The Emotional Intelligence Advantage

Proven strategies for navigating hard conversations, building team resilience and managing business transformation

In The Emotional Intelligence Advantage, leading expert Amy Jacobson shares a framework for resolving challenges in the workplace. How do you tackle tough conversations? How does your team react when a key process or system changes? And how can you overcome doubt and indecision to create a culture of alignment and trust? When it comes to modern leadership, you need to be aware of more than just the bottom line. You also need to apply emotional intelligence in how you manage people, processes and change.

In this book, you'll discover a clear five-step process for empathetic, productive communication. Through real-world case studies, proven tools and actionable strategies, The Emotional Intelligence Advantage demonstrates how you can address conflict and facilitate change seamlessly.

• Embrace workplace challenges and focus on what you can control.
• Process emotions and effectively shift from defensiveness to solutions.
• Recognise your impact on others and build team resilience and emotional alignment.
• Ask the right questions to unify stakeholders and achieve shared goals.
• Apply strategies that drive progress, spark organisational transformation and deliver lasting results.

A workplace thrives when people thrive. With this step-by-step framework for fostering emotional intelligence, you'll discover how to create a high-performing environment where each person feels safe and engaged. The Emotional Intelligence Advantage is a practical handbook for embedding emotional intelligence into your workplace effectively.

About the Author vii

Acknowledgements ix

Prologue xi

Part I: The emotional intelligence process 1

1 Understanding the EI process 5

2 Mastering the EI process 25

3 The constant evolution 37

Part II: Change intelligence 49

4 Our relationship with change 53

5 The change intelligence model 73

6 Step 1: Own and face the loss 79

7 Step 2: Feel and ask through the liminal space 93

8 Step 3: Drive the change like a champion 105

Part III: Difficult conversations 119

9 The excuse mindset 123

10 Five easy steps 135

11 The emotion over the situation 149

12 Putting it into practice The Emotional Intelligence Advantage 157

13 Managing up 177

14 Reflection 191

Part IV: High-performing teams 195

15 Team alignment 199

16 Trust 213

Conclusion: The emotionally intelligent workplace 235

AMY JACOBSON is a specialist in emotional intelligence and human behaviour in the workplace. Over two decades, Amy has developed a reputation of tough love and infectious energy for driving ownership, boosting performance and transforming workplace cultures through EI-focused initiatives.

TURN DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS INTO PRODUCTIVE OUTCOMES WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

How do you tackle tough conversations and manage your team’s reactions to change? Modern leadership requires more than just a focus on the bottom line; it demands a level of emotional intelligence to manage people, processes and change effectively.

In The Emotional Intelligence Advantage, leading expert Amy Jacobson shares a clear five-step process for empathetic, productive communication. Through real-world case studies, proven tools and actionable strategies, this must-have guide demonstrates how you can address conflict and facilitate change seamlessly.

Learn how to:

• embrace workplace challenges
• process emotions and shift from defensiveness to solutions
• recognise your impact on others and build team resilience
• unify stakeholders and achieve shared goals
• drive progress and deliver lasting results.

A workplace only thrives when its people thrive. The Emotional Intelligence Advantage shows you how to effectively embed emotional intelligence into your workplace, so you can deliver better results for your people and for the bottom line.