Why is EI important in the making of a leader?
Generally, emotional intelligence skills include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. The first three skills imply to self-management skills. Self-awareness refers to the understanding of your strengths and weaknesses and to the ability to evaluate your abilities and competences. Self-awareness plays a key role in making a leader as provides both self-confidence and self-criticism. Leaders with these skills are usually able to manage their time, to perform right amount of work, and to achieve their goals without any distractions. Self-regulation means the ability to possess yourself, to control your emotions and feelings, and to be able to channel them properly. The good leader should deal with unexpected changes both within the company and on the competitive market and should be able to think clearly and calmly without any panic. Self-regulation also prevents the leader from impulsive decisions and enhances the leader’s integrity and organizational strength. Motivation is the desire to achieve goals. Motivation to achieve distinguishes the good leader as makes the leader passionate about the work, and, what is more important, for its results regarding of their positivity or negativity. A motivated leader is able to keep optimism and to maintain interest to work both in herself and in a team of her managers.
The next two skills come under the ability of a person to manage the relationship with other people. Empathy implies to the understanding of other people’s feelings. A good empathic leader is able to make careful decisions with consideration for the feelings of employees. The empathic leader is able to keep the leadership strong even in difficult situations as is able to place herself in the employee’s position. According to Goleman, empathy is an important part of the leadership for three reasons: “the increasing use of teams; the rapid pace of globalization; and the growing need to retain talent” (Goleman, 17). In a team leadership, empathy allows the leader to unify the members of the team and make their work highly effective. Globalization means cross-cultural dialogue, and empathy constitutes a significant part of multicultural understandings. The need to refrain talented people implies not only to the level of stuff but also to the modern information economy as they can take with them the company’s knowledge. Social skills mean “friendliness with a purpose” (Goleman, 19). Socially skilled leaders are able to make connections and have a wide range of acquaintances. Social skills are the culmination of the other parts of emotional intelligence skills as they assist in their manifestations.
Is EI inborn or developed? Explain briefly.
According to studies, emotional intelligence is both inborn and developed. As Goleman writes, “Scientific inquiry strongly suggests that there is a genetic component to emotional intelligence” (Goleman, 8). Emotional intelligence is provided by the neurotransmitters of the limbic system of the brain, the same system that gives birth to feelings, drives, and impulses. Some specialists consider emotional intelligence to be a number of personality traits that “are strongly influenced by genes and are extraordinarily persistent in adulthood” (Team FME, 24). Thus, according to their opinion, emotional intelligence differs from IQ and cannot be developed.
At the same time, lots of specialists argue that emotional intelligence can and should be developed and improved, and there is existing evidence their statement can be true. As it was mentioned above, emotional intelligence appears in the limbic system, and it can be developed by various training programs that focus on the development of this system. The major purpose of such training programs is to change the behavior of a person, to turn attention to his or her current behavioral habits, and to help a person to establish the new behavioral habits with enhanced emotional intelligence skills. It requires a lot of time, but people who start to pay attention to their attitude towards others and find the change of their behavioral habits important finally succeed in their training and achieve the higher level of emotional intelligence.
List two main reasons why change efforts fail?
The first main reason why change efforts fail is a lack of the understanding that transformation of the company is a process that consists of eight steps. None of these steps is unimportant and can be jumped. Often, managers want to achieve the goal of the transformation faster and skip some steps, but this creates just the illusion of quicker transformation and, furthermore, brings negative results. Moreover, not just skipping but also incomplete work and mistakes made during the one of the steps can destroy the whole process or significantly slow it and bring lost revenues.
The second main reason is a lack of the strong leaders able to transform the company into a success. As it was mentioned above, managers often underestimate the importance of steps of the transformation process, but it is also worth noting that even very capable leaders unconsciously make mistakes. It is complicated to renew the company, and managers often experience a lack of vision or declare the victory of their transformation too soon and allow the signs of successful renewal to disappear in a couple of years.
Discuss two strategies to implement change effectively.
The first strategy to implement change effectively is the strong leadership familiar with the process of transformation and possible mistakes. This strategy logically follows from the reasons of change efforts failures. In his article, Kotter states, “Transformations often begin, and begin well, when an organization has a new head who is a good leader and who sees the need for a major change” (Kotter, 142). He also lists eight steps to transforming the organization and eight common mistakes, one for the each step. However, it is important to understand that the process of transformation can often be related to unfamiliar, unexpected, or not evident mistakes and surprises that could appear after the attempts to implement successful changes. The company needs a strong leader who will be ready to face these mistakes and surprises and to deal with them effectively.
The second strategy to implement change effectively is acquiring of a clear vision of the company’s future. As Kotter writes, “a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure” (Kotter, 152). The clear vision can help to escape from the excessive acts and to reduce the time of the transformation. It allows making a proper plan of the transformation without any additional moves. Not only the leader should have a clear vision but the management and employees also. The transformation of the company is the common business and requires participation and understanding among all staff of the company.
References
Goleman. D. (1996). What makes a leader? Reprinted in P. F. Drucker, D. Goleman, and B. George, HBR's 10 must reads on leadership (with featured article “What makes an effective executive,” by Peter F. Drucker) (1-21). Harvard: Harvard Business Review Press.
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change. Reprinted in P. F. Drucker, C. M. Christensen, M. E. Porter, and D. Goleman, HBR'S 10 Must Reads: The Essentials (137-152). Harvard: Harvard Business Review Press.
Team FME. (2014). Understanding emotional intelligence [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www.free-management-ebooks.com/dldebk-pdf/fme-understanding-emotional-intelligence.pdf
