Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Effectiveness

Being a leader is a complicated job because it is not only about being business savvy. A leader also spends a lot of time dealing with the interpersonal aspects of the workplace. To excel at this, understanding the importance of emotional intelligence is the key.

Emotional intelligence has been a hot topic in recent decades. It involves an individual’s ability to recognize and be aware of one’s own and other’s emotions,¹ as well as the ability to regulate one’s emotions and utilize the emotional aspects to improve, instead of hinder, performance. ² Individuals with high emotional intelligence have better social relationships with others, higher job performance, are seen as more trustworthy and have better psychology and physical health. Leaders with high emotional intelligence are often found to have better leadership effectiveness, use more desirable leadership styles and have better group outcomes.

The very first component of emotional intelligence is emotional recognition and regulation. Being able to recognize and manage one’s own emotions can prevent the damages of negative emotions and temperaments on one’s self and others, as well as interpersonal relationships. No one likes to work for a boss who is often angry and too emotional.

Emotional recognition also entails recognizing others’ emotional express and reactions. Leaders with high emotion recognition ability can sense the emotional cues expressed by team members during meetings and task assignments. By recognizing others’ emotion cues, a leader can assign tasks to those who seem to be more excited about the assignment instead of those who show resentment and anxiety. In return, subordinates of such leaders will tend to work on projects that fit them the best and perform better and be more satisfied with their jobs. They will also be more likely to trust the leaders’ decisions in the long run.

Another component of emotional intelligence is one’s ability to use emotions to facilitate performance. Positive emotions can promote creative thinking and help one to focus more at work. However, negative emotions are not all bad. Like I mentioned earlier, no matter what kinds of emotions you are experiencing at the moment, you can always choose how to act. Instead of letting negative emotions swallow you and stop you from performing and interacting with others, it is important to channel negative emotions to motivate yourself to a higher level of performance. Do you know that negative emotions can also help you make better plans for the future? For example, when you are planning for a project in a good mood, you are more likely to think about the positive outcomes and ignore the possible fallouts. But when you look back to your plans when you are in a bad mood, you are more likely to think about the negative outcomes and plan to deal with them accordingly.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence are more likely to use transformational leadership style⁴; the major components of that are a leader’s personal charisma and individual consideration. Transformational leadership style makes employees feel motivated, inspired and cared for at an individual level, which can lead to great organizational outcomes.

Emotional intelligence also contributes to leader effectiveness through a leader’s abilities of developing collective goals and objectives, generating trust and cooperation, and maintaining excitement, confidence and optimism in an organization. ⁵

All in all, there is lots of evidence on the positive outcomes of leader’s emotional intelligence. Organizations should consider using emotional intelligence as a gauge when selecting or promoting leaders. Leaders should also continually improve their emotional intelligence related skills to increase overall leadership performance.

References

1. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J.D. (1990). Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 3, 185-211.
2. Wong, C.S., & Law, K.S. (2002). The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: An exploratory study. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 243-274.
3. Walter, F., Cole, M.S., van der Vegt, G.S., Rubin, R.S., & Bommer, W.H. (2012). Emotion recognition and emergent leadership: Unraveling mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions. The Leadership Quarterly, 23, 977-991.
4. Brown, F.W., & Moshavi, D. (2005). Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence: A potential pathway for an increased understanding of interpersonal influence. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 867-871.
5. George, J.M. (2000). Emotions and leadership: The role of emotional intelligence. Human Relations, 53, 1027-1055.