Emotional Intelligence is the Pathway to Genius Leadership
What qualities do leaders need to achieve leadership in a whirlwind of change?
Leadership always has an emotional foundation. Genius leadership touches our emotions. But the emotional response is not limited to a surge of positive emotions, but opens up a whole spectrum of human feelings and related reactions, actions and processes.
Since a leader has a huge influence on others, his philosophy and worldview formulate the meaning of what is happening, offering an interpretation or version of understanding the situation, as well as the nature of the emotional reaction to it, and this is the area of Emotional Intelligence.
J.D.Mayer and P.Salovey were the first to use the term «Emotional Intelligence» as a component of social intelligence, which includes the ability to track one's own feelings and feelings of people around, see differences in them, and use the information obtained to control thinking and actions.
The popularization of the concept of Emotional Intelligence was facilitated by the research and fundamental work of D.Goleman in collaboration with R.Boyatzis and A.McKee.
D.Goleman considers Emotional Intelligence as a prerequisite for effective leadership and considers that the contribution of EQ to the effectiveness of managerial activity is twice the corresponding contribution of factors such as technical skills and IQ, he described a leadership ability model, which establishes a connection between leadership and such aspects of EQ like self-awareness, self-control, social sensitivity and relationship management.
D.Goleman considers emotional intelligence as a combination of factors that allow a person to feel, motivate themselves, regulate mood, control impulsive manifestations, refrain from frustration and, thus, achieve success in everyday life.
Thus, Emotional Intelligence is an integral category and includes a set of emotional, communicative and regulatory personality traits, i.e. includes not only intellect and emotions, but also volition.
Figure 1 shows the structure of emotional intelligence.
Figure 1 – The structure of Emotional Intelligence
Thus, the structure of Emotional Intelligence is represented by the following elements:
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Self-awareness - knowledge of oneself, introspection, the ability to objectively assess one's strength and abilities, i.e. it is an individual's understanding of the essence of own personality, awareness of own place in society and the whole picture of the world, this is a vision and analysis of personal emotions, feelings and motives of behavior;
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Self-regulation - the ability to control and manage emotions, adequately express emotions, the ability to choose emotions depending on the situation, the ability to use your emotions to direct attention to the most important events, the ability to evoke certain emotions necessary to increase the efficiency of activities, the ability to use different aspects of mood to analyze various points of view on the problem being solved;
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Self-motivation is a key life skill, it is the power that makes you do something, it is the ability to use deep motives, signals and preferences to achieve goals, i.e. it is the ability to be aware of the need for action;
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Empathy - the ability to understand what other people feel, the ability to put yourself in their place, i.e. it is the ability to comprehend the emotional state of another person through understanding his inner world without losing the clarity of understanding own world;
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Social skills - the ability to recognize emotions in relationships between other people, connections between emotions, transitions, causes, the ability to manage stressful situations, inspire, lead, etc.
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Thus, the Emotional Intelligence of a leader, who is confident, and credible to his subordinates, contributes to motivation, inspiration and the achievement of outstanding results.