CEO MONTHLY / JANUARY 2025 22 Harnessing Emotional Intelligence to Lead through Change By Kate Davis Executive Coach, National Coach of the Year Founder, Meraki People The ability to navigate change whilst maintaining team cohesion and performance has never been more critical as a leadership competency. As an executive coach working with leaders from scale-up to FTSE100 companies, I’ve seen that those who successfully guide their organisations through transformation share one fundamental characteristic: highly developed emotional intelligence (EI). The conversation around emotional intelligence in leadership is evolving. While understanding and managing one’s own emotions and those of others remains crucial, we’re witnessing the emergence of a more nuanced dimension: relational intelligence (RI). This capability extends beyond traditional EI to encompass how we create, nurture and leverage relationships to drive positive change. The EI-RI Connection Emotional intelligence provides the foundation for effective leadership, enabling us to recognise and respond to the emotional undercurrents that inevitably accompany change. Relational intelligence takes this a step further, focusing on how we build and maintain the relationships that form the backbone of successful change initiatives. Consider a leader reconsidering their hybrid work policy. With emotional intelligence, they might recognise and validate their team’s anxieties about returning to the office, demonstrating empathy and helping manage individual concerns. That’s valuable, but it focuses on emotions and reactions. Relational intelligence takes this further. A relationally intelligent leader would map out how hybrid working affects different relationship dynamics, how it might strain mentoring relationships, impact crossteam collaboration or affect informal knowledge sharing. They’d then proactively design new connection points, perhaps creating “collaboration days” when key relationship groups are in the office together, or establishing virtual mentoring structures. They’re not just managing emotions about change they’re constructing new relationship patterns to make the change successful. The Five Pillars of Change Leadership Through my work with organisations navigating significant change, I’ve identified five key areas where the intersection of emotional and relational intelligence proves particularly powerful: 1. Self-Awareness in Context Rather than simply understanding your own emotions, leaders need to comprehend how their behaviour and emotional states impact their relationships with different stakeholders. This awareness helps create authentic connections that sustain momentum during challenging transitions. 2. Emotional Conduction Management Leaders must recognise their role as emotional conductors. As the DNA of any CEO can be seen like a fingerprint on the company they lead, their emotional state ripples through the organisation, affecting relationships at every level. Managing this contagion effect becomes crucial during periods of change when anxiety and uncertainty can quickly spread. 3. Psychological Safety Successful change requires intentionally designing and nurturing relationships that can withstand pressure. This involves creating trust whilst maintaining clear boundaries and expectation, a delicate balance that requires both EI and RI. 4. Network Intelligence Understanding and leveraging the informal networks within organisations becomes critical during change. Leaders with high relational intelligence can map these connections and use them to build coalition support for new initiatives. 5. Adaptive Communication The ability to adjust communication styles and messages based on both emotional and relational contexts ensures that change initiatives resonate across different stakeholder groups. Practical Application To develop these capabilities, leaders should focus on four key practices: Know Yourself to Lead Yourself Understanding your own ‘core’ is fundamental to effective leadership through change. This involves deep self-reflection on your communication style, natural tendencies and how others perceive you. Leaders must recognise their default reactions to stress and change, their communication preferences and their impact on others. This self-awareness forms the foundation for authentic leadership and enables better relationship building. By understanding our own drivers and communication style, we can better recognise and adapt to others’ needs during change. For instance, some leaders naturally communicate in direct, resultsfocused ways while others prefer a more collaborative, consensus-building approach. Recognising these patterns helps leaders flex their style to connect with different team members effectively. Others Awareness Building on self-awareness, leaders must develop a keen understanding of different communication styles and personal drivers within their teams. This ‘others awareness’ enables leaders to tailor their change messaging and approach to resonate with various audiences. When people feel understood and heard they’re more likely to engage with and support change initiatives. Communication and Trust Focusing on communication styles, cultural and behavioural differences will give you an unparalleled insight into who your employees are, how they react to change, what their drivers are and how to work with them, not pull in opposition. Truly open communication, and a culture where employees feel seen and heard begets psychological safety, which allows for change to be accepted and integrated ‘BAU’ far quicker, and with less resentment.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTY1MjM3