How Emotional Intelligence Can Contribute to Effective Leadership - Essay Example

5 10Relevance of emotional intelligence and social intelligence for effective leadership .................... 5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 7 Reference ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 10 Introduction Human talent has a number of components ranging from values to traits. These elements can be measured, conceptualised and defined in a number of ways. The efforts towards exploring the deep capabilities have been related with various kinds of intelligence beyond cognitive. These alternatives have been using the term intelligence to demonstrate the basic capabilities of individuals. Social and emotional intelligence competencies are some of the basic behavioural manifestations of the above sets of attributes. Research conducted over the past thirty years show that most of the 5 advanced professionals , outstanding leaders and managers and also individuals in the key job positions appear to be requiring three of the behavioral 5habits as being the threshold abilities, and also three groups of competencies which distinguishes remarkable performance. The three groups are cognitive competencies like pattern recognition and systems thinking; emotional intelligence which includes self management, 5self awareness and self control competencies. Finally the third is social intelligence which includes 5social awareness like team work and empathy. The project tries to explore the respective competencies explicitly and makes a behavioral approach to the concepts of 20social as well as emotional intelligence. Salvor and Mayer (1990) were the first ones to use 20the terms emotional intelligence and social intelligence which have often been blended with the capabilities described by other psychologists surrounding the consequences of individuals behavior, notably effectiveness or success. Concepts like practical intelligence and successful intelligence have been used widely in literature. 5Psychologists have identified their complexities and have presented them with regards to multiple capabilities (Ashkanasy & Cooper, 2008, p.226). The project makes the different interpretations in different ways. The project also tries to being out relevance between the above aspects and leadership through particular reference to theories and examples. Emotional Intelligence 27High emotional intelligence are seen to bear positive relationships 26with effective performance in leadership in areas like participative management, self awareness, composure and self awareness, decision making, change management etc. Out of all the skills and measures on benchmarks, 3participative management has the largest numbers of correlation with the emotional intelligence measures. Thus it can be said that those managers who are found to be 3good in listening to other people and getting their inputs before implementation of a change are considered as better in terms of cooperating with other people, 3able to enjoy life, enhance and foster their relationships, have control over their impulses, have understanding of their emotions and others emotions (Centre for Creative Leadership, 2003, p.2). Researchers conducted have shown that the absence of emotional intelligence has direct bearing with career derailment. People are found to have problem in maintaining interpersonal relationships and also faces difficulty in adapting. The 15building and making amendment of relationships is regarded as the creation and maintenance of relationships with the different external and internal parties. This is where the emotional intelligence comes into play. It is not considered astonishing to note that due to 3poor control of impulse individual behavior shows itself as being unable to control its explosive behavior or hostility. It is obvious that this kind of tendency might not be translated into favorable relationships with superiors. Difficulties in handling stress might show themselves as being problematic in relationships or stress might result from confused and troubled relationships. In other words it can be said leadership abilities might differ according to the degree of emotional intelligence. The co-workers are generally appreciative of their managers ability to control impulses and anger. They are also found to be appreciative of their abilities to handle and withstand stressful situations or adverse events and behave cooperatively while working in 17 groups. Such leaders remain participative, composed, self aware (Centre for Creative Leadership, 2003, p.3). Social Intelligence There has been discovery of 14the fact that there are a number of things that 14leaders do which specifically, show empathy and also become accustomed to other peoples moods. They are found to literally affect not only 4their brain chemistry but also that of the followers. In fact, research has shown that leader-follower chemistry is not essentially a case which a number of independent brains which has been reacting unconsciously or consciously with each other. Rather individual brains become, integrated into one single system. It is believed that the big leaders are those people whose behavior enhances interconnectedness in the brain. It is to be understood that the crucial way of emerging as a good leader is by finding authentic references from which he can learn such social behaviors which reinforces the minds social circuitry. The context of social intelligence in relation to leadership skills is based on the fact that leading effectively is actually mastering such social skills and developing genuine interests in talent which fosters positive feelings in people whose support and cooperation is required. It is less about mastering or handling situations or developing social skills sets. The leadership scholars have characterized the 4talent as being the ability to identify or recognize patterns, generated of experience. It is suggested that they must trust their guts and must get as much inputs as possible while making decisions. The success of a leader comes from sound practice as they often do not have the time for consulting other people (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2008, p.5). 