How Emotional Intelligence Can Make Us Leaders

Several years ago Dr. Daniel Goleman helped us to expand our understanding of intelligence. Historically we have limited our understanding of intelligence to generally the measurement by way of an “IQ test” which typically assesses two areas of measurement: mathematical quotient and the linguistic quotient generally speaking most college placement tests focus on some facsimile of these two areas. Historically would appear that we were literally “stuck” in this quandary of intelligence that translated from mathematics to linguistics. Fortunately about 10 years ago there were two expansions of our understanding of intelligence from the perspective of eight levels of intelligence which also include its spatial, patterns, music etc. At the same time, Dr. Goldman and others expanded the field of intelligence to include spiritual, physical, and of course all emotional, and social. There have been several studies conducted that seek to compare intellectual, “high I. Q.” with him “high emotional intelligence” as to which is most important in securing success in everyday life, especially in the work place. Almost everyone was surprised that high intellectual intelligence was far less significant in contrast to high emotional intelligence in reference to the measurement of success in the workplace. Though these studies do not for some appear to have immediate credibility, if we spend a little bit time processing the components of emotional intelligence we will probably come the conclusion that emotional and social intelligence are the big winners in the workplace.

To begin with, we focus on ourselves and our ability to understand how we are responding emotionally what sort of drives us and effects our moods we become aware that our own self-assessment along with self-esteem, a sense a humor which can be self-deprecating at times are rather major players.

We also realize that we often have to redirect our moods and sometimes our impulses when others do not treat us as we would perhaps like to be treated. Were able to do this because we have a “comfort within our own skin” a sense of trust within ourselves as well as an appreciation for our integrity.

Our own inner awareness of our emotional intelligence supports the motivation and often the passion to complete work tasks and often this passion goes beyond money or fairness are emotional intelligence helps us to have a sense of business commitment even when there are major obstacles to overcome and we may actually face failure.

Our emotional intelligence expands beyond ourselves to truly understand the emotional makeup of people that we interact with and we have the awareness of our ability to establish rapport, trust, and confidence we are able to go beyond minor irritations to greater service of our fellow workers as well as our customers.

Emotional intelligence helps us to expand both as a leader and an expert in managing relationships and building effective networks of communication we are definitely leaders of change we have ability to persuade and often become charismatic as we build and lead teams throughout the workplace.

There is no doubt that intelligence is very basic and very important for success in the workplace however high intelligence without high emotional and social intelligence is usually doomed to failure. Intellectual intelligence without the ability of developing relationships, networks and the unique ability to develop teammenship, etc. would have a very limited and inconsistent outcome. High emotional intelligence gives us the greatest amount of persuasiveness, expertise, and confidence in bringing about profile and, effective long-term change and growth. At the end of the day motion will intelligence will always be the winner!