Emotional Intelligence & Leadership: The Key to Managing Generational Differences

Episode 83: Emotional Intelligence & Leadership: The Key to Managing Generational Differences

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Executive Leadership Coach & Corporate Relationship Consultant - shares with you...

• how enhancing your Emotional Quotient (EQ) can significantly reduce workplace tension and improve team dynamics, making you a more effective leader and communicator. (Essential Strategies for Emotional Intelligence)
• practical tips for understanding and managing diverse generational perspectives in the workplace, fostering collaboration and mentorship that leverage each generation's unique strengths. (Navigating Generational Differences)
• innovative methods to boost your self-awareness and relationship management skills, encouraging leaders to adapt their styles to meet the diverse needs of their team members for maximum productivity. (Actionable Leadership Development Techniques)

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Transcript

Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the Holly Hibbard Show.
It has been a minute.
Maybe not for you, but for me, it has been.
Because in the last couple weeks, my family took a vacation to Disney World and then we all got sick.
So I am just finally on the outskirts of about two weeks of a cold and my whole family has been through it.
So pardon me in advance if during this episode, you might notice my voice is a little bit off still.
It's because of the cold.
But other than that, we've been doing well.
We're back in cold weather Michigan, which is totally fine.
And, yes, we are still in the middle of moving to our new home.
That's a process that's gonna be going on for a little while yet.
And so for those of you that tune in on YouTube, hello and thank you, by the way.
My YouTube video portion of the podcast will be back in the upcoming weeks once we have relocated.
But in the meantime, thank you so much for bearing with me and being patient.
Now listen, if you have been paying attention to the last couple episodes of this show, there was an episode that just went bananas by comparison with my other episodes when it comes to leadership and mindset and growth and that is my most recent episode on generational differences in the workforce.
How we can start to notice the expectations and the unique characteristics that baby boomers, millennials, Gen X and Gen Z all bring to the table and, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly that come with it.
So today, I wanted to expound on that in this episode because something I feel very strongly about is that emotional intelligence and leadership are the keys to managing generational differences.
When I think about my show, when I think about my platform on social media, when it comes to leadership, I have not only been so focused on relationship building and the power of relationship building within a corporate or organizational environment and how that impacts retention, recruitment, and, yes, profits and the bottom line.
But my extra put a star on this and circle it 10 times stance is that emotional intelligence is something that gets looked over far too often.
And I would even go so far as to say that great leaders probably, for the most part, have some component or many components of emotional intelligence down pat and that's why they're great leaders and they move up in the ranks or they are content with their role or they're great with teams or organization or collecting data and info.
There's just something that they have excelled at in the realm of emotional intelligence that makes them phenomenal as a leader.
But where I think a number of you might be struggling or challenged is, let's say, you know, you've got those skills, but how do you impart those emotional intelligent skills to the people that you are leading, to the people that you are managing?
And in this episode, specifically how do we teach those skills to the generational differences the way that I described them in the previous episode, because if everyone is bringing different levels of emotional intelligence, that be knowing what it is, knowing what it isn't, the willingness to tackle and want to improve upon those skills, every generation sees them a little bit differently.
So if you as a leader, an owner, a manager, an entrepreneur, a head of your household even, if you have the emotional intelligence even just, like, one zero one, the basics, and you want to impart that on the people that you are leading, managing, being a role model to, this episode is for you.
Because emotional intelligence, your EQ, your emotional quotient, is your secret weapon for managing a multi generational workforce.
So without it, if you choose not to listen to this episode, without that emotional intelligence, tensions in the workplace are going to rise, communication suffers, and a team is going to underperform because tension doesn't support anyone and poor communication, we know, is more harmful than it is helpful, in your organization as well.
So if you've ever felt like leading different generations in the workplace can feel like herding cats, you're probably right.
So emotional intelligence is the key to reducing this workplace tension because it gives everyone a common understanding, a common language, let's say.
There is a certain set of terms.
There is a certain level of agreement and expectation that everyone in your team, in your organization, in your business, you can refer back to consistently as a baseline to say, okay.
This is how we support one another.
This is how we communicate.
This is how we manage stress.
This is how we problem solve, and emotional intelligence is the crux of all of that.
So if you wanna reduce workplace tension, having this common language amongst you and all of the people that you manage, that you lead, that you are your colleagues is super, super important.
