Emotional intelligence and its impact on leadership effectiveness

Strategy to Enhance Emotional Intelligence in Leaders

Emotional Intelligence defined

The ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others is termed as emotional intelligence. This ability in individuals also helps in defusing of conflicts. Many aspects of an individual's daily life is affected by emotional intelligence like the way one behaves in general and with others (Andrews, 2004).

There are four basic attributes that determine the degree of emotional intelligence in an individual. Self-awareness or the ability to recognize one's own emotions and how they affect that an individual's thoughts and behavior and helps in the identification of strengths and weaknesses and this impact self-confidence is one of the attributes.

Emotional intelligence also can be measured by the ability of an individual to be self-aware and thus using this awareness, be able to manage oneself by controlling impulsive feelings, behaviors and emotions in healthy ways, adapt to changing circumstances and take initiatives to follow through on commitments.

Emotional intelligence is also important to understand other's emotions and thus has a direct bearing on the social awareness of an individual. The understanding of the emotions, needs and concerns of other people by picking up on emotional cues is possible through emotional intelligence. This helps the individual to feel comfortable socially and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization (Goleman, 1995).

This social awareness, made possible through the use of emotional intelligence, in turn helps in managing of relationships and the development and maintenance of good relationships through clear communication and inspiring and influencing others to work well in a team and manage conflicts.

Comparison of EI to Intelligence quotient

The ability of an individual to learn, understand and apply information to skills and logical reasoning, word comprehension, skills at mathematics, abstract and spatial thinking and the ability to filter irrelevant information is described as intelligence quotient.

While Emotional intelligence helps in development of effective teamwork through efficient leadership, managing relations successfully, creation of service orientation, undertaking of initiatives and increasing of collaboration at workplace and socially, intelligence quotient increases the ability to achieve success with challenging tasks, by the proper and efficient analysis and connecting the dots in research and development (Murphy, 2006). This is the primary and the most important difference between the two concepts.

Emotional Intelligence can be measured by the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Test that involves the solving of emotion-based problem and tasks and the Daniel Goleman model Score that is based on emotional competencies.

Intelligence quotient is measured by the Stanford-Binet tests and the Wechsler and Woodcock-Johnson Tests for cognitive abilities.

Important Elements of Emotional Intelligence for Leaders

It is widely accepted that emotional intelligence is a key component of effective leadership. Possessing sound situational awareness ability and the ability to be perceptively in tune with oneself and one's emotions is a powerful and critical tool for effective leadership. This is possible through self-awareness and this is one of the elements of emotional intelligence.

Leaders also require to know and be understanding about and responding to emotions of oneself in order to overcome stress in the moment. A leader also needs to be being aware of how his words and actions would affect others and how the leaders should not indulge in acts like verbal abuse loosing of temper. Leaders also need to be trustworthy, conscientious, adaptive and be able to take the initiative. These are made possible by possessing a clear sense of self-regulation and management -another element of emotional intelligence (KAFETSIOS, NEZLEK & VASSIOU, 2011).

Leaders also need to possess empathy and efficiently understand others, especially other members of the team. This aspect of leadership helps leaders to be able to relate to the behaviors and the challenges of emotional intelligence at a workplace. It is critical that leaders possess empathy in order to be able to resolve conflicts, motivate team members and enhance performance through the building an exceptional team. These are enhanced by the enhancement of social awareness -- another element of emotional intelligence

To have effective teams, leaders need to be inspirational source and be able to motivate others. Leaders also need to develop similar skills in the team members to help them perform better. Building of bonds with the team and the team members is essential for effective functioning of a team. Enhancing of tram collaboration is also critical for a successful team. Tease attributes can be achieved by a leader through enhancement of social skills -- an element of emotional intelligence.

Given below is a graphical representation of the Emotional Intelligence Grid

(Source: www.educaitonal-business-articles.com)

All the above mentioned skills are necessary for a leader to enhance their leadership skills and thus it can be safely concluded that the degree of emotional intelligence within a leader often is critical in deciding the success of that individual as a leader.

Strategy to Enhance Emotional Intelligence in Leaders

To create a string leader with a high degree emotional intelligence, organizations need ot do the following:

The organization needs to share and effectively communicate the vision, your mission and your goals with the leader. This would provide the leader with a clear path to follow where the goals and objects are understood (Zakariasen & Zakariasen Victoroff, 2012).

The organization must focus on the identification, development and utilization of the strengths and gifts of the leader. These would help create a formidable leader.

Organizations need to induce a sense of being passionate within the individual who it intends to choose for a leadership role.

Adherence and compliance with the morals and values of the organization should be followed by the leader.

The organization should also set definitive goals for a leader and help the leader to follow the concrete action plans. The leader should be influenced to maintain a positive attitude.

Organizations also need to engage leaders in training for the development and improvement of communication skills (Bennett & Sawatzky, 2013). This would help the leader in developing social skills and would help to communicate the organization's vision, goals, skills, intentions, and expectations to the team members.