'Emotionally intelligent’ leadership

Who would you think of as an inspirational leader? Someone who makes people feel valued, and who deals with setbacks and challenges with unfailing resilience and optimism?

Add trustworthiness and an ethical nature and you have what we call an emotionally intelligent leader!

At times, most leaders have had a short fuse over something an employee has done, blaming them unreasonably and feeling awful about it a moment later – if you haven’t done it with an employee I bet you’ve done it with an exasperating child when you are tired.

Many leaders don’t like the term emotional intelligence – it’s too touchy feely, but actually it’s much more practical than that. Essentially, it’s the ability to inspire others to act by understanding how they feel.

Research shows the importance and effectiveness of EI. Boyatzis, Goleman and Hay Group (2002) state that emotional intelligence is the differentiating factor in success, twice as important as IQ and technical expertise, and 90% of the difference between outstanding and average leaders.

The leadership model designed by the Hay Group focuses on ‘clusters of competence’ entitled ‘self awareness’, ‘self management’, ‘social awareness’ and ‘relationship management’. 

In each cluster there are key “must haves” as well as a choice of other competencies, which might be required in different roles or sectors such as the difference between organisational awareness and/or service orientation.

The ‘self-awareness’ cluster are all deemed essential – not just awareness but confidence and an accurate sense of your own resources and abilities. We are a bit of a liability without these – we could probably all point to a few politicians who struggle here! 

The first key competence in the self management cluster is emotional self control – avoiding firing from the hip.

Other qualities in this group include things like, displaying composure and positivity, acting congruently with your values and behaving ethically, handling change with flexibility, taking calculated risks, being persistent and optimistic. It’s also about being resilient in the face of setbacks.

Empathy is rated very highly together with organisational awareness and the understanding as well as fulfilment of customer needs. All leaders need to influence those around them - colleagues, chairs, their professional advisors, banks, city investors, shareholders and all leaders have to be able to handle conflict and orchestrate win-win solutions.

If we think of it simply, we are human beings and being intelligent about our emotion and sensitive to other people’s emotion enables us to work more effectively together and deliver results. For leaders being emotionally intelligent equips them with the skills they need to motivate and inspire staff, tackle something new, or carry out major changes.

The leaders who are reading this and perhaps doubting the success of emotional intelligence should take a moment to think about Chris Watkin’s comments, he said: “Emotional intelligence is more than 85% of what sets out star performers apart from the average.

“Important are the hard results such as improved profitability from higher productivity, increased sales and lowered costs as well as softer results from increased morale and motivation, greater co-operation, lower turnover and loss of talent.”

I think emotional intelligence can get you further than your IQ, but if you used them both together imagine the success you could have?

Rating

By Launchlab Contributor  on   Jul 08,2008

Add a comment  |  Add a rating  |  Email to a friend

Keywords

leadership    emotional intelligence    motivation   

Comments

Margaret Burnside
I agree - most Leadership coaching I do centres around this stuff. You can have your Emotional Intelligence measured using the MSCEIT (Mayer Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test). It measures ability - so helps you to develop your EI further. Report Abuse