Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Leaders - Essay Example

Since the appearance of humankind, leadership has evolved in the sense of necessity. In the Stone Age the leader only needed brute force, in the middle age the leader already developed influencing skills towards others, in the industrial age the leader needed mechanical skills and a great experience, and currently, the leader needs knowledge, skills, and experience. Undoubtedly one of the most important competencies that every 21st-century leader must possess is emotional intelligence; Goleman (2004, p.1) said: IQ and technical skills are essential, but emotional intelligence is a mandatory and indispensable condition of leadership. And what is emotional intelligence? Goleman (2004, p.1) states that emotional intelligence "is the ability to self-motivate ourselves, to persevere despite possible frustrations, to control the impulses to defer gratifications to regulate our moods, to prevent distress interferes with our rational faculties and the ability to empathize and trust others." In turn, Pittaluga (2012, p.46) adds that emotional intelligence consists of "the ability to perceive, evaluate and express emotions adequately; to understand one's own emotions and those of others; to generate feelings or access them, to facilitate the associated cognitive activities; and, finally, to regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others ". After observing these brief concepts, it could be said that the use of emotional intelligence in leaders improves the effectiveness of the resolution of labor conflicts substantially.

Leadership is one of the issues that has been most touched in recent times since it has been seen that people with interests unrelated to developing the welfare of the societies or organizations that were at the forefront of these, did not know how to improve the situation in who found them. Ackley (2016) says: "Leadership is the ability to transform vision into reality," without a doubt that vision is an innate quality to the leader, of course, many people can have a vision, but only a leader can make it a reality. And leadership is a gift that has to be developed as the gift of music, Beethoven had the gift but it was not enough, he worked hard to achieve the results that we all already know, likewise, leadership is constant work and development (D'Alessio, 2010, pp. 3-5). But the leader is a human being like everyone he has to lead, for which he must know his behavior and the reason for it. In any organization, the main engines of growth are human resources, and it is for this reason that the leader must be adequately prepared. In the current and future context, of global analysis, of rapid decisions in interdisciplinary teams, human potential is the differentiator in organizations. The leader needs an intense training in the subject of his or her domain, to know and lead others and transmit the vision to his team. Starting from one of the many definitions, "Leadership is a process of influence, in the activities of individuals or groups, for the achievement of common goals, in certain situations." This includes:

activities and goals on the one hand (tasks and organization)

an influence of individuals and groups, in certain situations (people and context)

Then the Leader needs to be trained in:

Effective execution of activities: Needs tools for planning and monitoring those activities. Task planning requires more Rational Intelligence (which is taught mostly in technical colleges and in traditional project leadership courses).

Development and interaction with people: And this is the most important and perhaps the least concrete part of the leaders training. The conduction of people requires Emotional Intelligence (intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence). Emotional Intelligence begins with the knowledge of oneself.

According to the words of Alfredo Diez, ADEN Business School teacher, when speaking of managerial skills in the 21st century, we can no longer refer to a boss who orders, commands or punishes. We need a leader who appeals to work and develops his emotional intelligence. At present it has been observed through statistics and studies that the more satisfied a person is in his work, the more he performs and improves his results. We refer to the development and strengthening of emotional intelligence in managers that allows them to have the ability to recognize their own emotions and those of their team to be able to manage them correctly (Sadri, 2012). Also adding the ability to motivate, lead, without the need to expect from others. A manager must have emotional competencies to be a leader in the 21st century, a position granted by the team and their trust generated. A good leader does not call himself, but the leader is the one to whom others attribute the leadership, and he does not value anything that he puts on his business card or on the sign that hangs on his door.

Today, a successful manager who becomes a leader is one who has self-control, communication skills, who knows how to listen, who generates trust, who has interpersonal sensitivity and who knows how to lead. Moreover, it is proven that 85% of the importance and traction ability and good results of a leader depends on their interpersonal management (Rankin, 2013). A manager who cuts expenses and saves more costs is the better manager. The boss who listens, who is receptive, who values the people on his team and who interacts with them is the head of the 21st century. Emotions used to be a taboo in the company, currently all studies recognize that emotions go from home to work and from work to home; So what distinguishes an executive or a high-performance team leader is his capacity for empathy, much more than his CV.

