Personal experience: how emotional intelligence helps to run business

In the business world, emotional intelligence is just as important as logical intelligence. At work, we all experience absolutely the same feelings as in everyday life - joy, jealousy, aggression, thirst for power, tenderness. We transfer the roles we play in a family or society to work life. The renowned emotional intelligence researcher Manfred Kets de Vries argues in Leadership Mysticism that the effectiveness of the leader increases significantly if a person not only understands what feelings he or other people feel, but also knows how to manage with your emotions.

I'll tell you what I understood about the importance of emotional intelligence in work entrepreneur.

Gender stereotypes are a brake on business

The paradox is that in Russia it is not customary to listen to emotions and express them openly. And the leader is generally perceived as a person who cannot have emotions. Business in Russian is work under the supervision of (director, founder, state), that is, rather, compulsion to work.

When I just started building my career, I, like many leaders, was ashamed of my excessive emotionality. And subconsciously, when hiring one of the first employees, I thought that working with men was safer. In fact, it is a popular belief that women in business are more emotional than men. This is evidenced by this study.Communication Stereotypes and Perceptions of Managers: if you put next to man and woman and ask them to say the same text, observers will perceive a woman as more emotional, and a man as more authoritative.

So, I deliberately hired a man over 55 years old who had a lot of work experience, many connections and a rather authoritarian leadership style. We could not work together, the case ended in court. But the lesson I learned is that age and gender have nothing to do with emotional maturity. The man had a neurotic disposition, and we simply could not find a common language.

Now in our company women occupy all management positions (except for the CTO, but the head of product is also a woman). By the way, according to researchOne in four senior business roles now held by women, Russia is the global leader in the percentage of women in leadership positions (47% versus 25% globally), and companies with women in management showVoice of America. Is it true that women-led companies make more money? excellent financial results. A meta-analytical study conducted back in 1995 provedGender and the Effectiveness of Leaders: A Meta-Analysisthat men are more effective when it comes to managing tasks, but that women are better at managing people, which includes paying attention to values ​​and motivating employees.

Working with friends is great

Another stereotype, which was destroyed at the very beginning of my work as a leader, is “you cannot work with friends”. This is a popular topic in the media, many describe the conflicts that partners and founders have, give advice on how to reduce risks.

And I tried to work with strangers, with whom I had only professional relationships, with whom I was not friends. After a few months, I realized that this was hell. “Alien” people who are around you day and night - that's what actually presents the greatest difficulty for me. And not just for me. According to researchWith the Right Partner, You Can Create an Exceptional Workplace, 50% of employees who work with a best friend feel a strong connection with their company. 70% of employees say friends at work are the most important element of a happy work life. And 74% of women are ready sooner quit from a team than to work with unpleasant people (for men, this indicator does not exceed 58%).

Large companies have long recognized that working in a friendly atmosphere increases productivity. This is how Tony Shea, CEO of Zappos, an online shoe retailer with over a billion dollars in sales, promotes friendship as part of his corporate culture. The basic principles of this approach Tony Shay reflected in his book "Delivering happiness". For example, when you turn on the work computer, a Zappos employee needs to not only enter a username and password, but also remember the name of the colleague whose photo will appear on the monitor. This is how the company encourages all employees to know each other by name.

As a result, sooner or later I invited all my friends to work. Concerns about difficulties and conflicts in work were not confirmed: we are all human and can upset others for different reasons, but apologizing to a friend is much easier than to a stranger human.

It's important to listen to your gut when hiring

Of course it is impossible to surround yourself with only girlfriendsand the hiring issue continued to bother me. At first, I hired employees based solely on generally accepted criteria and fully trusted modern selection methods. One of the major trends in Western recruiting is blind interviewing. This method eliminates any factors that may interfere with the assessment of the candidate's professionalism: photo, name, gender, educational level and hobbies. Thus, the recruiter can only focus on assessing experience, motivation and competencies.

As a result, I got three employees and two advisors and spent a lot of money. Headhunters convinced me that these are the people I need and their profile is perfect for me. I succumbed to persuasion, but we didn't work well, and after a few months I fired the newcomers. Through trial and error, I found out that as a result of this standard selection, a good person joined the team, but not "mine". And this was exactly the stumbling block: I am an introvert, and it is difficult for me to spend time with people who are not 100% pleasant to me.

Three years later, I finally developed a rule for finding "my" person. Imagine that you have come on a business trip to another city and found an error in your reservation - you have one number. There are no more free ones, and in other hotels too. Can you sleep in the same room? Without sexual connotation, of course. Similarly, you can imagine a long journey in one compartment of a train or a situation where you are stuck together for a long time at the airport. Now, when hiring a new employee, I, of course, study summary, but during the first meeting I always listen to my intuition. And my instinct never let me down.

Being aware of your emotions is a very useful skill.

I once sobbed when an employee who was my right-hand man said that he was leaving because he wanted to do his own business. I wanted to shout: “Well, how is that? You can't leave me! This is your project too, I can't live without you. " Emotions were off scale, I felt a huge confusion. But at some point she said to herself "stop". I realized that in the fight against emotions, the main thing is to take a conscious break in time, to be alone with yourself. Meditation helps to find a balance, especially in nature.

After I calmed down, the realization came that I myself lived in peace illusions. The leader, and even more so the founder of the company, is always alone, and the sooner he learns to appreciate every day that the employee gave him, the sooner he will be able to correctly prioritize. By the way, my thoughts on emotional awareness even later led to the emergence of a new project on VR meditation.

You need to delve into all the processes yourself

Business don't build on the awareness of my emotions alone, and now I always have a plan. Every day I delve into all the work processes in the company. In this regard, the approach of Japanese management is close to me. The Japanese term gemba translates to “the place where things happen,” but figuratively it is the place where the main value is created for the customer. Each company has its own gemba — for someone a conveyor belt, for someone a sales office or a place where product development takes place.

The leader needs to know how his company and team live, he should not be out of touch with reality. I am not a developer, not an accountant, not a designer, not a marketer - and there are also 100 different “nots”. But I am very scrupulous about all the processes that create the core value of our product. When I choose parks-reserves, from where our broadcasts are then conducted, I accept into the development team or negotiate with scientists for joint research. Life has taught me to understand all processes at least at a basic level. And now not a single project will fail again if someone leaves.

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At some point, I realized that it depends only on me whether I will perceive my business as a constant challenge and test, or as a pleasure and a way of life. Emotions contagious. If you get bogged down in the negative yourself, negative thinking will be passed on to all your employees. You learn to manage emotions - everything will fall into place. Now I listen to myself more often and throw all prejudices into the stove.