leadership skills and emotional intelligence

S

Making the ConnectionLeadership Skills

and Emotional Intelligence

There is growing evidence that the range of abilities that constitutes

what is now commonly known as emotional intelligence plays a key role

in determining success in life and in the workplace. Recent CCL

research has uncovered links between specific elements of emotional

intelligence and specific behaviors associated with leadership effective-

ness and ineffectiveness.

by Mar ian N. Ruderman, Ke l ly Hannum, Jean Br i tta in Les l i e, and Jud i th L . Steed

L I A • VO LU M E 2 1 , N U M B E R 5 • N OV E M B E R / D EC E M B E R 20 0 1

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tuart is a senior manager ata well-known pharmaceutical com-pany. He is brilliant, and everyonewho knows him believes he has thepotential to achieve great things. Hisprimary strength is strategic thinking;colleagues say he has an uncannyability to predict and plan for thefuture. As Stuart has advanced in theorganization, however, his dark sidehas become increasingly apparent: heoften lashes out at people, and he isunable to build relationships based ontrust. Stuart knows he is intelligentand tends to use that knowledge tobelittle or demean his co-workers.Realizing that Stuart has extraordi-nary skills and much to offer thecompany in terms of vision and strat-egy, some of his colleagues have triedto help him work past his flaws. But

they’re beginning to conclude that it’sa hopeless cause; Stuart stubbornlyrefuses to change his style, and hisarrogant modus operandi hasoffended so many people that Stuart’scareer may no longer be salvageable.

Every company probably hassomeone like Stuart—a senior man-ager whose IQ approaches the geniuslevel but who seems clueless when itcomes to dealing with other people.These types of managers may beprone to getting angry easily and ver-bally attacking co-workers, oftencome across as lacking compassionand empathy, and usually find it diffi-cult to get others to cooperate withthem and their agendas. The Stuarts ofthe world make you wonder how peo-ple so smart can be so incapable ofunderstanding themselves and others.

What Stuart is lacking is emotionalintelligence. There may be little hopeof salvaging Stuart’s career, but thereis good news for managers who aresimilarly deficient in emotional intelli-gence capacities but willing to try tochange their ways: emotional intelli-gence can be developed and enhanced.

DEALING WITH EMOTIONSIn articles published in 1990, psychol-ogists Jack Mayer of the University of

New Hampshire and Peter Salovey ofYale University coined the term emo-tional intelligence, referring to theconstellation of abilities throughwhich people deal with their ownemotions and those of others. Mayerand Salovey later went on to defineemotional intelligence as the ability toperceive emotional information anduse it to guide thought and actions;they distinguished it from cognitiveintelligence, which is what determineswhether people will be successful in school and is measured through IQ tests.

The concept of emotional intelli-gence was popularized by psycholo-gist Daniel Goleman in his booksEmotional Intelligence and Workingwith Emotional Intelligence, amongother writings. Goleman broadenedthe notion of emotional intelligenceto include an array of noncognitiveabilities that help people adapt to allaspects of life. He focused on fourbasic competencies—self-awareness,social awareness, self-management,and social skills—that influence theway people handle themselves andtheir relationships with others. Heargued that these human competen-cies play a bigger role than cognitiveintelligence in determining success inlife and in the workplace.

Mayer, Salovey, and Golemanwere not the first to recognize thesignificance of the attributes now col-lectively called emotional intelli-gence. For years before, managers,educators, human resource profes-sionals, and others had seen evidencethat these attributes—known then bymore generic, colloquial terms suchas people skills—seemed to play animportant role in separating the aver-age from the first-rate performers.Like Goleman, many of theseobservers believed these skills weremore important than intellect or tech-nical skills in determining success.

Throughout CCL’s more thanthirty-year history, one of its primaryapproaches to leadership developmenthas been to help managers and execu-


tives to understand themselves andothers better, to increase their self-awareness, self-management, andinterpersonal skills—in other words,to expand their emotional intelli-gence, although CCL has not usedthat term. CCL has done this througha range of programs, simulations,publications, and tools—includingBenchmarks®, a 360-degree assess-ment instrument that measures lead-ers’ strengths and development needsas compared with those of other lead-ers. Although CCL and others havelong believed that people’s levels ofemotional competency are related totheir effectiveness as leaders, littlehad been done to scientifically exam-ine and document whether specificelements of emotional intelligence arelinked to specific behaviors associatedwith leadership effectiveness and inef-fectiveness—and if they are, how theyare linked. With this goal, CCLdesigned and conducted a study thatcorrelated Benchmarks results withscores from an assessment instrumentthrough which people gauge theirown emotional intelligence abilities(see the sidebar on page 5). Althoughthe findings are not sufficient to stateconclusively that leaders with highlevels of emotional intelligence arebetter leaders, they do show that thereare clear and basic connectionsbetween the higher ranges of emo-tional intelligence and the possessionof skills and abilities associated withleadership excellence. Knowing andunderstanding these connections cangive managers and executives addi-tional ammunition in their efforts toenhance their leadership performance.

