The Importance of EQ In Your Leadership

We’ve all heard much talk about IQ in the past. IQ being your ability to really rock out on standardized tests. More recently (past several years) we’ve also been learning about the role and importance of EQ, with many falling on the side of the fence that EQ is the more important value in determining someone’s success as a leader.

I just started a book called Primal Leadership that highlights the importance of high EQ. In the opening of the book it gives a wonderful example.

The news organization BBC decided to do an experiment with one of their divisions. They had one of their executives come into part of the group and tell them that they’d have to close the division. He did so in a very brusque and insensitive manner, not taking into account how the employees might be feeling. He just told the straight facts. “The atmosphere became so contentious,” the author recounts, “that it looked as though the executive might have to call security to usher him safely from the room.”

They then sent in another executive to the other group. He gave the same facts, but told it in a different way. By the end of his talk to the group, they gave him a round of applause.

“The difference between the leaders lay in the mood and tone with which they delivered their messages: One drove the group toward antagonism and hostility, the other toward optimism, even inspiration, in the face of difficulty. These two moments point to a hidden, but crucial dimension in leadership-the emotional impact of what a leader says and does” (p. 4).

Which leads me to the question: how aware are you of yourself? When someone objects to something that you say, how do you react? When you’re sharing with someone some difficult news, what is your body revealing? Do you have the ability to empathize with what someone is actually feeling?

If you can’t, I wouldn’t try to fake it and try to exude the right body language from some book.

Perhaps we can all learn to be a little more sensitive to how we are coming across to people, and the power of the emotions involved, by reminding ourselves that we are all sinners ourselves. And that we serve Someone that is able to empathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15).