Series: Psychology of Leadership TWO Succeed as a Leader- Use Emotional Intelligence

Simply put, Emotional intelligence or EI is the awareness of, the ability to understand and manage our own emotions, and those of the people around us. A person with emotional intelligence would be someone who is understanding, empathic, interprets emotional signals and can manage these. This is an essential for leaders, to achieve success. After all, why would anyone want to follow someone who does not know their own self, fails to recognise their own or their colleague or supervisee’s feelings. It is therefore vital for the organisational and individual’s own growth.

Definitions of Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman: In his definition this American psychologist listed the key features of EI, Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy, Social skills.

The four-branch model by Mayer and Salovey characterises emotional intelligence as a set of four related abilities: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions. This provides a useful framework to study differences in abilities of individuals in processing information? about emotions. According to them the term emotional intelligence means an intelligence having to do with emotions, understanding these in self and others and being able to express these. They state that EI is just one of hundreds of parts of our personality. However, this maybe a very limited view of this phenomenon. It is an overview of and understanding of emotional reaction in self and others around us. The definition provided by Daniel Goleman therefore seems more appropriate and wholesome.

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The world is full of challenges, difficult targets to meet, “left brain” work with hard facts and numbers, it is therefore understandable that more emphasis is placed on IQ. The ‘softer right brain’ skills however are ignored and neglected. At school, formal education mostly concerns itself with ‘hard skills’ with aspects of the soft skills left for the individuals to explore and develop by themselves. As a direct result, most people around us would not even realise that there was this huge gap in their skill set. Such a high IQ leader with low EQ would then be unaware of how members of the team feel uncared for, if that is the case.

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A leader’s role is to be highly motivated at all times, consistent, learning and developing skills constantly, provide strength, discipline and stability to a whole organisation. This is a big ask (almost impossible) but through self-awareness and self-compassion they can aspire for it. For if you know yourself, your limits and emotional triggers, and are accepting of these, the first hurdle is crossed. (Know yourself, read my article: Way to self Awareness)

Rather than suppressing these limitations and weaknesses or seeing emotions as limitations which unfortunately many leaders would instinctively do, the next step ought to be for a good leader is to develop strategies to manage the limitations and channel the emotions. Self-compassion is self preservation, without this as a leader you would burn out, sooner or later. (Read: Self Compassion and Preservation). Easier said than done, I hear you say. Many of the readers who are leaders would agree that looking after self, needs tremendous discipline, as similar to mothers, leaders put their own needs below that of the organisation. This is an error that many would regret.?

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Following the original description and definitions of EI in the 1990s a large number of psychometric tools designed to measure it were invented and developed. Currently, there are more than 30 scales and measures being used widely. It seems like some have been adopted readily as valid tests by those adept in this field; the non-psychologists of the world find the choice of tests complex with? overlapping and confusing terminology.?

The picture is further complicated by the fact the EI has been further classified into Ability EI and Trait EI, the former are measures which use questions/ items comparable to those found in IQ tests, trait EI scales use self-report items to measure overall EI and its sub dimensions. We then have the mixed EI that refers to questionnaires that measure a combination of traits, social skills and competencies that overlap with other personality measures.?

for the purpose of defining the reason for the tests.

On literature search the following seem most reliable tools:

1. Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Tests (MSCEIT), Mayer et al. 2002

2. Self-report Emotional Intelligence Test (SREIT), Schutte et al., 1998

3. Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), Petrides and Furnham, 2001

4. Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), Bar-On, 1997

5. Emotional and Social competence Inventory (ESCI), Boyatzis and Goleman, 2007)

In summary, emotional intelligence allows you and enables:

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1. Recognising emotions, strengths and weaknesses in self and others that helps with finding the right roles for each person within a team

2. The team members can work in unison, complementing each other at work to reach a common goal, rather than everyone doing everything.

3. Reduces work related stress as people do things they are good at rather than struggling with areas where their struggles lie.

4. Subtle monitoring of the team morale, common vibe helps the leader to make the team feel that they care for them as people rather than performance machines, hence more motivation to achieve their individual performance and potential

5. Recognising negative emotions or stress in individuals early and supporting the team members early would prevent “blowouts” or crises which can be damaging to the whole team, immediately and even in the long term, helping with avoiding conflicts altogether and when conflictual situations do occur then an emotionally intelligent leader would have the ability to arrive at a more positive outcome by being objective and unbiased.

6. Self care and compassion prevent burn out in the leader, of whom the expectations are exceedingly high.?

Are you a leader and need mentoring or coaching? We may be able to help. Contact Oaktree connect on [email protected]