Developing Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

I believe it is important for a good leader to spend time developing a team's emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence helps us to control our emotions and use them in a positive manner. As leaders, we need to be able to share that with our team. If we declare that we have a vision or a goal and we are going to work towards our mission statement, we will loose credibility if we are overly emotional. For example, if we are trying to persuade others to see the benefits of using environmentally friendly products because and some people still chose not to, we would do no good if be began to shout or become angry about it. Since our group is to share our same values and beliefs and are working towards the same goal, we do not want them doing that either.

I can remember one time when I was working with a volunteer group that was trying to get the town to allow us to host AA meetings in our building. The town did not want us doing that and we had to spend weeks and weeks lobbying for approval. I can remember getting so frustrated each time we got turned down. I would vacillate between being angry and being sad. My supervisor would always encourage me to be sure I did not approach the town council with these types of feeling as it would make me seem irrational, even though it was obvious that this was something I felt passionate about. Instead of emotions, we chose to use logic and facts in our presentation and allow the emotions to be the motivation for pushing forward.