges and processes can be extremely pessimistic. If this goes unnoticed or it’s not dealt with for too long, the repercussions are huge, and will delay organisational and team growth, and impact your team’s ability to reach goals.
If you’re reading along, and recognising these behaviours in yourself or a team member, it may be time to start learning more about ways to strengthen emotional intelligence skills for yourself and your team. The most effective way of improving these issues starts by understanding people, but more importantly, starts by understanding yourself. There are four critical areas of this work, that includes self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management. We suggest breaking these factors down, and ensuring you understand the importance of a highly emotional intelligent team first.
Our team at Pathways Australia is here to help you with this through our specifically designed course that covers the necessary components, shows you ways to recognise and respond well to others and their emotions, and provides you with tools to develop and maintain quality relationships with others.
There are so many benefits of improving the level of Emotional Intelligence within your team, and for yourself. In fact, it’s the foundation of any successful leader and will set you up for the rest of your professional career. When you’re ready to take this professional development leap, we’ll be here to support you every step of the way.