STRONGEST LINKSThe study comparing Benchmarksresults with scores from the BarOnEmotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i™), an assessment of emotionalintelligence, found that ten of the six-teen skills and perspectives assessed byBenchmarks were strongly associatedwith one or more emotional intelli-

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Marian N. Ruderman is a

research scientist at CCL in

Greensboro. She holds a

Ph.D. degree from the

University of Michigan.

Kelly Hannum is a research

associate at CCL in

Greensboro. She holds an

M.Ed. degree from the

University of North Carolina

at Greensboro.

Jean Brittain Leslie is

manager of product

research at CCL in

Greensboro. She holds an

M.A. degree from the

University of North Carolina

at Greensboro.

Judith L. Steed is a

research associate at CCL in

Colorado Springs. She holds

an M.S. degree from Virginia

Polytechnic Institute and

State University.

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R S

gence measures. In other words, higherlevels of certain emotional intelligencecomponents appear to be connected tobetter performance in those ten areas.Benchmarks is also designed to iden-tify potential problem areas that cancontribute to derailment, which occurswhen a manager who has previouslybeen seen as successful and full ofpotential for continued advancement isinstead fired, demoted, or held on acareer plateau. Associations were alsofound between two of these career-threatening flaws and certain aspectsof emotional intelligence.

Let’s look first at the connectionsbetween emotional intelligence andleadership skills and perspectives:

Participative management. Of allthe skills and perspectives measuredby Benchmarks, participative manage-ment had the highest number ofmeaningful correlations with meas-ures of emotional intelligence. Theessence of participative managementis getting buy-in from colleagues atthe beginning of an initiative byinvolving them, engaging themthrough listening and communicating,influencing them in the decision-making process, and building consen-sus. It is an important relationship-building skill, especially in today’smanagement environment, in whichorganizations value interdependencywithin and between groups.

Depending on the Benchmarks rater(boss, peer, or direct report), scores inparticipative management were relatedto the emotional intelligence abilitiesof social responsibility (being a coop-erative, contributing, and constructivemember of one’s social group), happi-ness (feeling satisfied with and deriv-ing pleasure from life), interpersonalrelationship (establishing and main-taining mutually satisfying relation-ships), impulse control (resistingimpulsive behavior), emotional self-awareness (being in touch with one’sown feelings), and empathy (under-standing and appreciating the feelingsof others). These correlations suggestthat managers who are perceived asbeing skilled at listening to others andgaining their input before implement-ing change are likely also to see them-selves as satisfied with life and goodat cooperating, fostering relationships,controlling impulses, and understand-ing their own and others’ emotions.

Putting people at ease. People whoare warm and have a good sense ofhumor are often able to make othersfeel at ease, relaxed, and comfortablein their presence. The connectionsbetween this skill and emotional intel-ligence qualities also varied accordingto who did the rating. The assessmentsby managers’ direct reports indicatedthat the ability to put people at easewas related to impulse control, which

suggests that not overreacting in diffi-cult situations and avoiding knee-jerkresponses such as quick anger go along way toward making people feelrelaxed. The assessments by bossesindicated that managers’ ability to putothers at ease was tied to the man-agers’ own sense of happiness, sug-gesting that a manager’s disposition isa determinant of how comfortable peo-ple feel in his or her presence.

Self-awareness. Managers whowere seen by their bosses, peers, anddirect reports as having an accuratepicture of their strengths and weak-nesses and as being willing toimprove gave themselves high ratingson the emotional intelligence abilitiesof impulse control and stress toler-ance (withstanding adverse eventsand stressful situations withoutfalling apart). This suggests that man-agers who are aware that they mayeasily explode into anger or becomeanxious in the face of difficult situa-tions are likely to be perceived aslacking in self-awareness. The assess-ments by managers’ direct reportsindicated that self-awareness is alsorelated to social responsibility.

Balance between personal life andwork. Managers who had demon-strated to their bosses that they wereadept at balancing their work priori-ties with their personal lives so thatneither was neglected gave them-


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Weighing the EvidenceTo explore whether specific behav-iors associated with leadershipeffectiveness are connected to par-ticular elements of emotional intel-ligence, CCL designed and conduct-ed a study in which 302 managerstook part. The managers, who wereparticipants in CCL’s LeadershipDevelopment Program (LDP)®, wereassessed through Benchmarks®, a360-degree feedback instrumentthat gives managers insights intohow their bosses, peers, direct

reports, and they themselves per-ceive their leadership strengths anddevelopment needs. The managersalso completed the BarOn Emo-tional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i™),with which people assess them-selves on fifteen components ofemotional intelligence. The BarOnEQ-i was developed through nine-teen years of research conductedaround the world by clinical psy-chologist Reuven Bar-On and ispublished by Multi-Health Systems

of North Tonawanda, New York. Theresults from Benchmarks and theBarOn EQ-i were correlated toreveal associations between leader-ship skills, perspectives, and derail-ment factors and aspects of emo-tional intelligence.

