How to grow as a leader by developing emotional intelligence

Think of a leader you admire at work. They collaborate well with others, and everyone at the company jumps at the chance to join their team. You might wonder: How can I emulate their approach? What technical skills do I need to develop?

The answer may surprise you – one of the traits that distinguish exceptional leaders is their emotional intelligence (EI). A leader's emotional self-awareness is a key indicator of team climate: 92% of leaders strong in this key EI skill build high energy, high performance teams, while 78% of leaders weak in it produce a team with a negative climate (source). Despite the image of the hyper-rational engineer, we're still human. Our emotions are critical - and often hidden or dismissed in high-tech environments.

Learning to appropriately acknowledge and tap into our emotions in the workplace can be a great asset toward developing ourselves and our teams. In this #TechLeaderChat, we’ll talk about:

• How to build your own emotional intelligence, whether you’re just starting or you're looking to deepen your skills in this area
• How to assess key skills within the EI umbrella in yourself and others, and put them into action with intentionality
• How to create more trusted 1:1 relationships as well as a more cohesive and productive team
• How emotional skills create a path to grow your impact organization-wide, beyond your team, and be the type of leader that others aspire to become - even where you don't have direct authority
• How to coach others on your team to develop their own EI, and ensure the entire team supports each other, even though people may be at different stages of their own journeys
• How to manage the weight of holding others’s emotions, as it’s an essential component of emotionally aware leadership

About the speaker
With a career in the technology industry that spans nearly two decades, Jason Wodicka has successfully taken on several different roles. They've worked as a teacher, test engineer, development engineer, and staff software engineer for Amazon, Microsoft, University of Washington, and Karat. They are a global speaker on the topics of opening doors into the tech industry, building diverse communities, and positive tech leadership.