How to Lead with Emotional Intelligence During Hard Times

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I try to imagine life prior to the pandemic and how I used to work on a team. Sure, I had to deal with some awful times, but they mostly had an ending that was closer to the beginning. Nowadays, the hard times just keep going. And going. And going.

In these cases, we need more than just simple management skills to help our staff manage their work. We need empathy. Grace. Explicit permission to be human.

Or more succinctly, we need emotional intelligence.

Photo by saeed karimi on Unsplash

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence refers to “the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence is generally said to include a few skills: namely emotional awareness, or the ability to identify and name one’s own emotions; the ability to harness those emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving; and the ability to manage emotions, which includes both regulating one’s own emotions when necessary and helping others to do the same.”