Intelligence, or book smarts, does not guarantee successful leadership. We have seen this over the years when professional athletes have attempted to coach teams or when entrepreneurs have started companies based off of products they invented only to hand them off to seasoned management teams to fully develop. They may have had the brains to take concepts to product or the ability to play a sport well but they lacked the emotional intelligence to expand that product further or develop a team to a winning season. They may have just lacked the emotional intelligence to inspire greatness in others.
Emotional intelligence is something that you can’t really learn. It’s an innate quality that you either possess or don’t. You can identify and tweak certain aspects of emotional intelligence but for the most part, people’s emotions are hardwired in nature. The most successful business leaders are one’s that take that knowledge to the next level. They value their employees and respect the fact that without loyal followers, they will not be successful. Because this concept is based on both the words emotion and intelligence, it doesn’t exclude the fact that there is knowledge in the equation. It is the perfect combination of being aware of a group’s feelings and using those feelings to bring out the best of their competencies (Northouse, 2016).
Effective leaders know how to take their intelligence and create a balance in the way they marry that knowledge with interpersonal skills. (Mittal, 2012) Communication is key, so is respect and integrity, and leading by example. It has been my experience that most things can be taught, either by a hands on approach or by formal schooling but there is invaluable worth in creating an environment where the people you work with respect you and your intelligence and want to be a part of the experience and opportunity that you as a leader provide. I liken this to the old saying, “There is no I in team.” People need to feel valued and respected. Good people want to learn from a good leader and good leaders should want to value the efforts that a good team will provide them.
Personally, I see this every day in my job. I always joke that I would take a bullet for my supervisor! She is highly skilled in her work and is extremely effective and innovative but just as important, she respects what I have to offer in my experiences and how I work with her and others. It’s teamwork, plain and simple. On the contrary, I see other departments where work is not valued and their there is no cohesive group effort. As a result, the work is subpar and the overall attitude is negative and counterproductive.
Are all types of traits important in leadership? Absolutely…and I consider myself extremely lucky to work with people who are both emotionally strong and highly intelligent.
Works cited:
Mittal, V., & Sindhu, E. (2012). Emotional intelligence and leadership. Global Journal of Management And Business Research, 12(16).
Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 2016
Paul Anderson says
I agree that intelligence alone does not guarantee successful leadership. However, I am not sure how you jumped from this thesis statement to attributing the failure of an entrepreneur’s product or the failure of athletic team to the lack of the leader’s emotional intelligence. To get more granular, you generated a cause-effect statement, with the cause being the leader’s lack of emotional intelligence and the effect being the team or product’s failure. Without completely dismissing your claim, could you be more specific on a failed product launch or a failed sports team, where the cause was the leader’s lack of emotional intelligence?
The textbook states that Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) did not find the same significant relationship between emotional intelligence and success (as cited in Norton, 2016) as say Goleman. While I do value leaders who are high in emotional intelligence, I have a hard time accepting your claim “the most successful business leaders are one’s that take that knowledge to the next level.” I have seen leaders who are extremely intelligent and possess high levels of expert power (especially in the software engineering world), but lack the emotional intelligence to understand the group’s feelings or emotions. A specific public example is Steve Jobs – an executive known for his low levels of empathy, but high levels of corporate success.
That said, I would rather work for a leader who has this softer side and displays higher levels of empathy for his/her team. In my current role I work for a leader who is very effective in what he does, but his lack of empathy and low levels of emotional intelligence is deterring his staff for performing at their personal best.
To summarize my thoughts, I do agree that intelligence alone is not enough to create a successful leader; however, I do not fully support the idea that a failed product launch or a failed team is due to the leader’s lack of emotional intelligence.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Mandee says
What a beautiful thing to work under a leader you would take a bullet for! If only every leader could create a comfortable atmosphere for their followers, imagine how productive the world would be.
I wanted to expand on your comment that emotional intelligence is something you are born with and cannot be learned. This is something in which I do not agree. In Chapter 2 of our textbook (Northouse, 2016), he discusses emotional intelligence in a boarder spectrum as having the mental ability to “perceive, facilitate, understand, and manage emotion.” I believe those are all characteristics that can be learned. Over time, my husband has learned how to be more understanding, I have learned how to be more perceptive, and my daughter has learned how to manage her emotions.
Being able to understand our emotions and the emotions of those around us is a key part of measuring a leaders’ emotional intelligence. New to an organization, a leader might need to revisit their level of emotional intelligence and how it is used. While continuing to be able to recognize their own emotions, they now have to learn the emotions of those around them and how those followers will perceive the emotions of the leaders.
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership theory and practice, seventh edition. Thousand Oaks, California. SAGE Publications.