[Answered] What do you understand by emotional intelligence? Discuss the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership.

Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability to understand our own emotions and other’s emotions and use them constructively to guide one’s thinking and actions. Persons who are capable of having awareness of emotions for self or others and regulate accordingly are called emotionally intelligent. Persons who fail to do so, deviate and thereby develop abreaction of emotion, resulting in anger, frustration and conflict. It has 5 components:

• Self-awareness,
• Managing emotions,
• Motivating oneself,
• Empathy,
• Social skills.

Importance of emotional intelligence in leadership:

• Effective Communication: Emotionally intelligent leaders know what to say and when to say, which help them to develop better strategies and increase their efficiency by synchronising their efforts.
• Developing realistic Goal: Self-awareness ability allows a leader to not only know his/her strengths and weaknesses, but also strength and weaknesses of his team members. This helps in delegation of work based on strengths of team.
• Develop Empathy:  Ability to recognize others’ emotions help leaders to practice empathy. It helps them to understand their colleagues’ feelings and perspectives, which enables them to communicate and collaborate more effectively with their peers.
• Management of stressful situations:  Leaders who lack emotional intelligence tend to react and have a harder time in keeping their impulses in check.
• Conflict resolution: Emotional Intelligence helps leaders to influence and mentor others and help in resolving conflict effectively.
• Motivation:Emotionally Intelligent leaders work consistently toward their goals, and establish extremely high standards for the quality of their work. This motivates other teammates to achieve these standards and goals.
• Better team performance:Emotionally Intelligent leader focus on collaboration between team members, which creates synergy and a better experience for employees. This leads to confidence building and better team performance.
• Decision making: Emotionally Intelligent leaders make objective decisions based on accumulated wisdom and understanding with time.
• It develops a strong bond between a leader and their team.

Emotional intelligence in the leadership is critical for team’s effectiveness. It plays an important role in driving team and organisation together towards a goal and help in conflict resolution. It enables a leader to be more empathetic, professional, understanding and goal oriented.