Corporate Leaders: Success or Failure and Emotional Intelligence

Work efficiency and effectiveness has been influenced over the years by factors such as skills level, intelligent quotient and emotional intelligence but it is only recently that emotional intelligence has crawled into the fore of individual effectiveness and achievement. It was Daniel Goleman who first brought the term "emotional intelligence" to a wide audience with his 1995 book and it was Goleman who first applied the concept to business.

The current trend in multinational corporations is to include in the job selection strategy-a test that accesses the emotional intelligence of the new entrants, this is not to down play the importance of skills and intelligent quotient in the achievement of personal and organizational goals it is rather to inform on the more important role of emotional intelligence in the workplace. The various skills that constitute the core of emotional intelligence are:

Self management skills

Self-awareness: emotionally intelligent individuals are self aware, they understand their strengths and weaknesses and they leverage that knowledge for delivering effectiveness through synergy. Self aware people are constantly open to constructive criticisms, as it helps them improve. They can also be identified by their self-confidence, their vast understanding of their capabilities; they are realistic in their approach a philosophy that is often seen as incompetence weakness by senior management.

Self-regulation: they are always reflective; this is the ability to evaluate events and programmes to determine the reasons for failure and how they can be averted in future. This also entails the ability to exert control over emotions, feelings and impulse. Such individuals are logically reasonable and are able to create organizations based on trust equity and fairness rather than politics and infighting.

Motivation: this is intrinsic, being driven for the sake of achievement and not other external factors. They are highly motivated possessing skills such as: attitudes to work (optimism), unflagging energy to improve, a passion for new challenges and the work itself. Effective leaders are always driven to achieve beyond expectations- be it theirs or others'. Effective leaders seek out challenges, love to learn and enjoy the pride of job well done.

Relationship skills

Empathy: this is the ability to always consider the feelings of others especially making decisions. It is a skill that helps individuals sees situations and events through the eyes of others. Empathy is thoughtfully considering other people's feelings in the process of making intelligent decisions. It is not trying to please everyone as such activities can easily lead a business to inaction.

Social skill: this involves skills such as effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness, expertise in building teams, achieving results and extensive networking ability. This can be defined as friendliness with a purpose; it is the ability to move people in your desired direction. Whether it is about creating enthusiasm for a new product, sourcing for funds for a project or agreement on a new corporate strategy.

Considering the prime position and evolving importance of emotional intelligence to businesses and organizations, it is only important that we try to understand the source of emotional intelligence and how it can be improved on.

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