Concepts of Leadership Behaviour and Emotional Intelligence - Coursework Example

Organizational Behaviour Name: Institution: Introduction Researches on the relationship between Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence (EI) present bold claims for an organization. Various experts concerned with effective management agree that the elements of EI such as self-confidence, empathy and self- awareness are essential in realizing transformational leadership. Modassir & Singh (2008, p6), indicates that since EI is crucial in dictating how people deal with one another, understanding of the emotions is significant for business leaders since insensitivity create moods that frustrate people thus minimizing people’s efforts in working environments. This is because it is crucial for leaders to ensure recognition of emotionally intelligent behaviours, and remunerate them appropriately. Harms & Crede (2010, p6), note that transformational leadership, on the other hand, is a paradigm of leadership with five dimensions, which include, idealised influence (attributed and behavioural), individual consideration, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation. Harms & Crede (2010, p6), also indicates that apart from the transformational leadership dimensions and elements of EI, the transactional leadership factors such as contingent reward, management-by-exception (passive) and management-by-exception (Active). Another significant aspect that most researchers are taking consideration to is the relationship between the emotional intelligence, transformational leadership and transactional leadership. According to Modassir & Singh (2008, p6), various researches indicate that there are high levels of correlation between Transformational, transactional leadership and Emotional Intelligence. This is because various components of understanding, emotional and emotions management predict translational leadership style. This essay aims at looking at the various concepts of leadership behaviour with consideration to skills, styles and attributes. It also describes and discusses the concepts of transactional and transformational leadership and their connections to emotional intelligence. The essay also discusses and describes other two leadership models of interest. The paper also discusses how leadership demands and behaviour on emotional intelligence vary with some facts. Finally, it provides a conclusion with a summary. Concepts of leadership behaviour and emotional intelligence One crucial fact to note is that leadership qualities can only be transformational if leadership is grounded in high levels of Emotional Intelligence. Leadership behaviour involves the transformational and transactional factors. Leadership styles, attributes and skills, as leadership concepts are vital in ensuring transformational and transactional leadership. Six leadership styles are crucial in achieving transformational leadership. The first one is Coerciveness. Coerciveness demands immediate compliance and thus in requires Emotional Intelligent qualities of self-control and is applicable during crisis (Butler & Chinowsky, 2006, p120). The second style is Authoritative, which requires self-confidence, empathy, and change catalyst and is applicable when change, new vision and a clear direction are required. A democratic style requires collaboration, team leadership and communication as EI elements and applies when achieving consensus. Pacesetting, on the other hand, requires setting high standards of performance and are applicable in getting quick results from a competent and motivated team. Coaching skills and styles, on the other hand, is essential in improving performances and developing strengths of the employees. Apart from the leadership styles and skills discussed above, another concept of leadership is system. Leadership in itself is a system. This is because it is necessary for leaders to reinforce and establish a vision, and aim to the underlying organizational structure. Since leadership is a system, it requires proper understanding of the necessities in order to ensure competitiveness and survival. Another aspect of leadership is that is crucial to establishing leadership behaviour is the context of leadership. Leadership is a process of persuasion. Various leaders act as the role models and examples of the group. This, therefore, forces them to motivate the rest of the group to achieve the set objectives. The contexts of leadership thus come with various qualities with no limits to variety (Breen, 2012, p1). The inclusion of complex individuals within a given group ensures a selective display of different sides of nature in various situations that do arise. In a bid to achieve set objectives, leaders always encounter complex problems that force them to turn to consequences that may not be the most appropriate measure of leadership. However, this is not easily realised until that time that the situation causing it is closely examined in light and depth of the context causing it. In considering leadership behaviour, the aspects of Emotional Intelligence are highly significant in relation to its various styles, skills and attributes. Leadership style such as coerciveness requires leadership emotional intelligence aspects such as self-control and the urge to initiate and achieve (Schmidt & Scholl, 2011, p1). This enables the leaders to deal with crises likely to arise within the organization. Authoritative style of leadership requires EI such as self-confidence, change catalyst and empathy as the elements that the leaders enforcing this style must have. Leaders who express empathy, communication and building relationships as EI are effective when an affiliative style is required to motivate