Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Different leaders espouse differing styles of leadership. The managers in various organizations benefit from diverse approaches comprising transformational leadership, transactional leadership, enigmatic leadership, dictatorial leadership or visionary leadership (Esfahani and Soflu, 2011). In the contemporary, there is increased consideration regarding the role that quality relationships play in the workplace and how they can profit the organization.

Emotional intelligence is delineated as the subsection of social intelligence that takes into account the capability of an individual to monitor his or her own feelings and emotions as well as those of others, to distinguish amidst them and to utilize this information for guiding the individual's thoughts and actions (Hunt and Fitzgerald, 2013).

In other words, emotional intelligence is the power of rational, coherent response and comprehending a sequence of emotions and belief that the managers with high social intelligence, through the assistance of ideal self-assurance and inherent control center have high capability to ascertain significant executive necessities. These take account of tractability, conflict resolution and establishing and following up long standing objectives and herald for elevating the organization in society (Esfahani and Soflu, 2011).

Numerous experts have argued that different components of emotional intelligence, for instance, self-assurance, compassion, and self-awareness are fundamental footings of some leadership styles. This article examines the relationship between leadership and emotional intelligence. In accordance to research by Esfahani and Soflu (2011), empathy, an element of emotional intelligence, has a direct link to managers and leaders with such feelings, in that against the personal notions and considerations of personnel, they utilize fitting motivational techniques.

This is particularly linked to transformational leaders as they are able to express their feelings with much ease and increase accountable feelings in personnel by individual and organizational communication and also generate positive motivation. This indicates that emotional intelligence can steer transformational leaders to not only positively influence their followers but also other leaders. Hunt and Fitzgerald (2013) indicate that emotional intelligence is an underpinning for the capability of a leader to instigate inspiration, motivation, and intellectual incentive.

Transformational leadership necessitates leaders that are competent on emotional self-management and capable of being emotionally self-aware and therefore this indicates that this style of leadership demands to have elements of emotional intelligence (Hunt and Fitzgerald, 2013). In addition, the results of the research study indicate that leaders can better develop more efficacious leadership skills by having more awareness regarding their strong suits and downsides in the aspects of emotional intelligence, together with enhancing their transformational leadership behaviors.

A similar perspective is argued by Quader (2011) who assesses the relationship between transformational and transactional styles of leadership and emotional intelligence, with special emphasis on gender comparison. In the study, the author delineates emotional intelligence through five particular factors including self-motivation, having proper relations, self-awareness, being able to manage emotion and emotional mentoring. With respect to these factors, results indicated that women had higher score in emotional mentoring and having proper relations compared to men.

More importantly, the research study indicated that there is a significant relationship between three distinct elements of emotional intelligence, comprising self-motivation, self-awareness and emotional mentoring to transactional leadership and not transformational style of leadership (Quader, 2011). Incorporation of emotional intelligence in transformational leadership enhances the development of the leadership style. As pointed out by Esfahani and Soflu (2011) transactional managers are less efficacious in comparison to transformational managers and this is due to the lack of emotional intelligence.

In particular, this is because they tend to control programs together with their followers and do not instigate ant change in the beliefs and insisting on the resolute roles of personnel. Transformational managers are able to easily express and convey their feelings and this in turn enhances the feeling of accountability amongst the personnel.

In addition, this aspect of incorporating emotional intelligence into their style of leadership generates a sense of motivation amongst the subordinates and therefore easily convey the values of the organization to attain the set goals and objectives. Through emotional intelligence in the style of leadership, transformational managers attain the respect of their subordinates and also increases their self-assurance in the organizational tasks being undertaken. However, on the other hand, Hunt and Fitzgerald (2013) assert that there has been no efficacious differentiation between trait-based emotional intelligence and cognitive or capability-based emotional intelligence.

Therefore, this aspect continues to cause misconstruing of the notion of emotional intelligence and as a result cannot be deemed to have any positive impact on style of leadership. In addition, Genderen (2012) examines the prospective relationship that exists between emotional intelligence and transformational style of leadership on managers in both the United States and Russia.

Results of the study indicated that there is neither no existing significant relationship between emotional intelligence and the style of leadership nor any significant differences in the general emotional intelligence scores or preferences in styles of leadership for the managers. Conclusion In conclusion, numerous research studies have examined the relationship that exists between styles of leadership and emotional.