Review of Leadership Style and Emotional Intelligence

Leadership Style and Emotional Intelligence

In today's competitive world, it is the professional organizations that lay the foundation of much of the social structure. Today's corporate and professional offices are considered important venues for an interactive growth sphere. Thus, the aspects of emotional intelligence (E1), leadership style and gender are now surfacing as really important aspects to understand the overall associative quality and nature of these workplace relationships and how these can be advantageous to the companies that pay attention to their quality (Quader, 2011). We now see a rising interest in how leadership can have an influence on emotional intelligence and vice versa. Especially in the past 2 decades, we see more research and findings being dedicated to the subject matter and so far more results and conclusions are coming to the surface. Quader (2011) in his recent study also highlights how emotional intelligence affects gender differences in the workplace. He writes that recent literature has overwhelmingly managed to create a "virtual industry" for the relationship that exists between the aspects of gender differences and emotional intelligence (Quader, 2011). The trend of rising research on the phenomenon of emotional intelligence and it's influence on the corporate performance is not only limited or restricted to just the U.S. The proof of that was in a recent study conducted by Van Genderen (2012) who compared the research done with the U.S. to that conducted within Russia. The results of his comparison were astoundingly similar in terms of the overall attention that business leaders were now paying to the aspects of emotional intelligence and gender as well. This particular study was also important in how it highlighted the different variations between male and female EI under different leadership dynamics and styles which gives it an interesting and novel depth (Van Genderen, 2012). In this particular paper, we discuss how emotional intelligence influences overall employee performance irrespective of gender and how it increases generally efficiency and effectiveness as well.

Influencing Performance

Leadership is complex and dynamic. There is a myriad of factors that can affect the performance of a leader and the performance of a leader has profound effect on the performance of an organization. Leadership has been addressed in a wide range of terms and theories including the contingency theory, charismatic leadership, leadership traits, leadership style and emotional intelligence; commonly referred to as EI. Leadership thus constitutes adopting a specific style, behavior or stance which transforms a leader and helps them to become better and effective. So, it means that an effective leader is a construct that can be made. The importance thus of emotional intelligence of a leader in operating business today is all the more significant because it is not easy to break even under the existing austerity culture. The role of EI cannot be underestimated in generating sales in the industry and reading the consumer demands beyond just numbers. These sales are what translate to profits. This scenario is especially true for firms that operate under business to business arrangements. This category of firms is extremely dependent on their sales force to thrive in their contemporary markets making it all the more important for the leaders in this particular industry to enhance their EI in the long- and short-term scenarios. The term effective is defined by such factors as performance and people management which can both be enhanced and improved using EI (Carlton Brown, 2014).

Bringing in Effectiveness

Social scientists do not agree on what quality, emotional intelligence, poverty, inequality, social capital and leadership are in terms of what they constitute and their conceptualization. It is thus incumbent to conceptualize these concepts and align some measurement criteria to the phenomenon. Any social scientist researcher is, firstly, faced with the challenge of conceptualizing and defining a phenomenon. Emotional intelligence began to draw the attention of psychologists and popular media in the 90s. There seems to be agreement among many analysts that emotional intelligence is crucial. However, many people have no clue what the concept is in clear terms; in any case, intelligence is a good thing and emotions are equally important to human function. Therefore, it follows that emotional intelligence must be something good; whatever it may be. In the earlier day, matters to do with emotions were not addressed because they were thought to be undesirable in the execution of logical behavior. These were, therefore omitted in order to avoid scratching of the desirable rationale-driven manager (Barbara Wagner, 2013).

Emotional intelligence has great potential to increase the desirable leadership qualities in modern day; in terms of individual inspiration and charisma. It is thought to enhance intellectual stimulation, contingent reward and management by exception. Judging from the available highlighted secondary research here, it can be concluded that EI has the potential to make leaders successful because it makes them effective in their practice and handling of organizational functions (Barbara Wagner, 2013). References
Barbara Wagner. (2013). IMPACTS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS. New Challenges of Economic and Business Development, 654-662.

Carlton Brown. (2014). The Effects of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Leadership Style on Sales Performance. Economic Insights -- Trends and Challenges, 1-14

F. Quader, M. S. (2011). Leadership style and emotional intelligence: A gender comparison. Annamalai International Journal of Business Studies & Research, 3 (1), 1 -- 23

E. Van Genderen, E. (2012). Relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership style: A comparative-gender study. Review of International Comparative Management 13(2) 73, 224-236.