people under stress or heal conflicts within the team (Segal & Smith, 2012, p1). Democratic leadership style requires EIs like collaboration, team leadership and communication in order to ensure building of consensus. On the other hand, conscientiousness and initiative are essential to pacesetting. In addition, empathy, self-awareness and developing others are EIs suitable for coaching leadership style. Concepts of transactional & transformational leadership in relation to EI Transformational leadership involves various dimensions. Attributed idealized influence is the socialised charisma describing whether the leader is considered committed to high-order ideals and confident. On the other hand, behavioural idealized influence refers to the charisma describing a leader as per the beliefs, values or ideals. Individualised consideration as a transformational leadership dimension describes the extent to which leaders respond to the concerns and needs of the team as aspects for socio-emotional support. It thus involves maintain contact and mentoring followers (Breen, 2012, p1). Inspirational motivation refers to the manner in which leaders appeal to and inspire followers through setting challenging goals and communicating optimism. Finally, intellectual stimulation involves developing persuasive behaviours where followers’ assumptions, creativity and task risks are challenged. Apart from transformational leadership dimensions, transactional leadership factors are also essential for leadership. Contingent reward describes leaders’ emotional exchange principles and management by-exception (active), which describes how leaders actively monitor followers for correction of mistakes together with management by-exception (passive), which describe leaders waiting for mistakes before correcting them describe the transactional leadership. EI comprises of five characteristics, which include understanding an individual’s emotions, developing ways of managing them. Emotional self-control is another characteristic that involves the ability to delaying gratification together with empathy and managing relationships (Modassir & Singh, 2008, p7). However, Modassir & Singh, (2008, p7) indicate that EI can be categorised into two, personal competence and social competence. The relationship between transformational, transactional leaderships and EI is essential. EI is a fundamental competency of TL. This is because the elements of EI were found to correlate to the TL’s dimensions. Modassir & Singh (2008, p9) shows a study done showing leaders of high EI attribute to the three dimensions of TL. Control and monitor of emotions relate to idealized behaviours and attributes. Therefore, from these aspects it is evident that emotional intelligence positively relates to contingent reward behaviours and negatively relate to passive management-by-exception. Other leadership models Apart from transformational leadership and transactional leadership and emotional intelligence, other leadership models are of immense significance to an organization. One of this is the Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). Organizational Citizenship Behaviour is a leadership behaviour, which aims at promoting an effective functioning organization through embodying constructive and cooperative gestures not compensated by organizational formal reward system (Karim, 2008, p165). It is thus an organizational ability, which aims at ensuring that employee behaviour is elicit beyond the normal duties. Various researches identify citizenship behaviours into five dimensions, which include sportsmanship, courtesy, altruism, conscientiousness, and civic virtue (Schmidt & Scholl, 2011, p1). Altruism is a voluntary action that is aimed at helping other people with aims of benefiting the organization. Courtesy concerns treating other people with respect. Sportsmanship, on the other hand, refers to a posture of tolerance to the inevitable inconveniences without grievances. Conscientiousness is also another essential aspect of OCB since it refers to the pattern of passing beyond the minimum requirement levels of conserving resources, attendance and other related matters. Civic virtue is a constructive and responsible involvement in the opinionated process of the organization. OCB is of significant interest as leadership behaviour because it enhances positive outcomes of product quality and quantity (Ewert & Hayashi, 2006, p230). OCB enhances managerial productivity, organizational ability to retain and even attract best performing employees alongside co-worker productivity. Whenever an organization is made up of significant organizational citizens, the organization is highly likely to mount up high levels of social capital (Meredith, 2008, p45). For this case, OCB is of high interest since it helps in developing and maintaining higher levels of organizational performances. Research has also indicated that, through proper OCB, various organizations have managed to develop high levels of trust, expectation, mutual obligations and identifications among the employees. Another leadership style that is of considerable interest in this context is the Laissez-faire leadership. This is a unique leadership style since its practice is rear but remarkably different from various people understand as proper organizational behaviours. Laissez-faire has negative attributions to the performances of the organization since it encourages various uncertainties within the organization. The reason why this leadership style becomes unique is that it is a leadership style where there is no need to makes prier decisions. Leaders find various ways of avoiding decision making or making stands or positions of opinion concerning the organization. Leaders