The senior-level managers in thestudy averaged just under forty-three years old. Seventy-three per-cent were male, 81 percent werewhite, and 90 percent had a mini-mum of a bachelor’s degree.

time being open to learning from oth-ers were associated by managers’bosses and direct reports with theemotional intelligence component ofindependence. People who rate them-selves highly on independence seethemselves as being self-directed andself-controlled in their thinking andactions and as being free of emotionaldependency. Additionally, bosses’assessments of managers’ ability to dowhatever it takes were connected withassertiveness—expressing feelings,beliefs, and thoughts in a constructiveway—and direct reports’ ratings onthis leadership skill were connectedwith optimism. So it appears thatmanagers who are good at doingwhatever it takes are more likely to beself-reliant, autonomous, and persist-ent and positive, even when theyencounter adversity.

Decisiveness. Managers said bytheir direct reports to prefer quick,unhesitating, and approximate actionsover slow and precise moves gavethemselves high marks on the emo-tional intelligence quality of independ-ence. This indicates that managers whocharacterize themselves as independentthinkers and as being self-directed andself-controlled in their actions aremore likely to be seen as decisive bythe people who work for them.

Confronting problem employees.Peers’ assessments of the degree towhich managers were able to dealwith difficult workers decisively andfairly were tied to the emotionalintelligence measure of assertiveness.This indicates that being able toexpress one’s feelings, beliefs, andthoughts in a constructive way ishelpful in handling employees whoseperformance isn’t up to par.

Change management. Directreports’ ratings of their managers’effectiveness at implementing strate-gies to facilitate organizationalchange initiatives and overcomeresistance to change were connectedwith the emotional intelligence abil-ity of social responsibility. Peers’assessments of managers’ change


management skills were linked to theemotional intelligence measure ofinterpersonal relationship. Thus itappears that managers who are coop-erative members of their socialgroups and who are adept at buildingand sustaining working relationshipscharacterized by intimacy and affec-tion are likely to also be good at lead-ing change by example, involvingothers in change initiatives, andadjusting to changing situations.

FAST TRACK TO NOWHEREThe second section of Benchmarks isdesigned to identify potential prob-lem areas that can contribute tocareer derailment. The study foundassociations between two of thesecareer-threatening flaws and certainaspects of emotional intelligence.

Problems with interpersonal rela-tionships. The connections betweenmanagers’ difficulties in developinggood working relations with othersand managers’ self-assessments oftheir emotional intelligence abilitieswere some of the most strikingfound in the study. From all threerater perspectives, managers whowere seen as having problems withinterpersonal relationships—a careerflaw characterized by insensitivity,arrogance, impatience, authoritarian-ism, volatility, and other negativetraits and behaviors—scored low onthe emotional intelligence ability ofimpulse control. Interpersonal rela-tionship ratings from direct reportsand peers were related to stress tol-erance, ratings from direct reportswere associated with social responsi-bility, and bosses’ assessments wereconnected with empathy. Theseresults suggest that no matter howstrong their intellectual or technicalskills, managers who care littleabout being cooperative and con-tributing members of their groups,who can’t handle pressure, who eas-ily explode and take their frustra-tions out on others, and who don’tunderstand or appreciate the feelings

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selves high ratings in the emotionalintelligence abilities of social respon-sibility, impulse control, and empathy.This suggests that if you give yourboss the impression that you are awhole person with a well-rounded life,you’re more likely to believe in yourabilities to contribute to a group, resistimpulsive actions, and understand theemotions of others. Ratings on work-life balance from direct reports werealso associated with impulse control.

Straightforwardness and compo-sure. From all rater perspectives, theleadership skills of remaining stead-fast and calm during crises, relying onfacts, and being able to recover frommistakes were related to impulse con-trol. Direct reports’ ratings of theirmanagers’ straightforwardness andcomposure were also associated withstress tolerance, social responsibility,and optimism (the ability to maintaina positive attitude even in the face ofadversity), and bosses’ ratings of man-agers’ resolve and poise were relatedto managers’ own sense of happiness.

Building and mending relation-ships. Bosses’ assessments of man-agers’ abilities to develop and main-tain solid working relationships withpeople inside and outside their organ-izations and to negotiate work-relatedproblems without alienating peoplewere linked to impulse control, anddirect reports’ ratings were associatedwith stress tolerance. These connec-tions make a lot of sense: managerswho are prone to explosive outburstsand an inability to control hostilitydon’t do much to help their relation-ships with their bosses, and problem-atic relationships with direct reportsoften cause stress for managers, orconversely, managers’ inability tocope with stress and adversity oftenresults in poor relationships with thepeople they supervise.

