Write up 2 pages about the case below, including these elements (What is the mai
ID: 370818 • Letter: W
Question
Write up 2 pages about the case below, including these elements (What is the main idea of the article?,What are you own personal thoughts, ideas, reflections?, How might apply the ideas in the article in practice? o Sharing personal experiences is a plus)
Executive Summary
When asked to define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—the qualities traditionally associated with leadership. Such skills and smarts are necessary but insufficient qualities for the leader. Often left off the list are softer, more personal qualities—but they are also essential. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, studies indicate that emotional intelligence may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate.
Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman first brought the term “emotional intelligence” to a wide audience with his 1995 book of the same name, and Goleman first applied the concept to business with this 1998 classic HBR article. In his research at nearly 200 large, global companies, Goleman found that truly effective leaders are distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence. Without it, a person can have first-class training, an incisive mind, and an endless supply of good ideas, but he still won’t be a great leader.
The chief components of emotional intelligence—self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill—can sound unbusinesslike, but Goleman, cochair of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based at Rutgers University, found direct ties between emotional intelligence and measurable business results. The notion of emotional intelligence and its relevance to business has continued to spark debate over the past six years, but Goleman’s article remains the definitive reference on the subject, with a detailed discussion of each component of emotional intelligence, how to recognize it in potential leaders, how and why it connects to performance, and how it can be learned.
Explanation / Answer
Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the capacity of an individual to be aware of his emotions and control and express them appropriately. It also means to make use of the emotional information to guide the thinking and behaviour of oneself and also of the surrounding people. The presence of Emotional intelligence enables an individual to handle interpersonal relationships more judiciously and empathetically. The given article talks about the necessary qualities that a leader must possess. The author lists down the most commonly observed traits of a leader such as intelligence, toughness, determination, vision, etc. Although, the author does not validates the fact that these are the only skills that a leader should have and refers to the findings of the renowned psychologist and author Daniel Goleman who first coined the term “Emotional Intelligence”. The main idea that the article conveys is the importance of the Emotional Intelligence in a leader and weigh it as a must-have quality. This is of course in addition to the basic analytical and technical skills that the position of the leader demands.
Emotional Intelligence enables a leader to be more self-aware, self-regulated, self-motivated and to have empathy towards the people he supervises. Multinational organisations have leaders at various hierarchy of the organisational structure. Top executives including directors, chairman, etc. Middle management executives like product heads, head of the departments, etc. Then, there are junior level managers like floor managers, line managers, team leaders, etc. One aspect of their job that is common across the hierarchy is the fact that they have people working under them, reporting to them and its the duty of a leader to supervise and guide the team. The team members often look upto their leaders for solutions and expects them to be the guiding force of the entire team. The traits that the author has observed in the article like intelligence, toughness, determination, vision, analytical and technical skills are necessary because in the absence of these, no manager or leader remains in the position to supervise their sub-ordinates. But, what makes great leaders different from other leaders is the presence of Emotional Intelligence (EI). One may ask why is Emotional Intelligence necessary for a leader? Well, Emotional Intelligence in a leader enables them to be more judicious and empathetic in their decisions. It gives their sub-ordinates a sense of belonging to the leader and it makes a leader more human.
In one of my previous jobs, I had a manager whom I really admired. He was in the list of top 20 employees of the organisation, highly respected among the top-most executives, product head of the department by designation and on one particular evening, I really got to know what makes him so superior as a leader.
It was the financial year ending time and the team had backlogs of huge tasks that needed to be accomplished before entering into a new financial year. All of us team members were slogging and doing overtime for consecutive weeks and inspite of that it seemed that the work is not going to finish. One fine evening, one of our team member and my colleague, approached our manager and asked to finish early as it was his wife’s birthday and it would have serious impacts on their relationship if he fails to provide her company on her birthday. Now, for a leader whose team is working so hard to accomplish the targets and still feels that they are going to miss them, granting one of the team member an early leave might have impacted the motivation level of other team members and would have created a negative flow of energy in the team. Also, he would not want to make one of his good performing sub-ordinate dissatisfied and unhappy. He didn’t grant an early leave to him and instead told him to finish all his tasks as early as possible even if it required him to skip lunch for that day. Meanwhile, he ordered one of the office staff to get packed a large chocolate cake and a bottle of wine for the sub-ordinate’s wife’s birthday and burgers for the entire team, all of this from his own pocket. None of us had to work overtime that day and all of us left at our usual timings. Our manager, our leader didn’t disappointed any of us and instead increased our respect and loyalty towards him as a supervisor. The morale of the whole team was so high for the coming few weeks that all of our tasks got accomplished 3 days prior to the deadline. Our manager surely had high Emotional Intelligence (EI) in addition to required analytical and technical skills and that made him different from other leaders of the organisation.
There is absolutely no doubt that emotional intelligence is a must have quality of a great leader and as the article rightly says, “Emotional intelligence is the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate.”
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.