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Story by Joel Pérez

Self-awareness is often referred to as the foundation of emotional intelligence, and it’s a requirement for exceptional leadership. When leaders understand their emotions, recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and hone their decision-making and communication skills, they build trust and foster better collaboration within their teams.

This leads to better performance all around. But here’s the catch: Developing self-awareness isn’t a onetime achievement. It’s a continuous, evolving process that requires intention and reflection.

Leaders who actively cultivate this skill don’t just improve their own effectiveness, they also create a healthier, more productive organizational culture. In fact, research from the Corporate Executive Board (now part of Gartner), reveals that leaders with high self-awareness are 10% more effective in their roles than those who rank lower. It’s a simple truth: Self-awareness isn’t just a personal asset—it’s essential for any leader looking to drive success.

Defining Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors—and to see how they influence your decisions, relationships, and leadership style. It involves identifying what drives you, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and being honest with yourself about areas for improvement.

Self-aware leaders do more than just understand themselves. They also recognize how their actions are perceived by others, which is essential for cultivating trust within a team. It’s a skill that evolves over time, meaning leaders must regularly pause and reflect on their actions and their impact. Continue reading →

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by Harvey Deutschendorf

In our fast, interconnected world, the success of organizations depends not only on sound strategy and technical ability, but on the strength of the human dynamics behind everything. Humans need emotional intelligence to work together successfully. It’s the social lubricant that helps individuals operate more effectively in adverse situations and also helps members of teams understand each other better and work more cohesively as a unit.

The key components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. These all factor into helping individuals overcome and navigate social complexities and build strong relationships with diverse groups of people, which facilitates stronger collaboration in the workplace.

Emotional intelligence complements and supports cognitive intelligence, enabling team members to work together more smoothly and cooperatively. It’s what allows team members to build trust and cohesion, without which even the smartest, most skilled teams will struggle to be effective. I delve into this in Emotional Intelligence Game Changers: 101 Simple Ways to Win at Work + Life.

Here are five emotional intelligence game changers that influence a team’s performance.

Enhanced communication

Without effective communication, all teams will struggle to build and maintain momentum. Emotional intelligence helps teams build clarity, openness, and the ability to work with varying ideas from individual team members without divisiveness and conflict.

By building two-way open communication, team members can focus on their tasks without getting bogged down in misunderstandings and one-upmanship. Team members can freely share their ideas without fear of being judged or misunderstood. “Emotional intelligence is the catalyst for psychological safety in teams,” according to Debbie Muno, who is the managing director of Genos North America.

Building trust and camaraderie

Teams work best when members feel a sense of deep connection with each other. It makes them identify and feel pride for being part of the group. Instead of competing with one another, members support and help strengthen each other’s skills and abilities.

This leads to mutual respect and feelings. Emotional intelligence breaks down barriers and supports team members in reaching a place where they feel this way. “Expressing feelings in the right place and time and encouraging others to express themselves leads to authentic, trusted communications and team cohesion,” Muno says.

Increased engagement and motivation

Emotional intelligence is crucial in helping team members build enthusiasm and interdependence with each other. When team members feel a sense of pride for what they achieve, they have the drive to achieve beyond their present level, building increasing momentum. This builds a strong understanding of and belief in the ability of the team to rise above and overcome challenges.

Preventing and resolving conflict

Differences and conflict are inevitable in any group setting where there are diverse viewpoints and personalities. But if members of the team possess a high level of emotional intelligence, they’re better equipped to navigate past all the ego-driven issues and look for solutions.

This requires transparency, open dialogue, and a focus on solutions instead of getting hung up on personal power struggles. If everyone on the team knows how to actively listen, they’re more likely to have empathy and respect for viewpoints that differ from their own. They also know how to make other team members feel heard and respected, even if they don’t end up implementing their ideas. Emotionally intelligent teams are also more likely to move past issues at hand; as they do so, their respect for each other increases, solidifying the belief that they can resolve disagreements positively.

Improved resilience and adaptability

In a rapidly changing workplace environment, being adaptable and flexible is crucial for success. “Responding effectively in stressful situations enables team members to engage and communicate with each other productively,” Muno says.

