During my last trip to Oslo in June where I had an opportunity to catch up and spend time with my ‘YoungShip family’ friends, my good friend and brother Erlend Holberg, gifted me with one of the most helpful books for myself and my colleagues (leaders of our organisation). Fortunately, it was also the first book we had randomly selected from our office library collection, to read and explore together in our weekly reading circle, which is running every week (this week marks the 10th and we look forward to our journey towards the 100th!).

The book is titled “HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership” and the first chapter of which is unsurprisingly named “What Makes a Leader?” by Dr. Daniel Goleman, which is the subject matter of reflection in this post!

The Story:

“Every businessperson knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also know a story about someone with solid-but not extraordinary-intellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared.

Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that identifying individuals with the “right stuff” to be leaders is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situation call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the help, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful authority.”

The Idea:

“I have found, however, that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as ‘emotional intelligence’: a group of five skills that enable the best leaders to maximize their own and their team’s performance:

1.     Self-awareness – knowing one’s strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and impact on others

2.     Self-regulation – controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods

3.     Motivation – relishing achievement for its own sake

4.     Empathy – understanding other people’s emotional makeup

5.     Social skill – building rapport with others to move them in desired directions

It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that it, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader."

The good news: We’re each born with certain levels of EI skills. But we can strengthen these abilities through persistence, practice, and feedback from colleagues or coaches!

The Evidence:

Dr Daniel Goleman and his colleagues conducted a focused research on how emotional intelligence operates at work analyzing competency models from 188 companies, most of which were large and global, like British Airways, Credit Suisse and Lucent Technologies.

They examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and effective performance, especially in leaders. After analyzing the data, they found dramatic results. While intellect was a driver of outstanding performance and cognitive skills such as long-term thinking were found important, when they calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.

Moreover, the analysis showed that emotional intelligence played an increasingly important role at the highest levels of the company, where differences in technical skills are of negligible importance. When they compare star performers with average ones in senior leadership positions, nearly 90% of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than cognitive abilities!

In the next five posts, I shall dive deeper into the five components of emotional intelligence in turn!

#myreflections #anideaaday #leadership #emotionalintelligence