Research shows convincingly that Emotional Intelligence is more important than IQ in almost every role. This was once said by Dr. Stephen Covey who was always very emphatic about the correlation between Leadership greatness and Emotional Quotient. Jack Welch (known as a tyrant in GE in a funny way) advocated that leader’s intelligence has to have a strong emotional component. S/he has to have a high sense of self-awareness, maturity and self-control. By the way, Leadership doesn’t only mean we are talking about the workplace. Leadership skills are, in many contexts—the workplace, schools and classrooms, politics, volunteer organizations, and even within families—fairly recognizable. People who take initiative, who have a vision, and who can strategize, plan, and accomplish goals to achieve their vision are considered good leaders. They display those skills when working in a team setting and, hopefully, their team members are appreciative of those skills.

By the way, EQ can be increased throughout your life but IQ cannot be increased once the brain has fully developed. But what about other kinds of skills that make up a good leader? Not just professional skills—you may be highly trained and proficient in your field—but skills that contribute to your ability to work well with others and to lead your team to success?

That’s where emotional intelligence comes in, which is defined as, “The ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions.” In a nutshell, we are talking about 4 competencies – Self-awareness and Management, Others-awareness and Management.

Think about a great manager that you’ve had in the past. You likely felt comfortable going to that person with your questions, concerns, and needs, and they were likely receptive to you and worked to address them and make sure that you felt supported. And if (or when) you both had disagreements, they were likely respectful and productive exchanges.

That kind of dynamic between employee and manager is similar to what we encourage couples to create in their own relationships—keeping a Positive perspective validating each other’s positions despite disagreement, and being intentionally respectful, even during difficult times. It’s a dynamic that works. It helps everyone involved feel supported and valued.

And let’s be honest: teamwork, especially when attempting to achieve difficult, long-term, and even lofty goals, can lead to intense emotions, such as (if things aren’t going well) frustration, anger, worry, or disappointment, or (if things are going well) excitement, anticipation, enthusiasm, and shared celebration. For example, look at the vivid displays of emotion from players on cohesive sports teams. They celebrate each other when things go well. They lift each other up when things don’t. Emotions, even on the field, play a huge role in working with others to succeed.

Yet all of those emotions, even the good ones, can lead to immense stress under challenging circumstances at work. And understanding and managing both your and others’ emotions in that team setting, just like in a relationship, is an important trait of all good leaders.

Emotional intelligence is necessary for good leadership

Daniel Goleman, an authority on emotional intelligence at workplace, notes that “No matter what leaders set out to do—whether it’s creating a strategy or mobilizing teams to action—their success depends on how they do it. Even if they get everything else just right, if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should.”

Many of us have likely been in this situation before. Think back on, maybe, the job you had in high school with a manager that had a negative attitude. They might have had excellent skills in their role, but how they did the job and communicated to their employees was a problem. Think about how you and your co-workers may have felt around that manager—undervalued, disrespected, and not driven to accomplish team goals.

In that kind of workplace, it’s easier to simply keep your head down, do the minimum, and get that pay-check at the end of the week. And when employees feel that way, they won’t necessarily be happy in their roles, productivity will likely decline, and work will stall. It will be more challenging for that team to do what needs to be done.

The same, according to our own research, applies to romantic relationships. A negative outlook can result in poor outcomes, like resentment, disconnection, and even separation or divorce. When negative statement override kicks in, it’s hard to change course back toward a positive perspective.

On the flip side, appreciation, respect, and enthusiasm, coupled with emotional support and validation, can be contagious. Positivity begets positivity. Because emotions are strongly correlated with performance and productivity, teams whose members feel emotionally supported and appreciated through their challenges and successes will likely be happier and more productive. They will want to celebrate their successes, so they will work harder and more effectively together to be successful.

This dynamic applies to many job settings—wherever there’s a leader. That could be the sous chef in a restaurant kitchen, a head nurse in an emergency room, a foreman on a factory floor, a chief executive in a boardroom, or a high school teacher in a classroom. Effective emotional understanding and management will help team members cohere and be more productive and feel more valued and understood.

Emotional intelligence helps leaders to adapt

Leaders also need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances in their workplaces, or in their own roles and those of their team members. President Xi of China told attendees at a job fair that emotional intelligence will enable an individual to be more adaptable in society,
which makes sense. Being aware of, understanding, and managing your emotions and of those around you should help you to navigate through an ever-changing world, and even to become a successful leader in it.

According to the Harvard Business Review, emotional intelligence is a key leadership skill —and for a leader to truly be effective, they must be masterful at managing their relationships in a positive way. Being a leader of a group of people is to have a very important relationship with those people. In the Harvard Business Review, Goleman writes: The most effective leaders are all alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of that has come to be known as dissociation capability. They are quite easily move themselves out of a situation, look at that situation and take decisions which are right. They are like the wise fly on the wall looking at the situation from a distance and taking a judgement call. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but…they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. 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.

This isn’t to say that emotional intelligence is enough to get you to that leadership position in your job—you will still need the professional knowledge and experience—but it means that if you take a leadership role and have a higher degree of emotional intelligence, you will likely be more effective and more successful. Because emotions are always in flux, adaptability is key to be an outstanding leader.

Great leaders dramatically improve their teams and organizations

When it comes to the workplace, and especially business, the bottom line is crucial and managers and executives are often held responsible for successes and failures. Researchers Dr. Jack Zenger and Dr. Joseph Folkman, co-founders of the leadership development and training firm Zenger Folkman, gathered over 100,000 direct reports from employees about their leaders from hundreds of different organizations and found 9 key traits the most successful leaders possess. Here are a few that are most related to emotional intelligence:

• They work to inspire and motivate those around them
• They focus on collaboration between team members, which creates synergy and a better experience for employees
• They “walk the talk,” or act with integrity and honesty with every team member
• They build trust, which stems from consistently acting with integrity and honesty
• They develop and support others, and they always celebrate the successes of their employees and encourage them to learn more and develop their skills
• They always build relationships, which communicates that each team member is valued, and that their concerns are important and will be addressed.

There is a steady rise in employee satisfaction with the development of a great leader—poor leaders’ employees have poor job satisfaction, and great leaders’ employees are much more committed and happier with their work.

Even more interesting is that when you have a truly great leader, they can double company’s profits. That’s right—double the profits! Most of us would think that emotional intelligence may not have to do much with a company’s bottom line, but when you have a great leader who possesses and utilizes effective emotional intelligence, your organization as a whole—ranging from employee satisfaction and engagement to revenue and profits—will greatly benefit.

All in all, I can say that the recent tragic incident related to one of the founders of Café Coffee Day Mr. V G Siddhartha could have possibly been avoided if help would have been provided at the right time to him. And I’m not saying help while or just after he committed suicide, but much before that. My good friend and once upon a time my college cricket team captain Kshitij Kulkarni has a good take on this which relates a lot with Emotional Intelligence and I am going to end my blog with that. According to him, “There are many things that can go wrong. Just like success, failures are also not only yours and we should be able to deal with them. I am sure he had a clout to get out of the jam and probably this end could have been avoided if he could have addressed his vulnerabilities with better self-awareness and management”. Well, these are 2 competencies from Emotional Intelligence, right?