Teams that are highly emotionally intelligent are confident in their ability to adapt and change rapidly to new situations and environments that arise. They’ve proven their ability to overcome personality issues and bruised egos that are damaging to a team’s effectiveness, so they can focus their attention and energy on the task at hand. And rather than engaging in one-upmanship that occurs in a dysfunctional team, they know how to get the best out of one another to maximize support and collaboration.

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com

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Story by Judith Humphrey

The goal for any leader is to build strong and productive relationships with their team and other stakeholders. And the best way to do this is by inspiring their audience every time they speak. This means creating believers with every set of remarks, whether they’re having a brief hallway conversation or delivering a keynote speech.

1. ADOPT AN INSPIRATIONAL MINDSET

The starting point for becoming an inspiring leader is developing the right mindset—one that is focused not on informing but on inspiring. Information, even when it’s up-to-date and accurate, lacks the power to move others. Avoid content-rich presentations or conversations full of too many facts. Instead, always be in “inspire” mode.

Inspire mode keeps you away from delivering content-heavy slides or numbing statistics, and instead gets you to engage your audience with your belief or idea. Bring your listeners to the realm of possibilities.

2. LISTEN INTENTLY

To inspire others, you need to listen intently. Leaders who fail to listen will not understand their audience’s mindset and they won’t be able to focus their message so it has maximum impact.

There are three ways to listen. First, listen with your body. Face your audience and align your body with the person (or people) to whom you are speaking. Stand or sit up straight. Keep a receptive expression on your face and make strong eye contact. Keep your arms open. This body language will send a message that you care about your audience.

Second, listen with your mind. You need to listen for the points the other person is making, and you also need to show that you’ve heard what they’ve said. You might interject phrases like “Oh, that’s so true” or “Yes, that’s a good point” or “I agree” or “Tell me more about that.” Such responses show that your mind is engaged and responsive.

Third, listen with your heart. When you listen with your heart, you show that you are emotionally engaged. Heartfelt responses include being polite, being sensitive, and using expressions like “I share your feelings” and “That must have been difficult.” (For a full discussion of these three ways to listen, consult the chapter “Listen, Listen, Listen” in my book Speaking as a Leader.)

3. SPEAK WITH A MESSAGE

If you want to inspire, you need to speak with a message. Without a big, central idea, you can’t expect people to follow you.

Your message should be stated at the beginning of your remarks and elaborated on by everything else you say. So, after opening your conversation or speech with a bridge or a grabber, get to your point. If you’re giving formal remarks, you might say “My message to you is . . .” If it’s a less formal situation, you might say, “I believe that . . .” Own your message and present it clearly at the beginning.

4. USE STRONG WORDS

Inspiring leaders use compelling language. They know that every word testifies to their credibility.

A leader’s language is confident. They own what they are saying with expressions like “I believe,” “I see,” “I know,” and “I care.”

They avoid tentative language like “I’m not sure,” “I don’t know,” and “I can’t.” They also avoid filler expressions like “um” and “ah.”

5. END WITH ACTION

Whether you are giving a formal presentation or offering a comment at a meeting, be sure to end your remarks with a call to action.

After a job interview, you might say to the candidate, “This has been a great meeting. We’ll be in touch with you shortly.” You might conclude a more formal presentation with “If we take the steps I have outlined, we will be a much stronger company. I look forward to your support for these initiatives.”

By ending with a call to action, you’ll move your audience from the present to the future you envision. You’ll inspire your listeners by taking them from “what is” to “what can be.”

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com

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Story by Bruce Eckfeldt

A strategy that remains clear only to leadership is a strategy that will fail in execution, no matter how brilliant it might be on paper.

In my work with scaling companies across various industries, I’ve consistently found that the difference between organizations that execute effectively and those that struggle isn’t the sophistication of their strategy—it’s the clarity and simplicity with which that strategy is understood throughout the organization.

Having facilitated hundreds of strategic planning sessions, I’ve seen firsthand how executives often mistake complexity for depth, creating strategies that sound impressive in the boardroom but collapse in implementation. The most successful companies invest as much in strategic clarity as they do in strategic development.

Democratize your strategy

A strategy that only your leadership team understands isn’t enough. For a company to execute effectively, everyone—from middle managers to frontline employees—needs to clearly understand what the business is focused on, whom it’s serving, and how it wins. When your strategy is too complex or your positioning is unclear, people waste time, duplicate efforts, and make decisions that pull the business in the wrong direction.

