Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is no doubt a term you’ve heard, and will continue to hear often. It’s a theory introduced by psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey in the 1990s that today, has gained wide acceptance and academic stature.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, Psychology Today defines Emotional intelligence as the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. To harness your emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving, and help others to do the same.
As you can appreciate, EQ is especially relevant to employee communications and successful leadership, but in this episode of Minute with Messaging™, we’re going to focus on its significance for your marketing communications. I’ve divided the information I’m sharing into three sections: Awareness, Empathy and Expectation.
First, awareness – the ability to form connections and take the perspective of others, is considered a pillar of emotional intelligence, but it does require doing your homework. Entrepreneurs in the innovation sector, particularly life sciences, are among the purpose-driven clients we work with. While researching the marketing communication challenges of this growing ecosystem, we discovered a need for greater awareness of the pressures facing organizations that innovation companies are approaching with their services. We kept hearing that rather than just focusing on sales, entrepreneurs need to better understand the challenges, goals, protocols and even culture of their potential customers – and speak to that. It’s valuable advice for companies in every market sector. Asking questions, taking time for discovery, and listening not only achieves greater awareness, it fuels empathy that can result in rewarding, long-term relationships. The key is to incorporate what you’ve discovered into the messaging you develop, using empathetic language, and demonstrating a genuine commitment to connect.
Which brings us to Empathy. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. So, in addition to doing your homework, conveying empathy requires speaking your audience’s language. (We’ve talked about this before and I encourage you to listen again to the episode literally titled, “Speaking Your Audience’s Language.”) When it comes to applying empathy in emotional intelligence, the idea of getting out of your head and into the head of those you’re working to connect with could not be more relevant.
Emotion is a significant motivator for action. Research has shown that we are neurobiologically dependent on emotions for making decisions and retaining information, two primary objectives of messaging and marketing communications. Tapping into the power of emotion to connect with what’s important to your key audiences, while communicating the solutions you offer, can deliver excellent results. Just be certain that any emotion you use is genuine, or you risk a betrayal of trust that we all know can damage your bottom line and is both costly and difficult to repair.
Which leads us to Expectation – the expectations emotional intelligence sets up when made part of your marketing communications. If empathy is something you communicate, is empathy what people experience? It comes down to “are you who you say you are?” Delivering on expectations you create with emotional intelligence is equally important to protecting the trust you’ve worked so hard to build. For the greatest impact, emotional intelligence isn’t limited to words, it’s experienced.
I’m Kelli Newman and this has been a Minute with Messaging™. If you found this podcast helpful, I encourage you to subscribe on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. And to learn how your organization can benefit from Newman & Newman’s marketing communication strategies, visit our website at NEWMANandNEWMANinc.com.
