Agile and Emotional Intelligence

We heard the word ‘Emotional Intelligence’ a lot this recent year. It is also used in businesses now.

But how does it affect businesses?

What does it mean?

When it comes to the intelligence we always think of IQ- Intelligence Quotient. But now businesses are valuing emotional intelligence as it is a better indicator of a person's success in a career. We already know IQ is a score of a person’s reasoning ability derived from some set of tests. Whereas, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage, identify and use emotions positively. An emotionally intelligent person knows how to handle stress, communicate effectively, overcome challenges, defuse conflict and emphasize with others.

With changing times organizations are focusing more on being agile. But while doing so they are more concentrated on making their processes agile but neglect to make their employees agile. But smart organizations know to make both agile. Emotional Intelligence is an important aspect of developing an agile workforce. With EQ training organizations can train employees to be more resilient, keen listeners, lifelong learners, clear and good communicators, proactive and collaborative.

Why Emotional Intelligence is Important in Agile?

Agile heavily depends on teamwork and more honest, transparent communication both within and outside the team with stakeholders and clients. Hence leaders and employees need to have better control over their emotions to handle any situation and provide the agile required qualities. It is difficult for leaders with less EQ to control their own emotions which will affect their everyday work creating issues in their leadership.

EQ is a skill and it can be developed. Emotional intelligence can be practiced and set in the person with the help of training and in many agile organizations training to boost the EQ of employees are a regular part of the work system. Let’s see ways to boost Emotional Intelligence in agile organizations or any other organizations.

Avoid Conflicts

Conflicts will never bring any positive solution to the discussion. Be aware of your trigger points and try to avoid them this will help in avoiding conflict and can save lots of effort later to normalize that situation. In some cases you will observe others causing conflict even after you are avoiding it then it is wise to leave the location for some time or calm them.

Learn to Cope with Failure

Many times failures cause us to lose our confidence in ourselves. But instead of thinking that we are permanently deficient we can identify the reason for our failure and learn to overcome them and do better. This will give us an ability to digest failure and improve ourselves for further situations making us better EQ people.

Be Responsible for Your Actions

An honest attempt to make things right is more welcomed by people than avoiding responsibility for your actions. It also creates a good image of yours. If you have hurt anyone’s feelings apologize directly without ignoring what you did. Before taking any action put yourself in other's shoes and see how it will affect them. Always examine your actions before taking them and be sure what you are doing is needed or not.

Manage Emotional Health

Good emotional health brings good spirit to our work and daily life boosting our confidence and energy to be active. When genuine interest is shown in others and pays attention to their words, actions, and responses you will observe a boost in your social life. Be alert to your emotional health and try to maintain it.

“Self-care is how you take your power back.”- Lalah Delia

Be Aware of your Words as well as Body Language

We are not aware of words and our expressions and how they impact others. Even not aware of what our body language is telling us. Impactful positive body language can be learned, ask any trusted team member to provide you immediate feedback after any event. This will help you soften your delivery and be aware of what your body language indicates to others.

Pre-Framing and Reviewing

To obtain exciting and meaningful learning pre-framing and reviewing are commonly used teaching techniques. In pre-framing teams discuss what needs to be done before starting the work. Doing so while working brain is already engaged. This method helps in understanding the difficulties that can be faced and hence gives chance to brainstorm solutions.

After completion of the product, reviewing is done by the team with a twist of explaining two things they learned about users. This helps in closing the gap between the user and the team.

Provide Meaningful and Worthwhile Feedback

Avoid giving false compliments and also be clear with your feedback. Hollow statements generally backfire and are never appreciated. Always try to add a description to comments at the end for adding value. This creates a better understanding of your comment and expectations creating a meaningful connection between the team and you.

These tips will help your team with success and help you have fun exploring your emotional intelligence.

About Advance Agility

We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. We provide various SAFe certification courses along with DevOps, Scrum, Agile Coaching and more trainings. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.