A simple, well-defined strategy benefits more than just your internal teams. It helps suppliers, partners, and vendors understand how to support your goals. It gives customers clarity about what you offer and what you don’t. It makes referrals easier because your network knows exactly whom you serve. And inside your business, it streamlines decision-making, capability-building, and long-term planning. Simplicity isn’t just a communication tool—it’s a strategic advantage.

The simplicity stress test

Most leadership teams overestimate how well their strategy is understood throughout the organization. To assess real strategic clarity, I often conduct a simple exercise with clients: Ask people at different levels of the company to write down in one or two sentences what the company does, whom it serves, and how it differentiates. The inconsistency of responses is typically eye-opening.

This exercise reveals not just communication gaps but strategy gaps. When frontline employees can’t articulate your core positioning, it’s not simply a messaging problem—it reflects fundamental uncertainty about where the business is heading and why. This uncertainty manifests in misaligned priorities, decision paralysis, and wasted resources.

The most effective companies I’ve worked with can pass this clarity test at every level. Their strategies aren’t necessarily simple in development, but they’re simple in articulation—clear enough that anyone can understand and apply them to daily decision-making. Continue reading →

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Story by Voyo Popovic

It ensures you’re staying close to the vision, identifying areas for improvement, and driving faster, more informed decisions.

When I started Piece of Cake Moving in 2018, we had three employees. As the founder, I was involved in building every department. Although we’ve grown significantly since then, I still believe in being across every part of the company. As a founder, staying involved ensures you’re staying true to the vision. It also builds a deeper understanding of how every department operates, helps identify areas for improvement, and leads to faster, more informed decisions.

Balancing micromanaging and managing by absence

Managing by absence leaves tremendous room for error. This happens because you’re setting a general direction then allowing the team to follow their own course. Working closely with your team can help employees in the early stages of a new role or project succeed. It ensures that your team will understand what needs to be done and will be better equipped to achieve it.

At Piece of Cake, when there’s a new manager, they submit a report at the end of each day. The report details what they worked on, what they accomplished, and their feedback and ideas. The manager can use the report to share their ideas daily. This tool also empowers founders to see how a senior team member is spending their time and how they think.

As they grow into that role, I slowly step away. However, I still check in with direct reports once a week. I always leave time for them to bring up ideas. The more open communication there is, the more likely the team is to share feedback and their thoughts on ways to improve the business.

Course correct and make improvements faster

When you’re not across every department, it makes it difficult to fix issues and make improvements. If you stay close to the product, customer service, and sales team, especially early on, then there’s a tremendous opportunity to identify issues as they arise. You are also able to make the experience better constantly. If you’re so far removed, it takes a significant amount of time to learn about issues and what caused them. It also delays the process of coming up with a solution. Moreover, the solution might be wrong because you don’t have proper context with your team. It almost makes things worse than being involved from the beginning.

For example, during our early years, the company had an issue with the call abandonment rate, which was increasing by 10 percent, and the customer wait time, which was increasing by 125 percent. I hadn’t checked in with the customer service team leaders for months because I had fully delegated the work.

Once the issue arose, I realized I needed to work with the team much more closely to find a solution. I decided we needed to hire more people. However, if I had been more involved with the team, I would have known the core of the issue was that client calls were being transferred between departments, causing inefficiency and extending the get-to-solution time. My team implemented a solution. The lesson was you can let your team do what they do best, but still be involved and act as a resource to troubleshoot when needed.

Staying true to the company’s vision

The founder knows the company’s vision best. After you set the vision, there’s accountability in ensuring the business and teams continue to be aligned with that vision. If you’re not involved in every department, it is very difficult to communicate it. It is also easy for team leaders to unintentionally move away from it. The vision is key to how the team engages with customers. So it’s critical to make sure it’s clear across the company.

Piece of Cake’s vision is to excel at customer service, build future leaders, and care for our employees’ well-being. During periods of rapid growth, the team unintentionally moved away from two of these pillars to keep the pace. When that happened, I realized I was not involved enough with certain departments or that I was unintentionally managing by absence. It’s a great reminder to never be too hands off. Every opportunity is a reminder of not only your company goals for growth and revenue, but of its core vision and principles.

This post originally appeared at inc.com.