First of all, what is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence -also known as EQ- means having the ability to understand and control your emotions, understand other peoples’ emotions, as well as understand how your emotions and actions affect the people around you.
In order to become a great leader with great leadership skills, it is important to improve your EQ, which happens through understanding the elements of emotional intelligence.
There are three important components/ elements that fall under emotional intelligence and they are as follows:
Self Awareness
Many people underestimate self-awareness and its importance in making great leaders. Self-awareness helps the person understand and point out their strengths and weaknesses. Not only does it help with that, but it also helps the person be more aware of their emotions and how it affects the overall performance of the team.
Self-management
This means having the ability to control your feelings throughout any situation you are put through. So, for example, if you are going through stressful times, if you have self-management, you are more likely to be able to control your emotions and stay calm. People who lack self-management are more likely to lose their temper easily and overreact in specific situations.
Social awareness
Besides understanding yourself in terms of managing your emotions and controlling your feelings and actions, it is also important to be aware of what is happening around you. In other words, it is important for great leaders to have the ability to understand other peoples’ emotions. People who develop this skill are more likely to become the next great leader because they know how to empathize with others, meaning that they understand their colleague’s feelings, which allows them to communicate with them better.
With that being said, let’s now answer the question “why is emotional intelligence important in leadership?” let me put it for you in an easy way. If leaders were to lack emotional intelligence, it will cause a lot of conflicts within the organization, but why? That is because there will be little employee engagement, low employee satisfaction and troubles in communication, and all of that result in a high turnover rate. If leaders are not self-aware and are unable to understand their employees, then it will simply not work out. However, mastering emotional intelligence will help the leader improve themselves, which results in improving their organization at the same time.