Design Thinking & Emotional Intelligence

How Design Thinking helps leaders to become emotionally-intelligent and work better?

Your EQ is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them,” said Howard Gardner, the Harvard theorist who researched and studied the theory of multiple intelligences.

When we use the Design Thinking approach, it’s imperative that we understand how to articulate other people’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, and behaviours.

We need to translate those into actionable steps to achieve our goal with the customer. Design Thinking uses the word “Empathy” to lump many elements into one “word” to fit a method/framework.

Anyone who has used Design Thinking can easily recognize and relate to these elements in the Empathy stage. I think it’s important to understand the importance of having a high EQ when problem solving and innovating.

This methodology help leaders achieve better results when trying to understand people, and responding to them instead of seeking to be understood first.