Emotional Intelligence in Enhancing Performance - Assignment Example

In several situations such as missing employee motivation; customers’ dissatisfaction or for that matter when a change process needs to be initiated, it becomes imperative to apply EI knowledge for favorable outcomes. EI plays an important role in developing remarkable leaders because empathy, assertiveness, and interpersonal relationships are the key factors that any leader must have to create organizational development. Specific actions are needed to enhance the use of EI frameworks in the organization; moreover, EI can be taught and promoted within the organization. EI can be a developmental experience for all, no matter what role he or she occupies. All decision-makers within the organization need to understand the importance of EI and must be trained for enhancing their effectiveness in the organization. For the reasons mentioned above, EI needs to be linked with leadership competency models because EI provides a complete roadmap so that leaders can reach their full potential. 

Only a couple of years back, intelligence quotient (IQ) was considered everything while measuring the leadership ability. As organizations began expanding keeping focus on customers’ needs, it was soon realized that human resource plays a pivotal role in success and failure of the organization because firms now operate in a fiercely competitive arena. Organizations need not be just efficient but effective too. It is effectiveness that provides a competitive edge over the competition in the marketplace; moreover, certain leadership qualities are essential for making the organization effective. And EQ or EI defines how effective the leadership is in managing the organizational workforce to achieve organizational goals.

Roger Pearman has rightly pointed towards certain characteristics that a manager or leader needs to demonstrate. Apart from having some of the known qualities such as integrity, a vision to see beyond, and the ability to communicate, they also exhibit some of the unique traits and skills that form an integral part of their compelling leadership style. These traits are essential to deal with, manage and motivate the workforce in the organization for desired outcomes. These traits are measured in terms of emotional intelligence (EI) which decide leaders' empathy towards the workforce; their ability to inspire and motivate employees at all levels for achieving organizational goals; problem-solving capacity; resolve intradepartmental conflicts and so on. Self regulation, motivation, social skill, empathy and self regulation are cornerstones of EI. While social skill brings persuasiveness and effectiveness in bringing change, empathy imparts cross-cultural sensitivity. The ability to motivate is an important trait found in leaders but self-awareness and self-regulation are extremely important traits that speak about leaders’ openness to change.

It is not appropriate to define EI in terms of weaknesses and threats. If EI assessment is not a simple exercise then that is only because it is relatively a new branch of estimating human strengths and therefore, it is obvious that limited experts are available to estimate and facilitate EI processes. Similarly, any new branch of knowledge is going to make people scare for the reason of natural inertia that prevents them to explore something new; however, simply because of this reason it cannot be classified as threats. Being a proven science, it provides a sure way to make organization effective by developing the problem solving capacity within the organization and enhancing the customer satisfaction level.

Currently, EI is considered the most sought after skill in CEOs and COOs. It is not surprising that currently, recruitment for all leadership positions in large organizations is done not based on only technical skills but candidate’s EI profile is also taken into account. Many highly qualified and intelligent executives have been found failing at leadership roles because they were lacking emotional intelligence. A person can have the most profound mind, the best ideas, and extensive training yet without EI, he or she will not make a good leader. EI is a distinct characteristic of all successful organizations and their leaders. An organization high on EI is likely to succeed on most fronts because employees work there as a cohesive committed force with a single objective to succeed in the chosen area of operations.