Developing emotional intelligence

Ever since Daniel Goleman framed the term ‘emotional intelligence’ most people realize that a high IQ alone is not enough to be successful. Research shows that leaders that have high empathy -one of the EQ skills- have a number of advantages. A Harvard Law School study for example, shows empathic leaders are better in building strong long-term relationships and rated higher on trust and desire to work together. This also makes them more agile, since connecting better with people makes them better at more dynamic decision-making. Other benefits of higher emotional sensitivity include being able to better handle complex situations, managing stress better and having a higher job performance. Plenty of reasons to further improve your empathy, but how? 

An interesting example is the Finnish parliament that uses an empathy toolkit Empatia Ele (Finnish for "empathy gesture") by empathy designer and artist Enni-Kukka Tuomala to address the empathy deficit in their government. Initiated in 2018 in close collaboration with Jani Toivola, member of the Finnish Parliament, and co-created with 6 other members of parliament from 5 different political parties, Empatia Ele is an ongoing live project. It started from the acknowledgement that politics has become polarised and devoid of empathy, yet collaboration is needed more than ever to solve progressively complex future challenges. By bringing empathy into the political arena through fun and play, Empatia Ele challenges the roles and the rules in parliament, introducing new rituals, perspectives and forms of communication resulting in more nuanced dialogue and more human interactions. Empatia Ele’s playful empathy tools are designed to awaken the human side of politics to revolutionize political culture through empathy. 

It’s too soon to know what the effects of this project will be, but the fact that the Finnish parliament is open to learn from experimenting with these playful tools shows that there’s a reason Finland is ranked as the 3rd most innovative country in the world in the Bloomberg Innovation Index 2019.

Do you actively work at improving your empathy? What kind of learning experiments do you organize for your team?