Doing whatever it takes. The lead-ership abilities of being perseverantand staying focused in the face ofobstacles, of being action oriented andtaking charge, and of taking a stand onone’s own if required and at the same

of others may be setting themselvesup for derailment.

Difficulty changing or adapting.Direct reports’ ratings of their man-agers’ resistance to change and abilityto learn from mistakes were related tothe emotional intelligence measuresof stress tolerance and impulse con-trol. A possible explanation for thisconnection is that managers whohave a hard time with change oftenhave a limited comfort zone. Whenthey are forced outside that zone, itsets off anger and resentment, whichin turn produces stress.

POINTS TO PONDERFour principal themes stand out fromthe relationships found between lead-ership abilities and emotional intelli-gence and between derailment char-acteristics and emotional intelligence:

• As organizations realize that thecommand-and-control, hierarchicalmodel of leadership is no longereffective, they are increasingly mov-ing toward a more participative man-agement style. It appears that man-agers can more easily embrace thischange and adapt to this style whenthey have certain emotional intelli-gence abilities—forming good work-ing relationships, being cooperativeand constructive members of a group,controlling anger and other impulses,and in general being pleasant to bearound. Co-workers view managerswith these characteristics as beingeffective in the participative style.

• Being centered and grounded isa valuable quality for managers. It’simportant for managers to give theimpression that they are in control ofthemselves, understand themselves,and know their own strengths andweaknesses. The degree to whichmanagers are perceived as being self-aware, straightforward, and com-posed and as having balance betweentheir personal and work lives is basedlargely on how they react under pres-sure and in difficult situations. If they

fall apart or flare up with anger, theirleadership abilities are liable to bequestioned; if they are imperturbableand resist flying off the handle, theirmanagerial skills are likely to be con-firmed.

• A willingness and ability totake action is key to effective leader-ship. Decisiveness and doing what-ever it takes to achieve a goal areassociated with independence inthought and actions. Managers whoare independent do not ignore theopinions of others but are also notdependent on such input. This self-reliance helps them think strategi-cally, make good decisions, and per-severe in the face of obstacles.

• Organizations are placingincreased value on interpersonal rela-tionships, and managers who don’thandle their emotions well, who lackunderstanding of themselves and oth-ers, and who are abrasive or abusivemake others feel uncomfortable. Thatincreases their chances of derailing.

WHAT YOU CAN DOEmotional intelligence can be devel-oped and enhanced, although doingso takes a lot of effort. Managerswho are in danger of derailingbecause of poor interpersonal rela-tionships are particularly good candi-dates for working on their emotionalintelligence. In general, assessmentand feedback instruments such asBenchmarks are good ways to beginimproving emotional intelligence,followed by goal setting and a devel-opmental experience that may takethe form of classroom training, jobassignments, simulations, coaching,or learning from a role model.Managers should identify and addressany obstacles to their goals, practicenew behaviors in a supportive envi-ronment, and review and reassesstheir behavioral changes to help lockin what they have learned.

More specifically, organizationstoday value managers who can putthe needs of the group ahead of their

personal needs—in other words, whohave the emotional intelligencecapacity of social responsibility. Oneway to develop this ability may be toinvolve yourself in the communitythrough charities, nonprofit organiza-tions, and other worthy causes.Devoting time and energy to suchgroups can help you see beyond yourown concerns and improve your abil-ity to be a valued member of a group.Another way to develop socialresponsibility is to review your indi-vidual work goals, then considerthem from the perspectives of yourteam and organization. Ask yourselfwhether your individual goals facili-tate and are aligned with the groupand organizational goals, and whatyou can do to contribute positively tothe larger goals.

The ability to handle stress isrelated to a range of leadership skillsand derailment factors. Managerswho are lacking in these related char-acteristics may want to considerstress management training. Be care-ful, however, to choose a program orworkshop that is well designed andhas a record of good results. Some ofthe better programs include assess-ment, feedback, modeling and prac-tice of new skills, and ongoing sup-port to keep people from lapsingback to their old ways.

Finally, the emotional intelligenceability of impulse control was relatedto ratings on eight Benchmarksscales. The manifestations of poorimpulse control—such as aggression,hostility, irresponsibility, and frustra-tion—are highly conspicuous to col-leagues, so learning to restrain impul-sive behavior can do a lot to improvea manager’s interactions at work. Ifyou have problems with impulse con-trol, you might want to considercoaching as a way to develop compo-sure, patience, self-awareness, adapt-ability, and coolness under fire. Acoach can help you pinpoint your hotbuttons and learn how to respondmore effectively in situations of con-flict or adversity.


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