What Are Examples of Emotional Intelligence?

Navigating your workplace can seem like a minefield at times. How do you know when to push your team so they can reach that next level versus when to back off and give them a break? What’s the best way to approach each workday so it yields the results you’re looking for? One of the biggest parts of being a sound, reliable leader is your level of emotional intelligence. In this blog, we’ll talk about the specific categories all leaders have to display in the office, as well as more specific examples of emotional intelligence in the workplace.

What Are the Three Main Categories of Emotional Intelligence?

Relationships are everything in the modern workplace; whether it’s your relationship with yourself, your co-workers, or your clients, improving yourself as a leader comes down almost entirely to how well you can manage those relationships. Your ability to manage others is a direct reflection of the level of emotional intelligence you maintain—but it’s hard to tell how well you’ve mastered the art of interpersonal skills from your own point of view, isn’t it? 

That’s why EGL’s LMRe assessment is designed not only to provide emotional intelligence examples for you to follow, but give you the context you need to see how those skills play out in a modern workplace. The three main categories of emotional intelligence include:

Self-Management: Leaders high in self-management abilities are able to navigate countless situations and maintain focus, level-headedness, positivity, and intention. The five traits of self-management include

• Transparency
• Complexity
• Emotional self-control
• Adaptability
• Optimism

Social Awareness: Leaders with social awareness are able to sense what other people are feeling (it’s not supernatural!). This enables the leader to build camaraderie with a wide range of co-workers. The three traits of social awareness include

• Empathy
• Organizational awareness
• Service orientation

Relationship Management: Relationship management skills allow workers to build, maintain, and leverage relationships to get the most from the people around them and achieve success. The seven traits of relationship management include

• Teamwork/collaboration
• Inspirational leadership
• Influence
• Developing others
• Conflict management
• Being a catalyst for change
• Building bonds

While that might seem like a lot to keep track of, the beautiful thing about possessing quality emotional intelligence skills is they all play into one another. For example, an optimistic (self-management) outlook on a situation has the power to build bonds (relationship management) between you and your team, which can, in turn, make it easier to apply a service-oriented approach (social awareness) to a given situation. It’s much easier to view each trait listed above as if they’re constantly in communication with one another as opposed to being isolated categories. 

How Does Each Trait Play Into Daily Examples of Leadership? 

There are countless situations that every leader has to handle with aplomb to keep things moving and everyone happy. A leader’s ability to understand the emotional strengths (and vulnerabilities) of those around them and manage each individual effectively (rather than as a collective with no discernible personality differences) is crucial to achieving your goals as an organization.