Executive Education White Paper
Using emotional intelligence to strengthen your leadership skills
With Évelyne Stawicki Affiliate professor at ESCP Business School
When it comes to deciding whether a person has the right qualities to fit into your team, emotional intelligence is key. But how can you identify emotional intelligence?
Recruiting new managers based on their experience, university degrees and professional accomplishments is relatively straightforward. That’s the way all businesses have recruited new people for decades now.
But when it comes to deciding whether that person has the right qualities to fit into your team, communicate effectively, convey the right message, listen with intelligence and patience, understand and anticipate the emotional needs of others - well that’s a much more arduous task.
Understandably so, since “emotional intelligence” is not a line that often features in CVs.Furthermore, even though it is increasingly regarded as a key priority within HR departments, the impact, necessity and management of emotional intelligence are not always clearly appreciated.
As opposed to hard skills (know-how), soft skills are personal qualities connected with attitude and approach. They include reliability, adaptability, the ability to resolve conflicts, flexibility, creativity, ethics, the capacity to find solutions to complex problems, cultural intelligence etc. Emotional intelligence is one of the most important soft skills of all, since it has a direct or indirect impact on all the others.
Emotional intelligence is a concept which emerged from the University of Yale in the early 1990s, thanks in large part to the works of American psychologists Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. n 1996, journalist Daniel Goleman drew inspiration from their research in a book now considered to be the founding text of the popular adoption of emotional intelligence: “Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ”. That book topped the bestseller lists for months.
This white paper is part of a series entitled “Leaders for the Future”, produced by ESCP Business School Executive Education, that addresses the needs of companies and professionals so that they can thrive in the face of challenges and a rapidly shifting business landscape.
Evelyne Stawicki
Évelyne Stawicki is a workplace psychologist, consultant and coach specialising in professional and personal development. She is a specialist on all aspects of human resources management.
