Are you an emotionally intelligent leader?

What makes a good leader? A recent survey notes that most managers of high-performing businesses do not only have operational smarts, but also have emotional smarts.

Indeed, an emotionally intelligent leader has the ability to influence others and build a highly functioning culture. Technical skills aside, the primary job of leaders is to influence and impact the people around them in a positive way, driving them to meet business goals. What differentiate an effective leader from a mediocre one are the skills inherent in their emotional intelligence, and as business coaches note, emotional intelligence is explicitly connected to how well a leader’s inner observer is developed.

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Emotionally skillful leaders can increase their success in influencing people in positive and productive ways. Leaders who understand the value of the people they work with and work intelligently to create a positive impact will build a contagiously positive culture where success results are the norm, not the exception.

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Leadership is definitely beyond IQ. As executives of successful corporations can attest, emotional intelligence and putting people first are keys to a well-run, values-centered company.

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Leadership matters. An emotionally intelligent leadership matters more.



Emile Haddad, a Seattle, Washington-based business coach, believes that emotional intelligence is a key to good leadership. Subscribe to this Facebook page for more leadership advice.

The transactional leader and his healthy sense of curiosity

One of the most challenging aspects in training business leaders centers on the work of emotional intelligence, which calls for developing a leader’s inner observer. And this requires two fundamental attitudes: curiosity and inquiry. Although not necessarily foreign concepts to most leaders, the challenge lies in practicing them consciously and consistently.

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A pressure-filled, fast-paced environment may result to some leaders quickly leaping to assumptions and conclusions that they have not carefully examined. However, this pitfall can be circumvented if leaders adopt an attitude of curiosity about their own assumptions and conclusions, and choose to do the same with others. This requires leaders to take a mental and emotional stance that will keep their own position flexible and open to be influenced by others’ input. Such a stance is achieved through a practice of inquiry, wherein a leader is curious about his inner and outer circumstances, driving him to inquire about his and others’ ideas, assumptions, and conclusions.

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And over time, an attitude of inquiry tends to build a larger capacity for curiosity, which allows for a stronger inner observer and a deeper propensity for emotional intelligence. Leaders become more “tuned-in” to their environment, team, employees, and the culture of the organization—the skills that will become the foundation of a transactional leader.

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Read more about transactional leaders here. For additional tips on how to be an effective leader, subscribe to this Facebook page for business coach Emile Haddad of Seattle, Washington.