So what is emotional intelligence?
Let's go through that one on one.
What are the basics, and why does your emotional intelligence matter in the first place?
Well, you've probably heard of IQ, your intelligence quotient.
Right?
Someone having a high IQ is deemed smart or very smart or even at a genius level.
Well, EQ is your emotional quotient and that is the measure of a person's emotional intelligence.
So it's not that we're necessarily quantifying and putting a number on emotions, but EQ, a person's emotional quotient, just means how adept are they at these four pillars of emotional intelligence.
So here are the four sectors of a person's emotional intelligence and yours included.
First is your level of self awareness.
Self awareness is your ability to notice on a surface level what you are thinking, the choices that you make.
It's your ability to have a moment in your life where before you take an action and react, you actually are more likely to respond, because self awareness is you're noticing a thought pattern or you're noticing you want to react and you can catch it and make a conscious choice and really an honest recognition of how is it you are showing up in that moment in time.
So that's number one.
Your emotional intelligence is how self aware are you.
And when you're looking at the people that you manage, if you've ever had a thought of, man, they just do that on autopilot.
They don't even know what they're doing.
They just they're not paying attention rather to what they're doing.
Or you notice that someone has a certain quirk or a certain mannerism in how they speak or in how they present themselves, and you think to yourself, I wonder if they even know that they do that.
I wonder if they even are aware that that rubs people the wrong way.
That's an example of emotional of in in emotional intelligence of self awareness, and those could be indications that this person you're thinking of in the moment isn't quite there yet in terms of self awareness.
The number two pillar of emotional intelligence is self regulation.
So self regulation simply is the way that you handle your emotions.
Do you, first of all, notice emotions when you have them, particularly the negative ones.
Right?
I think most people are able easily to notice when they're experiencing joy, when they're feeling at peace, when they're feeling content.
But emotional regulation or self regulation is your ability to take these unpleasant emotions like feeling burnout or nervous, anxious, panicky, angry, frustrated, taking those emotions that don't feel good in the body.
And when we say self regulation, it means how able are you to bring them to neutral.
I'm not saying that if you're having an anxiety attack that self regulation means that you have to take it from anxiety all the way down to absolute joy and bliss.
That's that's a stretch.
But if you're experiencing a panic attack, like an eight out of ten, ten out of 10 being the worst, do you at least have the self regulation ability?
Do you have the tools?
Have you learned the skills that you can at least get that anxiety from an eight down to a five?
Neutral.
So that you can get closer and closer toward a one or a zero on the scale in time.
So that's self regulation and there's a lot of folks in the workplace that don't have the ability to regulate their emotions the same way that they do in their personal life.
And there are people who are in their personal life who are a mess with their emotions.
But for whatever reason, when they come into the workplace, they are able to regulate their emotions.
So we don't want to assume that just because someone can regulate themselves in the workplace that they are the same at home and vice versa.
Everyone and every situation is totally different, but if you're looking for emotional intelligence amongst the people that you work alongside or the people you lead or manage, consider for yourself on the surface, what is your perception of how well they handle, unpleasant emotions?
Are they able to work through the stress, work through the panic on their own, or do they use unhealthy ways of coping?
Things that may be a detriment not only to their mental health, but also a detriment to the project, the company's bottom line, etcetera.
The third pillar of emotional intelligence that you wanna be paying attention to is social awareness.
Now I mentioned that one pillar of emotional intelligence is a person's self awareness, but do the do they do you as a leader have the ability to be socially aware as well?
Are you awake and noticing?
And I say awake, not like woke.
Okay.
I'm not saying it that way.
But I'm saying are you are you willing to keep your eyes open to the world around you and be curious about the people you are working with, working for, and staying curious about what are their wants, their needs, their desires, why do they operate the way that they do, how can you be an asset to that?
How can you learn from them?
How can you mentor them?
How can they mentor you?
Social awareness is your willingness to say, you know what?
I wanna learn about the people around me, good, bad, and ugly, and I want to be an asset to the world, my job, the corporation, the project, my life, etcetera.
So some folks, if they're not socially aware, at first it might seem like they're very isolated And for some people, yeah, they're incredibly introverted and recharge in solitude, but also they might just be very shy as well.
