Emotional Intelligence, Leadership & Sales

emotional intelligence

Successful Sales Managers/Leaders and Sales Professionals share many traits, one of which is Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

As you may know, emotional intelligence is the phrase used to describe a person’s ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways. It has been identified as a means to communicate more effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict.

There are several competencies, which are typically grouped into four major components:

  • Self-awareness – recognizing our own emotions and how they impact behavior
  • Self-management – controlling impulsive feelings and behaviors, managing our emotions in healthy ways, taking initiative, following through on commitments, and adapting to changing circumstances
  • Social awareness – having and expressing empathy, and understanding the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people
  • Relationship management – ability to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict

Research shows that organizations or teams led by people with high emotional intelligence tend to have climates in which information sharing, trust, healthy risk-taking, and learning flourish.

Conversely, organizations or teams led by people with low levels of EQ create climates rife with fear and anxiety. While fearful employees may produce well in the short term, over the long run quality, productivity, and effectiveness suffer.

The same principles hold true for sales professionals or sales teams, as their EQ level affects communication, attitude, customer relationships and creativity.

While it’s clear that increasing personal and team EQ levels can help sales leaders as well as sales teams, the path to higher emotional intelligence is often misunderstood. In our next post, we’ll share a five-step process that has proved to be an effective way of increasing or improving EQ levels.