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The Pharma Career Ladder · The first-line manager · Step 5: Motivating and building the team · Lesson 10

Emotional intelligence for managers

Know yourself, manage yourself, read your team

By Ahmed El Menshawy · 20 years in pharma, from medical rep to country manager in the UAE. Founder of RepPharma. LinkedIn
Published

Most of what a first-line manager does is technical. Targets, call plans, coaching, reports.

But the moments a team remembers are rarely technical. They are how you reacted when a rep lost a big account, or when the month closed short.

Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence is the model I keep coming back to. It starts inside, then turns outward.

Inside first:

  • Know your triggers. A lost account, a late reply. Know what makes you sharp.
  • Pause before you reply. The angry message can wait until tomorrow morning.
  • Own your mood. Your bad day quickly becomes the team's bad day.

Then outward:

  • Read the room. Notice who went quiet, not only who spoke.
  • Ask before you assume. "You seem flat today. What is going on?"
  • Name the feeling, then the task. "I can see this is frustrating. What is the next step?"

One habit has helped me more than anything else. Before a hard conversation, I ask myself two questions. What am I feeling right now? And what does this rep actually need from me?

Often those two answers are very different. That gap is where most of my mistakes used to happen.

“Your team feels your mood before they hear your words.”
Emotional intelligence for managers: Know yourself, manage yourself, read your team

Lesson 10 of 19 in Step 5: Motivating and building the team, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.

More lessons in step 5: Motivating and building the team

Lesson 1The 70% managerWhy the first-line manager decides whether a sales team is engagedLesson 2What actually motivates a repFixing frustrations is not the same as building driveLesson 3Money is not the whole answerWhat an incentive can do, and where it stopsLesson 4Autonomy, mastery, purposeThree drivers, applied to a field teamLesson 5The one-to-one that is worth the hourAgenda, ownership and follow-throughLesson 6Knowing what is going on at homeCare as a management skillLesson 7Trust is built in small promisesThe manager who does what they saidLesson 8Recognition on a zero budgetFive things that cost nothingLesson 9Recognising effort when results lagProtecting motivation in a bad quarterLesson 11Six leadership stylesChoosing the style the moment needsLesson 12The team meeting nobody dreadsStructure, timing and everyone talkingLesson 13Psychological safety in a sales teamWhy reps hide bad newsLesson 14Stages of a new teamForming, storming, norming, performingLesson 15When two reps do not get alongMediating without taking sidesLesson 16The difficult conversationPreparing, opening and staying in itLesson 17Radical candour in a field teamCare personally, challenge directlyLesson 18Managing a rep older than youAuthority without seniorityLesson 19The rep who wants your jobDeveloping a successor, not a rival

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