by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors
October 13, 2025
What to do when you’ve already made your first steps to strengthening your leadership skills by stepping back and realizing that you want to develop your emotional intelligence skills.
Dear Fairygodmentor,
I want to strengthen my leadership skills by developing emotional intelligence. What steps can I take to get there?– Leading with Heart
Dear Leading with Heart,
My dear, you’ve already made your first steps to strengthening your leadership skills by stepping back and realizing that you want to develop your emotional intelligence skills.
What is emotional intelligence? Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. They defined emotional intelligence (EI) as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” Having high emotional intelligence is linked to better decision-making, improved communication, stronger business relationships, and effective leadership.
American Psychologist Daniel Goleman developed a four-part model for emotional intelligence. Each aspect can give you insights that can translate into skills to help you listen more effectively and then respond in a way that can enhance your own life and be of value to those you’re trying to lead.
Self-Awareness
Each day we bring our emotional carry-on to work, and more and more emotional clothes get stuffed into our carry-on throughout the day at work until it explodes! Understanding your emotions and how they affect others is called self-awareness. If you know how to tap into your emotions well enough to understand how they impact you and other folks, it’s like having a really cool superpower.
Self-Management
Self-management is knowing what to do with your emotions before taking action. I like to call self-management the “Check yourself before you wreck yourself” EI skill. This skill also helps us understand how and why we get triggered. Knowing how to navigate through certain situations is also key to understanding the behavior of others and knowing how to deal with that.
Social Awareness (Empathy)
Having strong social awareness and empathy will help you so much with problem-solving. I like to call this the “Read the room” EI skill. As a leader, you’re interacting with your team on a daily basis.
As you lead, it’s important to communicate by telling, but it’s also stepping back and listening with empathy. The key is to seek to understand. Active listening plays a huge part in social awareness. Once you’ve heard them and really understand what they’re sharing with you, this is where you leverage the problem-solving part of what you do. Active listening leads you to be able to better understand your team and also de-escalate situations when tempers are running high. Empathy also builds trust. Trust is the foundation of any relationship, especially when leading teams.
Relationship Management
This last EI skill is all about using your awareness of your emotions and that of others to develop solid relationships, manage conflict, and communicate effectively. Sometimes we get so lost in the sauce of the management part of our role that we may lose sight of the relationship part. Relationship management is the leadership piece.
Be intentional in developing solid relationships with your team. Get to know them. Understand how they like to be coached. How do they like to communicate? Set up one-on-one meetings to level-set on the business end, learn more about their career aspirations, and hold space for them. Holding space will help them feel like their opinions and voicing their needs are welcome. One way I liked to strengthen my relationship with team members was to also ask for feedback. Yes, it may be scary to Show Your Ask in that way, but how will you know how to better support your team if you don’t ask?
Like with any skills, you need to practice using them. In time, you will strengthen your EI muscles and become the leader you aspire to be.
You got this!
Yours truly,
Your Fairygodmentor®
About Joyel Crawford:
Joyel Crawford is an award-winning career and leadership development professional and founder of Crawford Leadership Strategies, a consultancy that empowers results-driven leaders through coaching, training, and facilitation. She’s the best-selling author of Show Your Ask: Using Your Voice to Advocate for Yourself and Your Career.
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