I’ve recently been developing and delivering a leadership development programme for first line managers.

I’ve built it around three modules that I think capture the main dimensions and required competences of the first line manager role; leading self, leading teams and leading in the wider organization.

Having decided to start with leading self, I included a section on emotional intelligence drawing on Daniel Goleman’s four clusters of EQ competence; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.  I’ll admit to a bit of bias here as an ESCI coach, but I thought it made sense as self-awareness is both the foundation of emotional intelligence and core to authenticity and being clear about one’s values and purpose as a leader.

As I now come to finalise the third module and look back over the content, it has struck me just how important emotional intelligence is to successful performance across all elements of the first line manager role.

Here’s just a few linkages – based around the behaviours we expect first line managers to demonstrate – that have struck me:

• Engaging and motivating team members requires the ability to connect on an individual level and understand their interests and values. Doing this requires social awareness and in particular empathy.
• Building team effectiveness requires, alongside shared goals and role clarity, facilitating effective inter-personal relationships in the team. This is all about the EQ competences that fall within the relationship management cluster.
• Influencing others to get things done requires the social awareness to recognise the needs and motivations of the people you are dealing with.
• Successful conflict management, which is an essential element of the first line manager role, is impossible without both self-management and social awareness.

EQ really is the foundation for successfully and sustainably getting things done through others, which is exactly what we appoint first line managers to do. So worth reflecting, do your first line manager development programmes help build emotional intelligence?