Greetings from the Leadership Development Committee!

For the October book club discussion, we’ve selected two books Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman, and Primal Leadership- Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee. These books introduce the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) and how EI helps a leader to be effective and inspire a diverse group of people.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions and be able to understand and influence the emotions of others. We live in a complex world of a global village. We must interact with a wide range of professionals from across the world. The virtual tools like Microsoft Team, Webex, Zoom, and similar other tools have made it possible to collaborate and lead teams/groups where members are in diverse locations and from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Managing and inspirating a remote and/or hybrid team or organization requires additional skillset that may not have been that important for leading in person or co-located team members. An emotionally intelligent leader is in a better position to lead a team successfully diverse or homogeneous.   

Emotionally intelligent leaders are critical for group success because they create resonance- an atmosphere where are members of the group are emotionally synchronized. It is important for creating harmony within a group or organization. When a group or organization has harmony, they can reach their maximum potential for collaboration, productivity, and performance- the vital components for success.

Emotional intelligence is composed of four main skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Each of these skills contains a set of microskills.

1. Self-awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions. Microskills include understanding your emotions, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and having self-confidence.
2. Self-management means that you’re able to manage and rationalize your emotions. Microskills includes emotional control, adaptability to situation, high personal standards, personal motivation, and optimism
3. Social awareness is the ability to understand the emotions of other people and consider why they might be feeling a certain way. Micro-scale includes being empathetic and being able to foster an emotional climate.
4. Relationship management is the ability to use your understanding of other people to manage your relationship with them. Microskills includes- ability to inspire others, ability to help people to reach their goals, ability to bring people together as a team  

EI is especially important to effectively lead groups organizations in the context of remote and hybrid work force.  We hope you’ll join us for what is sure to be a thought-provoking and stimulating discussion.  More details to follow!