Leadership is more than management. It is the ability to inspire and motivate people to give their best. Technical and organizational skills are important for leaders, but the true test of a leader is his ability to drive emotions.

A Harris Interactive poll of 23,000 employees revealed startling information about how employees perceive their work environment. Only 20 percent of employees felt enthusiasm about the team and company goals. A mere fifteen percent regarded their companies as high-trust environments, and only 17 percent felt that open communication and respect for different opinions were values within their companies. Only 15 percent felt that their companies fully enabled them to complete key goals.

Clearly, the emotional connection between employee and company is missing in many companies. Leaders must restore that emotional connection to help their employees become personally invested in company goals.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Employee Retention

Mike’s team was tasked with achieving 50 percent growth. Sales were often in the million-dollar range and had a 12 to 24-month sales cycle, and Mike’s seasoned team started the year with a robust sales pipeline. However, during the third quarter, every large deal in the last stage of the pipeline fell apart. Mike’s hopes of crashing through the quota were dashed.

Mike decided to personally ensure that each remaining deal closed. He began micro-managing not only each deal, but each of his sales people. Within months, half of his formerly high-performing team members were looking for new jobs.

What happened? In reaction to the pressure, Mike reverted to his backup behavioral style. His fear overwhelmed his judgment, and his formerly popular management style became totalitarian and despised.

In Leigh Branhaw’s 2005 book The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to Recognize the Signs and Act Before It’s Too Late, published by AMACOM, nine of the top reasons employees give for leaving their jobs are related to poor leadership. Leaders make decisions everyday that impact the job satisfaction of their employees.

Under effective leaders, employees strive to improve their skills and their performance. Since they stay in their jobs, they internalize the values and the goals of the company and make company success an indicator of personal success.

“Primal Intelligence: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence” ascribes up to 95 percent of the difference between good and top leaders to emotional intelligence, the ability to relate to, communicate with, and motivate others. In a study of more than 2000 managers from 12 large organizations, 81 percent of the competencies that distinguished outstanding managers were related to emotional intelligence . The accurate recognition of her own emotions, the correct interpretation of her employees’ emotion, and the ability to respond appropriately make the manager with high emotional intelligence (EI) an outstanding and inspiring leader.

Incorporating EI into an overall management strategy shifts the focus from the flaws of the team to the strength of the leader. Instead of saying “My team lacks initiative, and I cannot improve their performance,” the leader with strong EI says, “I can find the motivational cues of each team member and help each one become vested in this project.”

For Mike, the threat of losing half of his team was an epiphany. Through a Leadership Emotional IQ evaluation. Mike became more self-aware of his reactive behavior and changed his strategy, taking into account his team’s strengths, talents and skills. The more positive work environment nurtured a winning team that is now beating their sales plan.

EI is not just acquired at birth; EI skills can be enhanced or learned. Self-assessment is a key component of becoming a successful leader. Effective leadership that creates an innovative and results-driven environment springs from the inside of the leader, not from external rules and controls.

Assessing Leadership Skills

Learning to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses first requires an honest, objective assessment of a leader’s EI and how he applies it. Assessments provide a clear picture of current strengths to improve performance and opportunities for both personal and professional growth.

There are many assessment tools available for leaders. Most of them evaluate the intersection of leadership and three basic dimensions: competencies, behavioral styles, or motivators.

• Leadership Competencies

A leadership and competency personal skills assessment evaluates the talent and skills of the test taker as well as emotional intelligence indicators like accountability, emotional control, and the ability to inspire. The goal is to gauge leadership effectiveness.

This type of assessment worked well for Luke, an easy-going manager of an employment agency who was very disappointed in his administrative staff members. An assessment showed that Luke had trouble clearly communicating when his employees failed to meet expectations, leading them to think that they were performing satisfactorily. Once Luke created a communication plan, his employees strove to meet his expectations.

• Leadership Behavioral Styles

A leadership and behavioral style assessment considers communication styles and how an individual interacts with people, approaches problems, and interacts within his environment. The DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance) model analyzes actions regardless of intelligence, belief systems, education, or skill level. The goal is to learn flexibility in relationships.

Janice has become a more confident leader since her team completed DISC assessments. Janice is an Influencer and is now aware of her tendency to show more emotion than other team members. By understanding behavioral styles, Janice knows that when speaking to Bill, her team’s engineer, she is most effective by keeping to the point. She also knows that Bill’s quick responses do not indicate that he does not appreciate Janice or her ability.

• Leadership Motivators

A leadership and motivation assessment unearths the reasons for behavior. Evaluations are based on unconscious values, pinpointed by Edward Spranger’s research in the early 1900s as Theoretical, Utilitarian, Aesthetic, Social, Leadership and Traditional. The goal of a motivation assessment is to understand employee values.

Many people assume that everyone in the nonprofit sector is motivated by helping others. Effective nonprofit leaders like Diane, however, look beyond that Social motivation to find the motivations beneath. She knows which employee is Theoretical and thrives in projects that require her to analyze data and which is motivated by Leadership and works hardest on projects that bring him recognition.

The Bottom Line

EI begins inside. Leaders who inspire performance and loyalty start out by understanding themselves. They then extend that understanding and turn it into empathy for their employees. That empathy guides great leaders as they inspire, motivate, and retain their employees.

Copyright:2008. Danita Bye. All Rights Reserved.