Is Emotional Intelligence Beneficial for Effective Leadership?

There are many different definitions of what emotional intelligence is and exactly which components should be included to comprise it. The most basic model of emotional intelligence is the "four branch model" described by John Mayer and Peter Salovey in 1997. The key concepts included in the four branch model are: "emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional meanings, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote both better emotion and thought (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).” The scientific definition of emotional intelligence, according to John Mayer, Peter Caruso and Peter Salovey is that "emotional intelligence refers to an ability to recognize the meanings of emotion and their relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on the basis of them. Emotional intelligence is involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000)."

Daniel Goleman describes emotional intelligence as "the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves and for managing emotion well in ourselves and in our relationships (Goleman, 2000).” Goleman goes on to explain that emotional intelligence can be broken down into two core competencies. These competencies include personal competence and social competence. Personal competence includes traits such as self-awareness, defined as being aware of what you are feeling; and self-management, which is what you do with your feelings once you are aware of what you are feeling, or exercising control of your feelings. Social competenc...

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