How Important Is Emotional Intelligence for a Leader?

How important is emotional intelligence for a leader?

Several years before, the requirements for a leader are about high IQ, outstanding education degree, professional technical skills and some other tangible certifications. Everything is changed. Although all of these requirements do matter, they became the entry-level requirements for leaders. Nowadays, one more vital requirement is added into the list. It is high degree of emotional intelligence.

We cannot survive in an isolated situation. Especially when globalization became an unavoidable trend. Organizations keep talking and emphasizing team-base and group work structures. Leaders have to understand the importance of sharing, communication, collaboration and any other intangible elements, which become more and more popular in modern society.

How to understand these intangible elements well? The answer is about the five components of emotional intelligence. There are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy for others and social skills.

My point of view:

I separated these five components into three stages. The first stage is “manage yourself”, which includes self-awareness and self-regulation. The second stage is “understand others”, which contains motivation and empathy for others. The third stage is “build your world”, which is mainly about using social skills to manage and build relationships and networks.

Leaders always busy, they have to handle multiple tasks. They rarely have time to stop and think about themselves. Self-examination is the combination of self-awareness and self-regulation. Most people may argue that they know themselves so well; they don’t really need to get to this stage. But everything is changed in every second. Stop for a rest, think about yourself and regulate yourself are the indispensible steps.

As a leader, motivate people is your job. How to motivate people in an effective way? You should understand what they want and what they need. How can I know? Put yourself into others shoes.

After you understand yourself and people around you, you already built certain level of social skills, now is the time to go out of your place. Upgrade your capability by extends your networks.

Currently a lot of traditional leaders they do not have high EQ, but they still running successful businesses. But in my point of view, EQ is the next competitive edge for successful leader.

Reference:

https://hbr.org/2015/04/how-emotional-intelligence-became-a-key-leadership-skill