Leadership and emotional intelligence

Leadership and Emotional Intelligence.
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One encounters emotions everywhere in the workplace, and it is unavoidable to deal with them. Emotions determine most of the people’s behavior as they are hardwired into our system. It would be very unrealistic for an individual to expect the workplace to remain emotion-free. Managers and employees are both humans, and they cannot leave their feelings at the door when they check into work; it is unrealistic given our human nature. People take their humanity with them to work every single day… their excitement, happiness, laughter enthusiasm, anger, worry, disappointment, and sadness. People bring all of these to the workplace (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2002). Accordingly, it is vital for employers and employees alike to possess emotional intelligence. The reason behind this is because success in the workplace needs more than just being book smart; emotional intelligence is important as it determines how we interact and are perceived by people. This paper will discuss this matter and highlight its importance, particularly to managers. It will do this with the aid of real world examples.
The first part of the paper will be an example of a leader with low emotional intelligence. Paul is a manager in a new healthcare association. He seems to have it all; a Ph.D. degree from a good university, a razor-sharp wit, charisma, and an unstoppable energy. Considering all the latter attributes, Paul ought to be a star.

Nonetheless, in reality, morale in his department is low, and turnover very high. Many people would wonder why this scenario would happen, and the reason behind it is very straightforward; Paul possesses a very high IQ, but his emotional intelligence is subtle. He hurts the feeling of employees with remarks that he considers “joking,” reacts poorly to criticism, is arrogant, rigid and insensitive. These actions make his employees lose morale as they feel low.
On the other hand, this article will provide an example of a leader with high emotional intelligence in order to enable one to differentiate between the two. Smith is another manager of a new dot-com company. The company is growing at a very fast rate than it could handle. Throughout its growth, the organization has come to the realization that the satisfaction and happiness of its employees is one of its top concerns. Smith predicted that if the organization’s employees were happy, they would go the extra mile to ensure that the company was doing well. In the end, this theory worked, and many of the employees of the organization have been there for a long amount of time while other competitors are going through a high turnover.
The first and second example shows two different leaders; one with high emotional intelligence and another with low emotional intelligence. The first leader could learn a lot from the second leader. Some of the things that he could learn is how to manage his emotions in the workplace, how to have emotional self-control, how to express emotions in the workplace and how to handle situations where an employee is too emotional to an unprofessional point. On managing emotions in the workplace, an important tool is seeking release when one gets frustrated and excusing oneself to think about it before one’s anger flared up, and he/she does rash things. Emotional self-control is yet another attribute that a leader should possess; one can practice this by gaining perspective from failure and learning to pick up emotional queues in oneself to understand the level they are at (Goleman, 1998). On the other hand, one can express emotion in a professional and respectful manner by calmly saying what has frustrated them and why it has. This would enable the other person to understand the situation (Asghar, 2014). Finally, if an employee is too emotional to an unprofessional point, a good leader should deal with the situation by acknowledging the employees behavior rather than ignoring it (Asghar, 2014). The leader would then listen, understand the situation and try to calm the employee.
In conclusion, the context herein highlights the importance of emotional intelligence. Developing it is a good career strategy and would go a long way in ensuring the success of an organization because teamwork is vital to success in today’s global world.

References.
Asghar, R. (2014). How Good Managers Manage Emotions. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2013/01/09/from-crying-to-temper-tantrums-how-to-manage-emotions-at-work/
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Goleman, D., & Boyatzis, R. (2002). Primal leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.