The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

Today, in a fast changing business environment, leaders need to manage an empowered workforce and go more and more beyond consultative, cooperative and democratic leadership styles. The today’s workforce does not accept an autocratic leadership style as they have now far more options and choices. In addition, there is a growing sense of democracy and independence in the workforce. Emotional Intelligence has become a vital and more and more important part of how today’s leaders meet the significant challenges they face. Emotion is known to alter thinking in many ways. It seems that Emotional Intelligence can help leaders in an evermore difficult leadership role, one that fewer and fewer leaders seem capable of fulfilling. And especially in the highest levels in organizations Emotional Intelligence can give developing leaders a competitive edge. The bottom line is that the manager who can think about emotions accurately and clearly may often be better able to anticipate, cope with, and effectively manage change. But provides the concept of Emotional Intelligence the answer to the question what the best leader differentiates from the average one? The following assignment aims at clarifying the role of emotional intelligence in leadership. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the theoretical framework surrounding the emotional intelligence concept by stating the most important models and its measurements. Chapter 3 points out the leaders’ emotional intelligence competencies to successful manage the organizations tasks. It also provides ways and even exercises of how to develop emotional intelligence and resonant leadership? To get the big picture, the last chapter explicitly summarizes the importance of emotional intelligence in the business field by also pointing out some critics to the Emotional Intelligence model.