LEADERSHIP AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Introduction
If you have been a manager, a supervisor, or a leader at different stages of your career you have
experienced the fun as well as the frustration, the heady feelings as well as the heart breaks of
trying to work with and lead people. As a professional, you're selected on the basis of your
specialist expertise. When you're an individual contributor, your performance and effectiveness
are largely determined by your knowledge, skills, and efforts. Over time, when you get promoted
to managerial roles, you're required to step out of the confines of your domain expertise. Your
performance now also depends on skills, attitudes, and efforts of your team members, your peers,
your superiors, and even external stakeholders. For example, there may be new demands and
expectations from your superiors or your clients, but you find that you're short of skills and
motivation in your team. You have to introduce a new approach, yet your colleagues are
skeptical. You have to work through relationship difficulties and are expected to listen not only
to the spoken words but also to unspoken emotions. And there are times when you feel that your
own moods and feelings are at low ebb. During those periods, you're expected to draw on your
inner resources to motivate yourself and exhibit resilience. When there is relentless stress of
work pressure, such difficulties become even more taxing. We have a huge body of knowledge
arising from research and practice on effective ways of dealing with such challenges. There is
conclusive evidence that the so-called soft skills that seem and sound un-businesslike are
absolutely crucial for stellar work performance, outstanding leadership, and happy and motivated
workforce.
In this course, we'll bring you key insights on a range of issues that are important for frontline
leaders. For example, how do you strengthen teamwork, what are effective ways of dealing with
, conflict? How do you develop your own leadership development plan to enhance your future
readiness? How do you create ownership for change, and how do you ensure effective
execution?
What Makes a Leader?
What makes a leader? The Harvard Business Review regards Daniel Goleman's paper on what
makes a leader as one of its 10 must-read articles of all time. Daniel Goleman's pioneering
research with 200 global companies showed that certain qualities that sound soft and un-
businesslike are absolutely crucial for stellar work performance, outstanding leadership and
creating happiness. Let’s look at Goleman's ideas on emotional intelligence and leadership.
We've all been recruited into our organizations, largely on the basis of our IQ. This refers to our
quantitative, language, analytical and other such abilities. IQ is required to deal with the
cognitive complexity we confront in our jobs. While IQ is important, it is considered a social
capability. It is a door opener. The people who are selected into a profession may have an IQ that
is about one standard deviation above the normal, say, IQ of 115. When everyone is about as
smart as everyone else, in terms of IQ, it is how people manage themselves and their
relationships that gives the best performers their competitive edge. In other words, you have to
be smart in a different way. That is where emotional intelligence, or EQ, comes in. EQ is the
ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively. Goleman's research showed that
EQ is twice as important as domain skills and IQ for middle-level managers. The importance of
EQ increases as you move up the organization. At senior and top levels, as high as 90 percent of
your success flows from EQ. There are four components of emotional intelligence at work. Two
of these are intrapersonal components and two are interpersonal. Then you have dimensions of
awareness and actions. Thus, the four components are:
Introduction
If you have been a manager, a supervisor, or a leader at different stages of your career you have
experienced the fun as well as the frustration, the heady feelings as well as the heart breaks of
trying to work with and lead people. As a professional, you're selected on the basis of your
specialist expertise. When you're an individual contributor, your performance and effectiveness
are largely determined by your knowledge, skills, and efforts. Over time, when you get promoted
to managerial roles, you're required to step out of the confines of your domain expertise. Your
performance now also depends on skills, attitudes, and efforts of your team members, your peers,
your superiors, and even external stakeholders. For example, there may be new demands and
expectations from your superiors or your clients, but you find that you're short of skills and
motivation in your team. You have to introduce a new approach, yet your colleagues are
skeptical. You have to work through relationship difficulties and are expected to listen not only
to the spoken words but also to unspoken emotions. And there are times when you feel that your
own moods and feelings are at low ebb. During those periods, you're expected to draw on your
inner resources to motivate yourself and exhibit resilience. When there is relentless stress of
work pressure, such difficulties become even more taxing. We have a huge body of knowledge
arising from research and practice on effective ways of dealing with such challenges. There is
conclusive evidence that the so-called soft skills that seem and sound un-businesslike are
absolutely crucial for stellar work performance, outstanding leadership, and happy and motivated
workforce.
In this course, we'll bring you key insights on a range of issues that are important for frontline
leaders. For example, how do you strengthen teamwork, what are effective ways of dealing with
, conflict? How do you develop your own leadership development plan to enhance your future
readiness? How do you create ownership for change, and how do you ensure effective
execution?
What Makes a Leader?
What makes a leader? The Harvard Business Review regards Daniel Goleman's paper on what
makes a leader as one of its 10 must-read articles of all time. Daniel Goleman's pioneering
research with 200 global companies showed that certain qualities that sound soft and un-
businesslike are absolutely crucial for stellar work performance, outstanding leadership and
creating happiness. Let’s look at Goleman's ideas on emotional intelligence and leadership.
We've all been recruited into our organizations, largely on the basis of our IQ. This refers to our
quantitative, language, analytical and other such abilities. IQ is required to deal with the
cognitive complexity we confront in our jobs. While IQ is important, it is considered a social
capability. It is a door opener. The people who are selected into a profession may have an IQ that
is about one standard deviation above the normal, say, IQ of 115. When everyone is about as
smart as everyone else, in terms of IQ, it is how people manage themselves and their
relationships that gives the best performers their competitive edge. In other words, you have to
be smart in a different way. That is where emotional intelligence, or EQ, comes in. EQ is the
ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively. Goleman's research showed that
EQ is twice as important as domain skills and IQ for middle-level managers. The importance of
EQ increases as you move up the organization. At senior and top levels, as high as 90 percent of
your success flows from EQ. There are four components of emotional intelligence at work. Two
of these are intrapersonal components and two are interpersonal. Then you have dimensions of
awareness and actions. Thus, the four components are:
