Emotional Intelligence: Personal Leadership And Emotional Intelligence

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Personal Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
Great leadership doesn’t necessarily come from what you do, but instead from how you do it. According to Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 's (2013) book, Primal Leadership, this "how" of a great leader comes through the heart or emotions. If leaders fail at driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do, even if they get everything else just right, will be as successful as it could or should be (p. 3). This goes against many of the preconceptions of good leadership. I have always been shown that "good" leaders keep their emotions at bay and lead through intellect devoid of emotion because emotions can distort reality. However, the emotional task of the leader, according to Goleman et al., …show more content…

(2013) called, resonance. Resonance is when a leader is attuned to people 's feelings and move them in a positive emotional direction (p. 20). When leaders create resonance they become in sync with those they are leading and the emotions those people feel is the glue that holds them together as a team (p. 20). However, when leaders are not in tune and out of touch with the feelings of the people they lead, they instead create dissonance (p. 19). Dissonant leaders create a lack of harmony and people feel conflict emotionally. Dissonance discourages people and burns them out. The toxic environments that dissonance produces doesn’t just exist in the group or workplace but is carried by the people throughout the rest of their interactions (pp. 21-22). How much a leader has developed their emotional intelligence is seen through how they lead and if they produce resonance or …show more content…

(2013) separated emotional intelligence into four domains, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management (pp. 30, 38). These domains are then broken into two competencies. Self-awareness, the understanding of one 's emotions and being clear about one 's purpose, and self-management, the focused drive and emotional self-control, make up the personal competence (pp. 39, 45-46). While social awareness, or empathy and service, and relationship management, the handling of other people 's emotions, make up the social competence (pp. 39, 48, 51). These emotional intelligence competencies are not innate talents, but learned abilities, each of which contribute to making leaders more resonant and effective (p. 38). This is good news for me because I still have much to develop in regards to emotional

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