Esther is a well-liked manager of a small team. Kind and respectful, she
is sensitive to the needs of others. She is a problem solver; she tends to see
setbacks as opportunities. She’s always engaged and is a source of calm to her
colleagues. Her manager feels lucky to have such an easy direct report to work
with and often compliments Esther on her high levels of emotional intelligence,
or EI. And Esther indeed counts EI as one of her strengths; she’s grateful for
at least one thing she doesn’t have to work on as part of her leadership development.
It’s strange, though — even with her positive outlook, Esther is starting to
feel stuck in her career. She just hasn’t been able to demonstrate the kind of
performance her company is looking for. So
much for emotional intelligence, she’s starting to think.
The trap that has ensnared Esther and
her manager is a common one: They are defining emotional intelligence much too
narrowly. Because they’re focusing only on Esther’s sociability, sensitivity,
and likability, they’re missing critical elements of emotional intelligence
that could make her a stronger, more effective leader. A recent HBR
article highlights the
skills that a kind, positive manager like Esther might lack: the ability to
deliver difficult feedback to employees, the courage to ruffle feathers and
drive change, the creativity to think outside the box. But these gaps aren’t a
result of Esther’s emotional intelligence; they’re simply evidence that her EI
skills are uneven. In the model of EI and leadership excellence that we have
developed over 30 years of studying the strengths of outstanding leaders, we’ve
found that having a well-balanced array of specific EI capabilities actually
prepares a leader for exactly these kinds of tough challenges.
There are many models of emotional
intelligence, each with its own set of abilities; they are often lumped
together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. We prefer “EI,” which we define as
comprising four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
and relationship management. Nested within each domain are twelve EI competencies, learned and learnable capabilities that allow outstanding performance
at work or as a leader (see the image below). These include areas in which
Esther is clearly strong: empathy, positive outlook, and self-control. But they
also include crucial abilities such as achievement, influence, conflict
management, teamwork and inspirational leadership. These skills require just as
much engagement with emotions as the first set, and should be just as much a
part of any aspiring leader’s development priorities.
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