Emotional intelligence
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Recent in-house programmes run by HMCL:
The Emotionally Intelligent Team
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership for Women
The Emotionally Intelligent Leader
Stellar Leadership
Emotional Intelligence (EI) enables us to know and manage ourselves well whilst empowering us to understand, motivate and relate effectively to others. According to Goleman (1998) who has popularised the concept within the business community, EI is ‘the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships’.
In a nutshell EI is about how we relate to ourselves and other people, how our self-awareness and awareness of others affects how we manage ourselves, our emotions, and how we manage other people. The foundations of EI are self regard and regard for others. If we have an equal high regard for ourselves and other people then our relationships will develop on that basis. It doesn’t mean being nice all the time, what it does mean is that you can disagree without being offensive, or give a compliment where it is deserved, but it’s actually much more than that. Dozens of studies in scores of organisations suggest that approximately two-thirds of the competencies linked to superior performance are emotional or social qualities such as self-confidence, flexibility, persistence, empathy and ability to get along with others ( R., Bar-On, J.D.A. Parker, (2000) The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Development, Assessment and Application at Home, School, and in the Workplace. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).
In leadership positions almost 90% of the competencies necessary for success are social and emotional in nature (Goleman, 1995). According to the EFQM Excellence Model ‘Leadership motivates by example, and people follow because they trust their leaders and the journey he/she wishes them to take together’. In addition ‘leaders provide motivation, support and recognition to their people’. To achieve this, leaders need to be emotionally intelligent.
Emotional Intelligence isn’t about being ‘all touchy feely’, it’s about enhancing understanding to impact on individual and organisational performance and to influence that ever important bottom line.
Research suggests that emotional intelligence competencies can be developed and changes can be sustained over a prolonged period of time (Boyatzis, Cowan and Kolb, 1995; Boyatzis, Howard, Rapisarda and Taylor, 2004).
Emotional intelligence is based in the limbic system and traditional training methods tend to focus on analytical and technical abilities, which are centred in the neocortex of the brain(Goleman, 2001). Enhancing the emotional intelligence of managers and leaders requires a more individualised approach than traditional management training programmes and is likely to take more time than traditional development approaches. Executives need to practice in order to change and as they practice they need feedback about their performance. This feedback could come from a valued colleague or mentor. However, for many executives this can be a difficult process and there may be some reticence in asking for feedback from someone within the same organisation, and people close to senior managers may be afraid or unaware of how to confront them about their behaviour (Kampa and White, 2002). Employing the skills of an executive coach enables executives to obtain the necessary feedback for change and development within what is predominantly a confidential forum (Boyatzis, Howard, Rapisarda and Taylor, 2004; Hall, Otazo and Hollenbeck, 1999).