As an executive during this pandemic, knowing how to use your emotional quotient or EQ can be one of your most important leadership tools.
Leadership and loss
The great exodus from company cubicles to home offices was also a stampede from things we now miss more than ever:
Hugs. High-fives. Malls. Play dates. Adult dates. Restaurants. Happy hour. Proms. Graduations. Sleep. Personal space. Distant loved ones. Friendly faces! [Who can tell what’s behind a mask?] Freedom.
Online meetings, social media, and smartphones can’t fill the gap left by lack of personal interaction. Millions of workers—on every rung of the corporate ladder—are suffering a deep sense of loss and are struggling to work in spite of it. There’s no time to grieve and little time to reflect because there are too many irons in the fire; too many fires to put out.
Leadership one-on-one
As a leader, your challenge—one of many—is to keep things together when everyone and everything seems to be falling apart. And the first major change to your management style is individualizing it. You’ll have to gauge how to use your emotional quotient with each employee. One-size-fits-all management won’t work right now—perhaps it’s gone forever.
A few of your employees may be longing for the old normal. Some are waiting for the new normal to settle down, so they can take a deep breath and start fresh. Some recognize that the new normal is already here, but they don’t quite know what to do with it.
Leadership, EQ, and self-awareness
Your emotional intelligence of EQ regarding others actually starts with you. For instance, your EQ will shape how you communicate, and what you communicate. And that all depends on how you’re coping yourself. Your ability to empathize with an anxious employee will hinge on how you’re managing your own emotions.
Openness, transparency, and compassion—they certainly didn’t cover these virtues in your MBA program, right? Yet these non-traditional, un-businesslike concepts may have to become part of your new management normal. For some executives this is a very scary prospect. Sliding down the corporate ladder and away from professional autonomy? What a dreadful picture!
How about you? How aware are you of your own thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns and how they impact others? And how comfortable are you about being sensitive to a worker’s emotional needs without feeling that your authority is being undermined?
Do you know how to pick up on emotional cues from others without being judgmental? As work demands ebb and flow, your demands on your team must reflect these unpredictable shifts. Are you ready to adapt to the changes in relationships with members of your core team?
Leadership, EQ, and mental health
Some 60 million essential American workers are putting in longer hours on-site. They live in constant fear of contracting the virus or transmitting it to their loved ones. This is straining their childcare arrangements, their budgets, their marriages, and their emotional stability.
Millions of remote workers feel isolated, depressed, and stressed, because they, too, worry about contracting this dreaded disease. On-site and at home, employees from coast to coast are exhibiting an increase in mental illness which is resulting in a decrease in productivity.
Leadership, EQ, and DiSC
Employees are emotionally and psychologically fragile. Many remote workers don’t know how to establish a work-life balance when home and work are in the same place. Full of anxiety, both remote and essential on-site workers have questions about the future of their health and their jobs. They need leaders with answers.
Now is the time to learn how to use your emotional quotient in order to become a more dynamic leader. And there’s no more essential or dynamic tool than DiSC personality profile training to teach you how to use your EQ.
Each of us exhibits Dominant, Influential, Supportive, or Conscientious [DiSC] personality types that shape the way we interact with people. DiSC can help you understand where each staffer’s head is and help them adapt to the changing demands at work and regain stability at home.
For example, some staffers may need more time to shift gears and mindsets about new policies, procedures, and programs. Subconsciously they may drag their feet longing to return to life before COVID. Unintentionally, they may hang on to the old normal waiting for it to return. With insights learned from DiSC training, you can better understand their reluctance and help them make this transition without making them feel guilty or anxious.
DiSC personality profile training will dramatically increase your EQ and your credibility with your staff. When they need understanding the most, you’ll be able to provide it, along with the assurances they’ll need in order to move the company forward.
Firm, steady, and compassionate leadership. DiSC.