But they can be very shy and still be very socially aware of what people's needs are around them.
And then you might have folks who are boisterous, outgoing, gregarious, and you might think, wow, they are such a people person.
And you may automatically think that they are socially aware and that is not the case at all.
They might be outgoing on the outside, but they might not have a single moment in their day where amidst all of that shaking hands and greeting people, they might not have a single moment where they consider what other people need and want around them.
There's a level of being, I'll call it self absorbed, not because they mean to be, but because they're just so caught up in their own thing.
Okay?
So social awareness is not just based on how well they get along with people.
It's really based on do they take an interest in the people around them and wanting to develop that relationship in a way that is beneficial to the organization, the project themselves, etcetera.
And the the fourth pillar of emotional intelligence that you wanna look out for is relationship management.
So this is your ability to, yeah, manage a relationship.
Can you learn how another person ticks in your business, in the project, in because it's important to recognize that you are not the same as anybody else and no everyone is not like you.
And when we make those assumptions that people are going to do things the way that we do them just because it's well or good or better or whatever, then we're already failing at relationship management.
So relationship management is having that, going back to self awareness, having the awareness that you are uniquely yourself, having the social awareness that not everyone is like you and that's actually a good thing, and then relationship management really comes down to knowing how best to communicate with others in a way that they get it, in a way that they understand it because we're all different.
We all speak different.
We all listen differently.
We all prioritize differently.
We all organize differently.
And relationship management is not just dictating to somebody how something needs to be done, but also working alongside them to discover where they can thrive in that role, that project, that moment, and seeing to it that we're capitalizing on their strengths and not just saying we'll do this because I said so.
So emotional intelligence, frankly, when it comes to leadership, your EQ, your emotional quotient is, to me, more important than your IQ because there are so many people on the planet, especially entrepreneurs and business owners.
How many times have you heard the story of people who were not great in school, who went to college or didn't finish college, people who dropped out of high school, who are very, very, very successful, like the anomalies of success on the planet.
So maybe the IQ didn't match this the what the school itself wanted to see or what the traditional classroom setting wanted them to put out there.
But the emotional quotient, their ability to know to be self aware, their ability to regulate their emotions and fail fast and fail forward, to get up and keep going again, their social awareness, paying attention to the market.
What do people need?
What do people want?
What are people buying?
What are they rejecting?
Okay?
And their ability to manage relationships.
EQ makes for more success than IQ alone.
And listen, I like IQ.
I'm not I'm not against being intelligent and being a lifelong learner.
I love that.
But EQ is something that is so powerful and does not need does not require you to be the most book smart person on the planet.
So the difference between emotionally intelligent people, and people who are in other types of leadership is if you don't bring emotional intelligence to the table, you end up with what's called a rigid leadership.
Emotional intelligence allows for you to bring people to your leadership, to allow the different personalities of people in your organization, in your business to flavor the kind of leadership that you're going to put out there.
If we ignore self awareness, self regulation, social awareness, relationship management, if we ignore those things, then we have cookie cutter leadership.
We have rigid leadership that is not customized to the people that are working for us.
Because remember, I'm sharing with you today that emotional intelligence and leadership are the two key components to managing generational differences.
So if if you have that as an aim, if you wanna be able to manage generational differences in your organization, in your business, then it is critical that you have the ability to say, alright.
I wanna learn about the people that work with me or for me or both, and I don't I have a commitment to not be a rigid leader.
I wanna learn the people, and I wanna manage them based on, what they bring to the table.
So common leadership struggles, by the way, speaking of which, that come with these generational differences.
As I laid out in the previous episode, baby boomers or boomers, and Gen X, who are the older of the four generations I'm gonna talk about in a second, these two older generations, they may struggle with adapting to flexible work styles.
They're they might be very accustomed to staying in an office place and have ideas, for example, that you must be in an office to be the most productive, or they might like there to be not only some structure, but a lot of structure.
Because odds are that since they've been in the workforce, they have likely only had a certain structure that they have had to abide to through rigid leadership.
And so when they get all this flexibility, they might not be as interested in those flexible work styles because it it's different.
It feels foreign to them.
And some people might say, well, it's different, therefore, it's ineffective and it's bad.
And that's that's closed mindedness, and that's something that someone can be self aware about and say, okay.
I'm noticing I'm a little bit judgy about that.
