A Paper on The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership Effectiveness

Emotional Intelligence & Leadership Effectiveness

In order to be a successful manager, it is not enough to achieve high GPA score during the studies or obtain a professional certification. Successful management is more than simply being “clever”. It is important to combine a leader’s intelligence with emotions, as the reasoning and analytical abilities are often affected and reduced during emotional situations. Managing a team without understanding its emotions is like managing a car without driving license.

In the past the leader decided about the direction of development and his/her team followed him/her. This concept has changed and does not hold anymore. Nowadays, leadership is more about creating the connections and supporting the relations; an effective and successful leader must be able to manage the emotions in this new kind of environment.

The practical skills related to the components introduced by Daniel Goleman are of particular significance for managers in the establishment of their emotional intelligence. These five competences are critical to being a successful leader and can be traced back in the manager’s behavior. With greater emotional intelligence comes greater ability to effectively manage, lead, inspire, motivate, and influence others. This paper will first describe the EI components with practical applications for effective leadership:

Self-awareness

The ability to recognize the emotions and understand how these emotions affect the people a manager is leading and working with is essential for effective management. Being in a leadership position, s/he should have a clear picture of his/her strengths/weaknesses in order to implement/develop them to become more effective. Good leaders must be self-aware and understand how their verbal and non-verbal communication can influence the team and its performance.

Self-regulation

It is all about staying in control. The second component covers a leader’s flexibility and ability to regulate her/himself effectively. Controlling emotions helps effective managers to avoid attacking others verbally, making spontaneous or emotional decisions as well as stereotyping people. Leaders who react from their emotions without filtering them can create mistrust among colleagues and seriously jeopardize working relationships. Reacting with erratic emotions can be detrimental to overall culture, attitudes and positive feelings toward the company and the mission. A leader with high EI does not tend to blame others when something goes wrong and is able to admit the mistakes done.

Motivation

“Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal.”, writes Daniel Goleman. Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work. They also make sure that team members are involved in the goal achievement and that goal statements are fresh and energizing. However, in case of the failure, s/he will still be optimistic and find something good or important lesson learned.

Empathy

Having empathy is crucial for successful and effective team leadership, since a good leader must have an ability to put her/himself in someone’s else situation. The more a manager relates to others, the better s/he will become at understanding what motivates or upsets the team. As a referee or coach, a manager helps to develop the team members, gives a constructive feedback and is able to listen to the others. Mutual understanding and close interaction with the colleagues enables an effective manager to earn the respect and loyalty of the team, resulting in overall enhanced productivity and performance.

Social Skills

Leaders with developed social skills are only great communicators, who are equally ready to hear good as well as bad news, but also are good in managing and solving the conflicts diplomatically between the team members. To achieve effective leadership, a manager should be able to involve the team members into a new mission and get them excited about new project and related challenges. A good leader does not only serve as a source for a feedback, the team is also always supporting a leader. This emotional interdependence between a manager and her/his team improves the quality of working relationships and leads to the better outcomes.

Emotional Intelligence Leadership factors

Together with his colleagues, researcher David McClelland took a closer look at different kinds of styles that managers implement and follow and tried to differentiate them. They defined six leadership factors that influence a firm’s environment via the style most often used by senior management:

• Flexibility: how free are employees in bringing something innovative;
• Responsibility: a sense of duty and commitment to the organization;
• Standards: the level of standards C-suite sets and adheres to;
• Rewards: the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and fairness/aptness of the rewards;
• Clarity: the understanding that organization members have about the organization mission and values;
• Commitment: the level of dedication to and engagement with a common purpose.

EI & Effective Leadership: Explanatory Studies

A variety of studies tried to investigate the role of feelings and emotions in the leadership process. George (2000) concludes that EI contributes to effective leadership in organizations based on above-described five elements of leader effectiveness. Gardner & Stough (2002) identified effective leaders as those who reported transformational (focus on team-building, motivation and collaboration with employees at different levels of an organization to accomplish change for the better) rather than transactional (focus on maintaining the normal flow of operations) behaviours.

They also found that EI correlates with the components of understanding of emotions. Based on Mayer Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) EI test among 38 supervisors, Kerr et al. (2006) found that half of the MSCEIT scores act as a strong predictor of leadership effectiveness and insist on incorporating EI interventions alongside the recruitment and selection process and the training and development process of managerial personnel.

Conclusion

As seen from the essay, EI is one of the keys to the effective leadership. Understanding how the brain operates and how the emotional response system works should be considered while working with colleagues in a firm. Being able to relate behaviors and challenges of EI on workplace performance is an immense advantage in building an exceptional team. One of the most common factors that leads to retention issues is communication deficiencies that create disengagement and doubt. A leader lacking in EI is not able to effectively gauge the needs, wants and expectations of those they lead.

A manager who is able to create and maintain goals that team members are excited about, get others involved and excited about their jobs, sustain confidence and positivity in the workplace, assure flexibility and a “go with the flow” attitude, and share a meaningful organizational identity with the organization members is possessing a high EI level and is very likely to be a successful leader.

References

1. Ackerman, C. (2019, January 04). 69 Exercises for Leading With Emotional Intelligence. Positive Psychology. Retrieved from https://positivepsychology.com/
2. Gardner, L., & Stough, C. (2002). Examining the relationship between leadership and emotional intelligence in senior level managers. Leadership & organization development journal, 23(2), 68-78.
3. George, J. M. (2000). Emotions and leadership: The role of emotional intelligence. Human relations, 53(8), 1027-1055.
4. Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard business review, 78(2), 4-17.
5. Goleman, D. (2001). Emotional intelligence: Issues in paradigm building. The emotionally intelligent workplace, 13, 26.
6. Kerr, R., Garvin, J., Heaton, N., & Boyle, E. (2006). Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27(4), 265-279.