The Customer Focus Series

EI—It’s (very) Good For…Pretty Much Everything

I’m no psychologist, so I won’t try to be. However, every business leader must (must!) work to understand and grow in their emotional intelligence. 

You have emotions, and that’s good. You just need to know a little bit about how they often respond to customers (and employees and kids). Something triggers them, and now, suddenly, you feel irritated or annoyed and suddenly defensive. 

As a business owner, you should learn and share emotional intelligence (EI) tools with your team. 

Talk about how customer-related situations should be handled with EI so that the number of problems is reduced and the effect of these problems on your team is minimal.

I’ve learned from Daniel Goleman and others that the components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills.

For example, self-awareness asks, “Am I acting defensive? Am I able to control my emotions? Are my emotions rising here?” 

Another example: cultivating empathy helps you understand the customer’s feelings and situation. Empathy says, “That’s my job. I’m motivated to give them 100% customer satisfaction and get better and better at sorting out the details of how to provide that.”

Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and self-regulation put you in the driver’s seat. 

I hope you’ll gain some EI skills and lead your people toward EI. The person with the most understanding control over their emotions wins, and you’ll end up walking out on top of the game. Emotional Intelligence. See you next week. Build muscle.