Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Great analytical skills, tech-savvy and experience are the three principal characteristics that everyone associates with a leader. However, a major quality that most people overlook is emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence, also known as EI or EQ, in simple terms is the ability to understand and handle emotions of your own and those of others.

Having emotional intelligence is essential for success. After all, a leader who assesses the situation calmly and stays in control always has an edge over the ones who shout at their team when under stress.

Emotional Intelligence can be broken down into four core competencies-

a) self-awareness
b)self-management
c) social awareness
d) relationship management

Self-awareness is at the core of everything. It describes a leader’s ability to not only understand one’s strengths and weaknesses but to recognize one’s emotions and the effect they have on them and their team’s performance. In order to bring out the best in others, leaders first need to bring out the best in themselves, which is where self-awareness comes into play.

Self-management refers to the ability to manage one’s emotions, particularly in stressful situations, and maintain a positive outlook despite setbacks. Leaders who lack self-management tend to react and have a harder time keeping their impulses in check. While it’s important to understand and manage one’s own emotions, one also needs to know how to read a room.

Social awareness describes one’s ability to recognize others’ emotions and the dynamics in play within their organization.

Relationship management refers to one’s ability to influence, coach, and mentor others, and resolve conflict effectively. Some prefer to avoid conflict, but it’s important to properly address issues as they arise.

To develop leadership skills, one doesn’t need to be a robot and turn their emotions off, but rather focus on their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.

Astorianz Industries hosted a leadership masterclass with Indian Army veteran Lt. Gen. Balbir Singh Sandhu (PVSM, VSM) talking about leadership in the age of digital and digitization. Watch here.

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