Are Leaders With Low Emotional Intelligence Weakening Your Bottom Line?

Organizations with emotionally intelligent executives could have an advantage in today’s high stress work environment, suggests i4cp’s latest research on emotional intelligence (EI).

i4cp found that only about a quarter of companies with a 1,000 or more employees have implemented an emotional intelligence initiative in parts of their organizations. But among those that have, high market performers were considerably more likely to focus those initiatives on the executive levels.

There is a big difference at the top of organizations. Among companies that have these initiatives, about two thirds of high-performing organizations apply the concept to their executives. But fewer than half of the low-performing organizations do so.

In this study, emotional intelligence was defined as the degree to which a person has the ability to recognize and understand emotions and the skills to manage personal, individual and team performance using such awareness.

The i4cp study asked about the areas in which organizations are using emotional intelligence. It turns out that higher performers were more likely to focus EI initiatives on leadership development than on other areas such as communication. What’s interesting, though, is that what they really seem to want are better team leaders. Nearly four fifths of high performers said they expected improved team performance from their programs.

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