How Emotionally Intelligent is your organisation?

Change is happening and it is happening fast and on top of this people want more and more connection, they want speed and they want to know what’s in it for them. 

So what is in it for them? and how can creating a culture of emotional intelligence help?

Lets take Xero as an example.

They are not just service providers. They know how to tap into the hearts and minds of people and particularly the next generation. They provide flexible working, they seek to understand their customers and the people in front of them, they understand that business isn’t rational it’s fundamentally emotional. 

Helping their customers with the numbers isn’t just helping the customers bottom line, it is helping them stay focused on what they are good at, helping them do what they love best, helping them contribute to this big world and trust that the numbers are taking care of themselves.

Emotional intelligence lies at the heart of the development strategy. How can they create an emotionally intelligent culture that will appeal to the next generation and keep them ahead of the competition?

So rewind…..what is EI?

EI is an ability to understand the thoughts, feelings and emotions of oneself and others. It has four components:

• Self awareness
• Self management
• People awareness
• People management

This is typically applied to individual development however it also works for creating cultures (a culture is largely a combination of the strongest values, beliefs and efforts of its main players).

An emotionally intelligent organisation will first of all have have a high level of self awareness. I.e it understands who it is is, who its key customer is, what it wears, where it goes and how it acts. It knows its strengths and plays to these. It also knows its weaknesses and looks to cope with these. It stays on top of the game and is forever growing, learning and being true to itself. Central to this is being able to answer the question. What is my purpose?

Secondly an emotionally intelligent organisation knows how to mange itself. It proactively seeks to understand its biggest strengths and biggest threats and puts plans in place of how to mitigate these. It grows its strengths and doesn’t fall victim to the reactionary mindset of some of its competitors.

Thirdly an EI organisation knows its people. It understands that people are different with different drivers and beliefs, different values and philosophies and different needs. It taps into the ideas and perceptions of the collective. It accepts that difference is what makes us different and will adapt accordingly, playing to the fundamental elements that we all have in common like love, survival, growth and belonging. It seeks to understand people without trying to be everything to everyone. It understands but also stays true to itself.

Lastly, because of this self awareness and people awareness an EI organisation knows how to manage people. It knows how to help people evolve and develop, how to get them from where they are now to where they need to be. It knows how to inspire its audience and capture its heart. It knows how the brain works and how to tap into the emotional decision making centres that are there behind every action we take.

An emotionally intelligent culture is born from emotional intelligent leadership. So the question is how self aware, resilient, empathic, intuitive and inspirational are your leaders?

If the answer is somewhere between nay and nearly, then maybe you could do with injecting some emotional intelligence into your organisation?

Please contact us to understand how we can help you in creating an emotionally intelligent organisation fit for the future.