But we also can say, okay.
There are gifts to that flexibility.
And some boomers and some Gen Xer, they might want some details on what's in it for them by going with this flexibility.
Now millennials and Gen z, the two younger generations that I'm highlighting of the four, they might struggle with, you probably can guess it, the traditional feedback structures because, they, you know, I think if we think back to, like, ninety day reviews, quarterly reviews.
Right?
And that's something that's been a part of corporate America for eons at this point, centuries.
And what happens is millennials and Gen z, they might be more because it's an instant instant gratification generation.
These are people who have DMs and born with an iPad or a phone in their hand.
Like, this is they want that immediate feedback, not just immediate gratification, but they wanna know sooner rather than later, not ninety days from now, but now what's working and what's not.
And so they want their feedback structures to be, you know, very fluid, not rigid.
And so these are just two examples that can that be some generational differences, that you as a leader or as a manager, as a business owner, you might notice.
Now when where workplace misunderstandings come from in the first place is, as I've said before and I said in the other episode, is expectations.
So Boomers and Gen X who've been in the workforce simply longer, simply because they've been on the planet longer, they have expectations that their workforce is supposed to look this way and reviews are supposed to look this way and the office component is supposed to be this much and they're supposed to communicate x number of times a day in a certain fashion, and others are expected to do the same for them in return.
There's expectations, and the expectations are unspoken.
People hold on to them.
They're they're silent.
And then we have lots of folks who have these silent expectations that are not met, and now you have a bunch of people who are stressed out, mad, frustrated.
Okay?
Another place where these miss the misunderstanding come from in the workplace with the generations is the communication styles.
And And I I'll I won't go too much into the communication styles part of this because I did a lot of that in my previous episode about the generational differences.
I think it was episode 82.
But I want you to know that, communication styles from how much they email, pick up a phone, text, how many letters, how many characters I typed in that email or in that text, all of that is different generation to generation as well as how we use technology.
Different generations and different personality types want more technology or less of it.
Some find it very personal.
Some find it very impersonal.
And so those are all different struggles that come up with these generational differences.
So you wanna know what people like and gravitate toward, but then also do they have a commitment to honing their emotional intelligence skills so that they can be less judgy about the surface stuff, like how much we're texting, and really get to the heart of how we can work on a project together and say and say, okay.
They are not like me and that's totally okay and let's find common ground.
So, so how can you as a leader use your EQ, your emotional intelligence, to unite your team?
So if you are a person that you feel, you know, amongst you, your colleagues, the people that you're managing or leading, you might think, okay, Holly, I have a lot of these skills already.
How do I impart this on my team?
First thing you can do is truly practice active listening with the people that you are managing or leading and honestly, active listening can only happen if you are asking them questions, if you are truly getting to know them, if you are discovering for yourself through asking them questions in a casual way, like, what level of self awareness do they have?
What are their abilities to self regulate like or not like?
Do what is their social awareness level?
How do they manage those relationships?
So really giving them an opportunity to have those conversations with you.
And by participating in active listening, you're going to learn not only how each individual prefers to communicate, for example, but you're also going to start to see patterns amongst the generations of people as well.
So as I highlighted in another episode, I am on the cusp of a millennial and a Gen X.
If you look at certain, certain, like, years where they lay out what it is, my birth year has been defined both as the oldest millennial and also as the youngest Gen X.
So I'm right on the border, so I actually have traits of both, and you'll probably find that as well with people who are in their mid forties, for example, where I am at this current time as I'm recording this.
And so it's important to consider just really commit yourself to active listening, and you'll learn a lot by keeping your mouth shut and asking them open ended questions.
Other otherwise known as questions where but they can't answer in a yes or a no or one word.
Right?
Really get to know them.
Another way that you can use emotional intelligence to unite your team is remember that, you can adapt your leadership style so that it accommodates different employees.
I'm not saying you have to adapt the way you do things.
You don't have to adapt the structure.
Right?
Your company, your organization, your team can still have the same structure, but you can adapt the way that you present certain things.
You can adapt how you are encouraging a person that you are leading.
How are you encouraging them to prioritize something, to organize something?
How are you helping them to notice what they bring to the table or what their strength is in that moment?
But you've got to know your people really well, before you can adapt your leadership.
That's part of your relationship management as a leader in this role.