become reluctant to taking required actions within the organization. In this leadership style, leaders are not being fully committed to their duties and thus abdicate their authority to some people who can concentrate with the work. As indicated, leaders give their duties to other people within the organization and thus in such state, they are not able to be present in the organization. They are thus not active and thus are not available when they are needed. In this context, Laissez-faire might seem similar to passive management-by-exception. However, the difference between these two is that Laissez-faire leadership typically result to lack of any effective action even at the period when corrections are mandatory. In this essay, this leadership draws significant interest due to its ineffectiveness for any organization. The negative impacts of such leadership to an organization are essential since it is significant for people to understand its negative impacts to the organization. Factors affecting leadership behaviour and demands on EI Conflict In every organization, situations such as conflicts are inevitable. This is because the social structure of the society is composed of different kinds of people with different likes, and potentials thus it is expected that conflict potential becomes common. In actual sense, conflict is one of the inherent parts of any structure, which involves people (Coetzee & Schaap, 2005, p36). Though less research has been done on the relationship between leadership behaviour and conflict, leaders of any organization are likely to consider a given conflict-resolving style. The style chosen is based on the quality of leadership and the relationship between the leaders. Because of concern for oneself and concern for others, there are five different style of handling conflicts within the organization. The styles include obliging, integrating, compromising and avoiding. Emotional intelligence highly needs to be positively related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Positive emotions are likely to help an argument results to positive feelings towards the work environment. Intellectual stimulation, as a dimension of transformational leadership, is critical to leaders in conflict handling. Leaders must exercise intellectual participation in dealing with conflicts. Thus in search for an effective conflict resolution style, to adopt, management-by-exception (active) is necessary, since it enables leaders to monitor the mistakes of the followers and make efforts to correct them. This is more applicable if the leaders want to correct possible conflicts. However, for conflicts already present, management-by-exception (passive) is applicable. If EI characteristics such as emotional self-control are present into the organization, then conflicts are likely to reduce. It is obvious that if leaders and other employees can understand others’ empathy or emotions, then conflicts are will undoubtedly reduce within the organization. Crisis Just like conflicts, an organization may be a subject of crises. Since not all crises are avoidable, and quality of leadership plays a critical role in crisis management. The time of response leaders adopts to resolve the crisis within an organization is majorly determined by leadership that exists within the organization (Solan, 2008, p132). Various aspects of emotional intelligence define how leaders handle crises within the organization. A balance of maturity is necessary in handling crises affecting the organization, and such balance of maturity is only dependent on EI. Emotional intelligent leaders will retain focus and understanding of the various situations the organization faces. Handling of crisis within the organization also calls for intellectual stimulation. This is because there is a need to develop a careful problem-solving ability (Cherry, 2012, p1). Coercive leaders would prefer, self-control, and initiative as the EIs of suitable for crisis solving. This leadership style is preferred for emergency purposes such recovery from natural disasters. Consciousness and the drive to achieve, on the other hand, are essential in crises that need quick results from teams or followers. It is thus evident that leadership behaviour styles play a significant role in determining the emotionally intelligent response to adopt (Coetzee & Schaap, 2005, p35). However, this is limited since in situations where leaders who do not posses given elements of emotional intelligence such as of self-control are in charge of situations needing them. This calls for other alternative adoptions such as confidence and consciousness since they also aid quick decision-making process. Thus, solving of crises within the organization depends on the leadership style, personality, and the crisis. Personality Since personal qualities and abilities depend wholly on an individual and the environment, there exist various personality types within an organization (Bratton & Dodd, 2011, p23). Ensuring effective leadership behaviour within the organization thus calls for understanding of this aspect and thus requires leaders with traits that suit this difference in personality. Integration of such contrast is significant to the organization. This, therefore, calls for adoption of various leadership styles that effectively integrate this difference within the organization. Differences situations also come with a difference in personality. A new employee would require more supervision and thus needs motivation (Donaldson, 2006, p120). This, therefore, calls for understanding of emotions and motivation and hence, empathy and understanding of another person’s emotions is critical. There are those who are self-independent and lack proper