What has Agility got to do with Emotional Intelligence and why is it important?
When describing the world of work, you may have heard the acronym VUCA – meaning volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
2020 has certainly provided a stark example of the truth in this acronym. Covid 19 has made astonishing demands on our workplaces, processes and people to be incredibly agile in responding to the changing circumstances.
From a people perspective what does being agile actually mean? And how can we develop our skill in this area?
At redKite we see an agile individual as someone who…
Has the tools and techniques to cope with whatever comes next, logistically and emotionally
Is resilient, proactive and collaborative
Demonstrates personal leadership in making decisions and managing every day changes
Adapts to new situations, even when it’s uncomfortable
Connects with people very different from themselves
Demonstrates core social and emotional strengths that make teamwork and problem-solving possible: active listening, self-reflection, empathy, objectivity, assertiveness
In other words, an agile individual consistently demonstrates the core elements of emotional intelligence.
Being emotionally intelligent means being able to read the emotional and interpersonal needs of any given situation and respond appropriately; agility is the ability to do that even if it’s difficult.
Over the many hours of coaching and development programmes we have delivered, we know that individuals have different ranges to their comfort zones. For instance, I feel very comfortable given a blank piece of paper and asked to come up with a new way of facilitating a team session, but I find it very frustrating when big plans change – it takes me a while to adapt and settle into the changes.
It makes sense that the greater the range of our comfort zone, the more able we are to adapt and lean in to new circumstances and situations. The more agile we become.
Emotional intelligence and agility can create better outcomes for individuals, teams and organisations, it also builds resilience. Our ability to adapt our mindset and approach to deal with a new boss, a new project, or a new work environment will support us to take these changes in our stride. And if we do find ourselves in the grip of VUCA situations, by honing our emotional intelligence and agility muscles we are better able to respond, recover and reflect on any lessons we can learn and therefore, develop our resilience capability even more.
The topic of emotional intelligence is not new. What is more current is the growing recognition of the value of emotional intelligence in the workplace.
Below are statistics extracted from “Agility Unlocked, Revealing the Connection Between Agility and Emotional Intelligence”, Everything DiSC, A Wiley Brand.
How Important is Emotional Intelligence (EQ*) in the Workplace?
Importance: 95% said that in the workplace, EQ is at least as important as IQ – if not more so.
Rising Need: 86% of leaders said EQ is more important to their organisation’s success now that it was 5 years ago.
Time spent: 46% of managers said they spend significantly more time on interpersonal issues, where higher EQ would be helpful, than on either the quality or quantity of work from their employees.
Toxic culture: 80% said they’ve seen low EQ produce a toxic culture.
Productivity: 79% said they have worked on a team where low EQ hurt productivity.
Staff retention: 41% left jobs because they were working with people who had low EQ.
(* EQ refers to Emotional Quotient which is a measurement of Emotional Intelligence).
So, we know there is a compelling case to stretch our comfort zone, build our EQ and agility muscles both personally and in others.
How do we do this?
A relatively simple action to stretch our comfort zone is to introduce something new into each day. Human beings are creatures of habit and we become wired in to our daily routines and rituals. Think about your actions as you start your day… we tend to start our day in the same order – shower, dress, coffee, exercise, look at our phones, open our laptops… back in the day when we travelled to our workplace, we would use the same mode and route to get to our destination.
In order to start building up our muscle to deal with change and ability to adapt we recommend identifying one small change you can try out in your daily routine… once you have mastered the small changes you will be more agile in stepping outside your comfort zone for the bigger changes in your life.
At redKite all our coaching and development programmes are built on the foundations of EQ. One of the tools we use is Wiley’s Everything DiSC® Agile Profile - an assessment used in either one-to-one coaching or group development workshops. It is grounded in the proven Everything DiSC® assessment (Agile EQ), which measures two central aspects of personality: pace and skepticism and each individual’s comfort with eight EQ mindsets.
We use the 26-page Agile profile in one-to-one coaching or development workshops to explore individuals’ EQ Mindset comfort zones. For instance, you may excel at the empathy mindset and supportive, one-on-one conversations but resist connecting with strangers at sales events. The profile outlines beginning, intermediate, and advanced steps you can take to make the outgoing mindset more comfortable.
Each individual gets to understand the EQ strengths they’re starting from. We then explore the tools and techniques for each individual to build their EQ and agility muscles.
2020 has shown each of us the VUCA times we are living in. The level of agility and resilience that has been drawn upon both personally and organisationally has been unprecedented. We know that the level of VUCA in our world is not going to reduce. So our BEST response-ability is to personally and organisationally build our agility in adapting to each new challenge.
Agility and emotional intelligence is most definitely something we can learn and grow.
Using our 15 years experience and the best know-how from our one-to-one coaching programmes and leadership development programmes we have designed a new programme called The redKite Experience that builds EQ, personal resilience and coaching capability.
If you have any questions about any of the topics we have covered, drop us a line customersupport@redkitepc.co.uk
For more information about our redKite Experience Programme, one-to-one coaching or our leadership development programmes click on the links below.