The role of a manager in today’s organizations has evolved from planning, controlling, and inspecting organizational operations to motivating and inspiring others, creating a sense of importance among employees, and cultivating a positive working environment. Superior technical competence and solid experience thus should be complemented with the right values, behaviors, emotions and the ability to handle oneself properly. Effective leaders must be able to acknowledge and address key people issues and create a climate that encourages high performance, pride, and purpose. In order to meet the rise of effective leadership, leaders at all levels must have high emotional intelligence translating into a heightened sense of self-awareness, the ability to manage their emotions as well as those of others, to develop affinity among diverse groups of people, create vision, and to motivate and inspire others to achieve shared goals and objectives. Emotional intelligence, whether empirically or qualitatively measured, should thus be used as a factor in all business promotion decisions from line managers to C-Suite executives.
Effective managers instill a workplace where individual contribution is valued and praised due to trust and fairness in the system allowing free flow of ideas and innovation. Such environment is better fostered when the person in charge has a heightened sense of self-awareness and self-regulation especially when it comes to controlling predatory emotions and reactions while dealing with subordinates and third parties (Goleman, 1998). A manager who also is empathetic, that is being considerate of employees’ feelings, is even more successful in fostering such collaborative environment. Individuals feel respected and talented people remain in the organization. Thus, in choosing who to promote next, companies must value individuals who can foster a collaborative and respectful work environment and who can be a magnet to retain talent and boost business. Further, an empirical study conducted by Griffin (2013) shows a strong correlation between sales managers who exhibit high empathy and understanding of emotions and their ability to meet and surpass their sales goals. When planning, coordinating, and executing sales strategies, sales managers must demonstrate competency in leadership behavior sensing what they and their subordinates were feeling to be able to transition effectively from one state to another such as discouraged to more aggressive in response to the changing environment.
Beyond the ability to regulate and understand emotions, managers also have a big role to play in motivating their teams especially when facing challenges. Sosik and Megerian (1999) state that emotionally intelligent leaders provide the momentum for individuals to collectively perform. This motivation comes with the use of symbolic management techniques such as the use of stories, inspirational speech, and rituals which effectively encourage individuals to perform to the standard required. In difficult times, or in times of conflicts, effective managers must also have the ability to properly handle the situation and maintain team dynamics. Baral (2017) states that conflict management requires the ability to bring disagreements into open and resolve them by aligning personal and subordinate goals leveraging a good emotional intelligence. Thus, not only do emotionally intelligent leaders evaluate team members’ emotional situations in order to motivate, but also they do so to discourage harmful interactions. So in deciding who to promote next, special emphasis should be put on those who demonstrate strong abilities in inspiring others and solving conflicts.
127 our experts are availableright now
Critics of emotional intelligence as a predictor of effective leadership like Antonakis (2003) worry that the literature available on the topic does not provide robust empirical evidence supporting its importance namely because it does not control for other measures like general cognitive ability (“g”) and because of its reliance on self reporting. Further he makes the claim that emotional intelligence is hard to measure quantitatively. While such claims must be taken into consideration when deciding on promotions for example by being wary of results from tests like the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), evidence still shows the qualitative importance of emotional intelligence in fostering a thriving workplace environment governed by trust and fairness and where the leader plays the motivator and facilitator role. Thus, in deciding on business promotions, emotional intelligence, perhaps qualitatively measured, should still be taken into account in addition to more established cognitive abilities and prior experience.
