Leadership Needs Workers With Emotional Intelligence

Image by || UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL || via Flickr

Workers with emotional intelligence are an asset for any leadership team. Emotional Intelligence is a buzz word heard flying around these days in the offices of hiring managers, sales leaders, and many others. People with high emotional intelligence are in great demand due to their ability to communicate effectively with those around them. Emotional intelligence can be described as the way a person perceives and interprets the emotions behind what someone they come in contact with says in order to respond appropriately and effectively. Harry Urschel tells us why employers want emotional intelligence in their work force.

For some people it’s innate. It may be a natural part of their personality, or something they’ve learned through their upbringing and their family dynamics. However, it is something that can be learned and developed whether you already have it or not.

It primarily comes down to effective listening and observation!

Too often, people don’t really listen to the people they are conversing with. They are more preoccupied with what they are going to say next, rather than paying close attention to what the other person is saying, or how they are expressing themselves with their body language. Listening, not only to their words, but also to their voice inflections, their boldness or uncertainty, their comfort or irritation, or other aspects of their tone. Observing, not only their lips, but their stance and posture, evidence of stress or anxiousness, looks of concern, joy, curiosity, anger, caring, or boredom. Paying attention to all these things and more can give clues about the persons interest, concern, or other aspects of the conversation.

…More at Employers Want “Emotional Intelligence” | Career Rocketeer …

Emotional Intelligence is becoming more important to us as human beings as we transfer to a plugged-in world where it is increasingly the norm for people who work together never to speak face-to-face. It becomes very important to have a highly developed emotional intelligence to be able to reliably read auditory clues that can give hint to a person's emotions. Great leaders typically have a high emotional intelligence for people to be willing to follow them. Leadership development should focus on emotional intelligence as a learned skill if it is not naturally part of a leader's repertoire. People with emotional intelligence are more apt to succeed because leadership relies on these people to help them connect their teams.