10Relevance between emotional and social intelligence for effective leadership In the last few years extensive research 23was conducted to find a relation between social and emotional intelligence with regards to life satisfaction, personality, social relationships, team performance, education, training and most importantly leadership. The severity of emotional intelligence is related to the modern regular environments, behaviors, events, like the development of societal values and norms, impacts of the consumer marketing, influences of the political behaviors, establishment of prejudices, social fears, stereotypes and impacts of increase in urbanization. From the perspective of the ever increasing changing and complex world, researchers have highlighted on the aspect of leadership change competencies as being important for the effectiveness of modern leadership. Goleman, (2002), has presented his views with regards to the building of a culture of change in organizations. According to his view, emotionally intelligent leaders have the knowledge as to the way of managing their disruptive emotions so as to maintain their focus, and think clearly while making crucial decisions under pressure. They are not found to be waiting for the emergence of a crisis when they could catalyse the need for change. They are also found to remain flexible, remain adaptive to new realities which are different from the conventional crisis and 1find their direction through it to a bright future, and communicate visions and show the way (Cavins, 2005, p. 17). Organizational change has also been referred to as a transformational process which is associated with individual attitude, personality and emotional intelligence. Thus, transformational leadership theory happens to be one of the numerous theories which emphasizes 1on the requirement of building positive relationships between the leaders and its constituents for the prosperity of the organizational. Yukl, (1999) has defined the connection in transformational leadership as one where followers see the trust, loyalty, respect and admiration towards their leaders. They are also motivated towards doing 1more than what they were expected to be doing. Sosik and Megerian (1999) have recognized four different characteristics which have overlapped between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership which is a well defined emotional and social skill, an enhanced degree of motivation to stimulate the team members development, their performance and finally the leaders abilities to give attention towards each of the team members. The conclusion is that leadership is an emotional and social process, and that effective leaders can harness those emotional and social ties for effectively guiding organizations through rapid changes and chaotic conditions (Cavins, 2005, p.18). Also emotional intelligence plays a major role in contributing to a leaders ability to implement changes successfully in organizations. They 2 can get their followers make assessment of their feelings that they feel and also the way they demonstrate them. Depending on this ability the leader might be able to substitute alternatives views which resolve his 2emotional ambiguity. He might identify that anger is not the right response to the injustices in case the group tries to effect a real change. In this case a leader might propose alternative views about the 2situation with appropriate sets of different emotions which are more appropriate for attainment of the goal (George, 2000, p.19). Conclusion The present study shows that a minimum social and emotional intelligence is known to be worthy of consideration as far as the leadership domain is concerned. 2Emotional intelligence also has got the ability to compliment towards leadership in numerous ways. The special relevance of leadership with emotional and social intelligence bears relevance to leadership which is 2 a process which is laden with emotion, both from the leaders and the followers perspective. It must be realized that emotional intelligence contributes towards the fact that it influences the leaders ability to influence the emotions of his followers. But this does not mean this is manipulative or having overt control over other people. Rather it can be said that the followers emotions can be guided and influenced in the proper direction by the leader which is functional both for the followers as well as the organizations. Emotions can be determined multiply and effective leadership is able to have influence in the process. Every kind of individual, events and situations are said to have the ability to have influence over how individuals feel. Leaders high in terms of emotional intelligence can understand this as well as understand the way anger can be dissipated or got 2out of control or the way low spirits can be lifted after having any setback. It is important to mention 2that the above are some of the elements in leadership and that the list is exhaustive. There are numerous elements which come under the purview of social and emotional intelligence and their impacts on effective leadership. Rather it can be summarized as to how emotional intelligence can contribute towards effective leadership in terms of five essential elements, namely instilling the importance of work in others, generating confidence, cooperation, optimism and trust, encouraging flexibility and finally maintaining and establishing meaningful identity in the organization (George, 2000, p.2). Read More