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

The importance of emotional intelligence is to optimize both personal and professional performance. The more satisfied the person is in his job, the more he will perform, and the higher his performance, the more he will have a positive impact on the company's income statement, and therefore the financial performance will be higher (Kristjansson, 2006). The individual needs to feel good with his manager and in the company, which is the place where he spends the most daily hours. Therefore, a good manager who is a true leader must help employees to be happy, and that is how you will link them to the company, and the results will be splendid.

Working on the motivation of my team increased customer satisfaction, resulting in a substantial economic increase. Likewise, the worker should not wait for his boss to motivate and stimulate him to do his job, one of the fundamental concepts of emotional intelligence lies in the individual's ability to self-motivate (Pittaluga, 2012). He must make his self-stimulation effort. In this task of introspection and self-knowledge, it is positive that you can talk to your boss and tell him what you feel and what you want to work more efficiently, defending your competence with maturity and firmness to finally get your boss to understand and work collaboratively.

If a manager does not understand the basis of leadership and performance coaching, he cannot be a good leader in these times, because his scheme will be old and obsolete, since simply with the "command, command and punishment," the worker goes to fulfill the right and nothing else. Nowadays it is necessary to develop other types of skills that require an analysis of emotional intelligence. The workers are the soul of a company because they are the ones that make the results grow or decrease.

A good leader knows how to control himself or herself before an adversity; he faces his challenges leaving his problems aside because they are people with a great mental state. They are usually very well informed and very communicative. They know how to listen to their people because listening is learned a lot (Ackley, 2016). All these skills can be developed and reinforced because in many areas of our lives are needed either as entrepreneurs, parents or in any profession in which we must motivate and fill with enthusiasm the people around us, and therefore emotional intelligence plays a fundamental role in this capacity development.

To evaluate emotional and social intelligence and create development plans, Goleman (2004) propose a behavioral assessment tool based on seven emotional and social skills:

Empathy: Understand what motivates others, even those who come from different environments and experiences, develop sensitivity to their needs

Tuning: Listen carefully, think about how others feel, tune into their moods

Organizational Awareness: The ability to appreciate the culture of the organization and understand its social networks, the explicit and implicit norms

Influence: The ability to persuade and gather the support of key people

The growth of others: Skills related to coaching, mentoring, with providing useful and effective feedback

Inspire others: Developing a compelling vision, building a positive emotional tone, ability to instill pride and bring out the best in people

Teamwork: Encourage the participation and collaboration of all team members

We can also indicate some skills that are strengthened by the development of emotional intelligence:

generate trust in our team and collaborators;

be present and solid in our role;

learn and develop the instrument of "powerful questions";

ability to communicate directly;

ability to create and make aware of the conscience (of oneself, of the company, of each one's abilities);

ability to develop actions in the right direction

ability to manage the objectives and activities that involve other sectors;

ability to assume and delegate responsibility;

Ability to manage progress and growth of responsibility in themselves and others.

If we agree with the fact that the role of the manager is based on choosing people and making them grow with satisfaction and in line with the achievement of the objectives of the organization, it is important to ask ourselves how we can assume such a large responsibility without knowing, dominate and manage the "personal" emotional heritage of ourselves and our collaborators. Emotional intelligence is a crucial tool to understand and exploit the full potential of people and teams within the company and can solve many business problems and needs, without resorting to external resources, which can often be expensive and inefficient. The use of emotional intelligence in leaders improves substantially the effectiveness in the resolution of labor conflicts; it has been shown that effectively when the leaders use emotional intelligence, it substantially improves the effectiveness in resolving labor conflicts (Deepika, 2016). By developing emotional intelligence skills leaders can feel empathy and know their followers and self-knowledge to self-regulate to achieve a more efficient communication which leads to a resolution of labor problems faster and sustained over time. The development of emotional intelligence has a close relationship with the transformational leadership style, as D'Alessio correctly said (2010, p.60), this style of leadership is real leadership. Therefore it is recommended that the leaders of the 21st century develop emotional intelligence capabilities.

The 21st century is a period of many rapid changes in different areas of science and life in general. Leaders must be able to adapt to very rapid changes, and for that, emotional intelligence will be crucial in inspiring and motivating the development of people. Each of these capacities has a reason why they should be developed in the leaders because it will be a significant competitive advantage for organizations with leaders of these characteristics (Deepika, 2016, p. 33). There are competencies that are already inherent to the leader...