And then also some other practical examples of emotional intelligence and EQ based leadership in action.
Honestly, I think that listening is such a huge component and really recognizing that the people who are working with you and for you are not only employees.
They are people.
They have families.
They have friends.
They have stressors.
And there are so many things that we as people can connect with, other than the weather, how the sports game was this weekend, asking about, you know, just their kids or just their dating life or whatever.
I think that there's so many ways to connect people.
One of my favorite ways to do this is, there's I just call them question cards because there's so many variations of this.
But there's question cards for leaders.
There's question cards for, happy hour.
There's question hours for question cards for coworkers, and it just gives everybody an opportunity to share something that seems just out of the norm.
Right?
So even just to have a moment and ask people, what was the last book that you read?
Or what was the last movie you saw?
Or what is your my most favorite question I ask because every time I do a workshop, I ask everyone to go around the table and and quickly introduce themselves and to share a pet peeve that they have.
Because no one's sharing a pet peeve that's really awful and people really connect over that.
It's not related to work, but it's also not related to something that might they might feel is unprofessional or too private.
So if you don't feel that you're a a good asker of questions or you're not skilled at that yet, that's okay.
But that is a way a very practical, simple way that you can get to know your people.
And, you know, honestly, that would be one of those subjects too that I would just put it into an AI.
I just put it into chat GPT and say, I'm leading a team of x number of people.
I want to get to know them in a fun way.
Give me a list of 10 questions that I could ask at the start of a meeting that everybody could share an answer to in under ten seconds.
That would be fun but professional and unrelated to work.
And then see what it comes up with for you.
Plug that prompt in and see what kinds of things they suggest you ask about or talk about.
Alright?
So here are your final action steps.
As a leader, as somebody who is guiding others in the workplace and you want to manage these generational differences, first and foremost, find ways to improve your own emotional intelligence as a leader.
Think about those four pillars I mentioned before.
Consider, if you had to choose just one to improve upon, do you wanna focus on your level of self awareness?
Do you wanna focus on your emotional regulation, your self regulation?
Do you want to grow in how socially aware you are?
Do you wanna focus on how to manage those relationships?
Just focus on one.
Okay?
And become committed to it.
Google it.
Look up different ideas of how you can become you'd be improved in one of those areas and start there.
The number one mindset shift that you need to adopt if you want to lead across all generations is remembering that they are not like you.
You are not like them, and that that is a great asset.
They are not like you, you are not like them, and that is a great asset.
And now it's up to you as a leader to be on the treasure hunt to find out what everyone is exceptional at and play to that strength.
And as you play to that strength and you listen and you have active listening and you discover what they deem to be their weak spot or the spot that they need to improve upon, then you can start pouring into them to fix that, fix that, or improve upon that as well.
But you've got to recognize first and foremost that just because they might be a lot like you, it doesn't mean that they see the world like you, that they're like you, that they're going to do it like you, or like somebody else on the team that you think that these two people are so similar in how they do that.
Making that assumption is a huge expectation and we fall for it so easily.
So just remember that mindset shift.
They are not like you.
You are not like them.
And that is an asset to your organization, your leadership, your team, and the generational differences because they can mentor each other.
They can learn from one another, and it's a gift.
It's a gift that you give them in leadership because then they can take it to their outside world too, outside of work, and apply it there as well.
So here's my challenge to all of you, your little homework assignment for my listeners here.
Try one emotional intelligence strategy this week and look at the results.
Observe the results.
I'm not saying you need to go change the world, right?
What I'm saying is choose one of those four pillars I said before: self awareness, self regulation, social awareness, or relationship management.
Do a little bit of internet search on what is one way I can improve my fill in the blank, like what is one way I can improve my social awareness as a leader of my business and learn one new skill.
If you didn't already hear it in this episode, go search for one and try it for a week.
And then put a reminder in your calendar a week from now to just sit and reflect.
You don't even have to write about it, talk about it, anything.
But consider, did that one change make a difference?
Good or bad or no.
And what do you wanna do now?
Do you wanna try it for another week?
Do you wanna learn a different skill?
Do you think there's something that could be more effective?
And that's how we wanna take this on.
We wanna keep aiming for the next level, and it's okay if we don't get it the first time every time.
That's all I have for you today.
So until next time, thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.