What makes a great leader?

Technical skills?

A talent for communication?

An ability to work well with people and get the best out of them?

Over the years, plenty of research has shown that the world’s most successful leaders have one quality in common: ez Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient (EQ) is the ability of a person to understand and effectively manage his/her emotions and the emotions of the people around him/her.

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Unlike Intelligence Quotient (IQ), which measures a person’s ‘native’ or ‘innate’ intelligence, EQ measures their ability to understand other people and their motivations and work cooperatively with them for mutually beneficial outcomes. A person with a high EQ has a high level of personal integrity and excellent communication skills. These qualities make her highly proficient at managing relationships and navigating social networks with ease. She can also influence and inspire others. That’s why people with high EQ make great leaders. And that’s also why a great manager who lacks EQ is unlikely to be a great leader.

The importance of emotional Intelligence for business leaders and organisations

For any organisation, the competence and availability of its workforce determine its business outcomes. Highly-trained employees who are engaged with their organisation believe that their work is meaningful do better at their jobs. Consequently, they are more valued.

However, in many cases, an organisation may not have productive or engaged employees. This is when Emotional Intelligence comes in handy in more ways than one!

To improve workplace performance of employees

To understand the root causes of the company’s people problems, and to find effective solutions, a high degree of EQ is required. Therefore, such a critical task cannot be assigned to a manager who lacks EQ. This is where emotionally intelligent leaders can bring the slackers up to scratch and re-align their performance with its goals.

Also read: Yield a high-performance work culture with these unconventional motivating tools

For better teamwork 

Emotionally intelligent leaders are excellent at fostering, nurturing, and maintaining relationships. Their communication skills enable them to express their thoughts and ideas with clarity and passion. People listen to them and trust them. They even want to follow them. Furthermore, such leaders are highly empathetic to understand different points of view and address conflict in the workplace in healthy ways. All of these abilities of emotionally intelligent leaders help promote teamwork and ensure extraordinary outcomes for the team and the organisation.

Also read: Do team building events really work for small businesses?

To conclude 

Applying Emotional Intelligence to leadership is not just natural. It is also critical. Without it, a so-called ‘leader’ will lack empathy, self-awareness, self-motivation, and any number of other crucial skills required for excellent results in the workplace. It doesn’t matter how smart a person is. Without Emotional Intelligence, he will never get far in his ambition to be a great leader.

Also read: What is successful leadership?

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