Leadership Traits - Emotional Intelligence

This leadership traits page may be empty. While the so called emotional intelligence has clearly been popularized and is being taken as an article of faith in many leadership circles, a note of caution ought to enter the conversation.

A recent exchange in Leadership Quarterly by Antonakis, Ashkanasy, and Dasborough make the following points:

1. If EI exists then the Salovey & Mayer ability model is more likely to yield result than the Goleman and Bar-On model which uses broadly defined traits. The ability model consists of:

• Emotion perception
• Emotion facilitation
• Emotion understanding
• Emotion management

3. Emotions are important in leadership.

Leadership Tips

Don’t use EI instrument for hiring, promoting or firing. Their validity is eminently challengeable in a court of law. The authors listed above all agree on this point.

Be cautious about using EI measures and instruments to predict leadership success, especially self report instruments.

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