Emotional Intelligence and the Helicopter View

If you’re aiming to move from a middle or line management role to a senior leadership position, you’ll need to sharpen a variety of skills and refine aspects of your personality.  But I believe the two most critical traits you need are Emotional Intelligence and the Helicopter View.

While both deserve their own deep dive (or maybe even a full series), I want to briefly touch on these concepts and share my personal take.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

The higher up you climb the leadership ladder, the more important your soft skills become. In fact, they often overshadow hard skills.

In a broader sense, it is more correct to talk about horizontal and vertical development, a concept I’ve discussed in my post on the Spiral Dynamics model.

But for now, let’s focus on emotional intelligence. At its core, it is the ability to manage your emotions. In simple terms, it means not yelling at subordinates, not lashing out, not humiliating people, avoiding unnecessary disputes, and so on.

In a more academic sense, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand emotions of yourself and others, as well as successfully managing them. This includes four basic skills: being aware of your emotions, regulating them, identifying the emotions of others, and building effective interactions based on this understanding.

I’ve known many people — some among my subordinates over the last few years — whose biggest obstacle to growth was their inability to manage emotions effectively.

How to Boost the EQ?

1. Go to therapy. Surprise, surprise! This blog is about business and management, so I feel obliged to advise therapy. Therapy helps you better understand and process your emotions, which is crucial for staying in control and avoiding emotion-driven reactions.
2. Read Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. This 1995 bestseller provides great insights on the topic. 

Helicopter View

The second critical skill is the ability to rise above the operational stuff and look “outward.” I’ve made this mistake myself and seen others fall into the same trap. Sometimes people just can’t see the bigger picture.

Stephen Covey captured this perfectly in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

“It is incredibly easy to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to realize that it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”

All of this isn’t just limited to business strategy. It applies to everyday situations as well. For example, your team is locked in a heated dispute, but instead of stepping back to address the root cause of the problem, you dive headfirst into the conflict, playing by the rules of those involved.

The ability to view any situation from the perspective of the company and its strategic long-term goals is a key skill for a senior manager.