flexibility. This calls for self-awareness and optimism. Leaders need to exercise individual consideration in order to understand different personalities of their followers. Such leaders must show responsiveness, appreciation and compassion towards their employees as a way of recognizing and celebrating their achievements (Legier, 2007, p76). Collaboration, communication and team leadership, are EI attribute that build positive impact in an organization with different personalities since they enhance building consensus and employees’ input. Therefore, developing an understanding of human nature is critical for leaders handling different personalities. High diverse/heterogeneous teams Diversity is one organizational factors drawing attention in the current world. The manner in which organizations deal with or tackle the issues concerning cultural differences is of significance to an organization. Therefore, this calls for development of leadership behaviour and styles that enhance integration of cultural differences (Srivsastava & Bharamanaikar, 2004, p110). In organizations, research agrees that it is more convenient to appreciate another person’s culture and embrace them. This, therefore, discourages forcing people to change to only specific cultural practices. Embracing diversity becomes the principal aim of leaders handling such kinds of cultural differences. In dealing with diversity, social competence is highly significant. It is necessary, for the employees and leaders to develop social awareness techniques since this will enable them understand others (Toon, 2008, p32). Through understand of other people’s culture that people learn to work with them. Thus, elements of emotional intelligence such as insight, appreciation of others, respect to others and understanding other people’s perspectives create an essential pillar in dealing with diversity (Parker, et al, 2009, p211). Effective leadership is visible through the integration of various people from various cultural backgrounds together. Therefore, embracing diversity of cultures brings various culturally different people together to build a team that embraces the developed organizational culture. Conclusion and summary As evident from the paper, leadership behaviour defines the success and continuity of operation of an organization. In order to ensure proper and effective leadership, it is necessary for every organization to embrace transformational leadership. The transformational leadership dimensions such as individualised influence, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration and inspirational motivation are highly significant in every organization. How these various dimensions are effectively utilised, is also crucial to the organization. Transactional dimensions such as contingent reward (both active and passive), and management-by-exception (both passive and active) significantly affect the effectiveness of leadership in an organization (Modassir & Singh, 2008, p6). Emotional intelligence, as discussed, is also a significant aspect of leadership behaviour. This is because; the various elements of emotional intelligence provide leaders and their followers with effective means of running organizations. It ensures effective utilization of the available resources with considerations on the differences that exist within the organizations. Through this essay, it is evident that emotional intelligence forms the central pillar of an organization, especially in leadership (Harms & Crede, 2010, p12). The various elements of emotional intelligence such as developing emotional self-control, empathy, understanding one’s and others’ emotions, managing relationships and knowing how to manage these emotions are critical to the organization as evidently discussed in the essay. As discussed, personal competence and social competence thus summarise effective utilization of emotional intelligence. It is thus evident that emotional intelligence is crucial to an organization since it enables self-evaluation and developing considerations of other people. This enhances peaceful coexistence within the organization. Every organization thus needs to embrace transformational, transactional leadership and emotional intelligence. These three factors also ensure embracing of difference in cultures within the organization, towards building a single organizational culture. Therefore, leadership behaviour requires various skills, styles and attributes. However, the effectiveness of such components is highly dependent on position that the organization takes. The integration of emotional intelligence, transformational and transactional leadership with various skills and styles of leadership ensures proper and effective leadership. Leadership styles such as democratic, authoritative, coaching and affiliative develop positive impacts to upon any given organizational climate. It is thus evident that, these three aspects enable achievement of set organizational goals and objectives, and since they enhance effective relationship between leaders and their followers. References: Harms, P. D. & Crede, Marcus, 2010, Emotional Intelligence and Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 17, 1, pp. 5-17. Doi: 10.1177/1548051809350894 Butler, Colleen & Chinowsky, Paul, 2006, Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Behaviour In Construction Executives, Journal of Management in Engineering, 22, 3, pp. 119-125. Doi: 10.1061/ (ASCE) 0742-597X (2006)23:3(119) Modassir, Atika, Singh, Tripti, 2008, Relationship of Emotional Intelligence with Transformational Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, International Journal of Leadership Studies, 4, 1, pp. 3-21. 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