Blog

Although Valentine’s day has been and gone, that doesn’t mean that love, kindness and understanding should stop for the rest of the year. In fact, now that our team is more geographically disparate than ever before, we’ve found that focusing on emotional intelligence has become even more important.

Despite great uncertainty and the tough climate that many businesses have had to battle through, the Fivium team has undergone huge growth over the past 18 months, onboarding 18 new staff, all working remotely. This has presented new challenges for all of us and, given that remote working will likely remain in some capacity, the role of leadership in nurturing high-performance teams has become even more vital.

Replacing the qualities and benefits of face-to-face contact is nearly impossible. Our aim is to make the working environment as personal as possible, so we have placed greater emphasis on the values of leadership and, more importantly, the role of emotional intelligence to help us ensure we have high performing, motivated, and connected teams.

All of our leadership team have been given emotional intelligence training. We believe this helps them in inspiring others, maintaining personal integrity, improving communication skills, and building better relationships. The training programme includes quarterly coaching sessions, an EQI test, and action plans that can be shared with line managers to ensure there is support for them in achieving their objectives.

One of the most important pillars of emotional intelligence that allows our leaders to create more connected and motivated teams is empathy. Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s situation and understand what it is that drives them. With so many new team members and without true face-to-face contact, empathy becomes even harder to achieve, yet even more important. Part of the Emotional Intelligence training we give our team is in ‘perceptual positions’. This allows leaders to give constructive feedback, see all sides of the story, and make more informed decisions. Combined, it helps leaders to truly understand what drives an individual to succeed, and what support and nurture is needed for them to advance their careers with us.

Whilst understanding others is vital, understanding your own actions is also important. To be effective, leaders need to have a good understanding of how their own emotions and actions affect the people around them. Being self-aware means always knowing how you feel, and also having a good idea of your own strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to act with humility.

By having leaders trained in emotional intelligence, their actions and way of conducting themselves permeate throughout the business. We believe it is helping us maintain our team unity, even when we are geographically divided unite.

When a company undergoes great change and growth, it can be easy to get swept away in the commotion that greater success brings. We are ensuring that, throughout our growth and despite the additional challenges we all now face, we are keeping the people who make us who we are more connected, more motivated, and more emotionally intelligent.