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Author: Professor Johnson Odesola
Posted to the web: 2/6/2007 3:56:32 PM

Great organisations are made up of people who, above all, have high emotional intelligence. The relevance of emotional intelligence in business is immense –conflict resolution, customer service, winning the war of talent, productivity, goal setting and in leadership.

 

It is critical that a leader not be limited purely to his cognitive abilities and logic, but also be aware of his feelings. When top management values feelings and attitudes, so will people down the lines. Emotions are contagious; if leader feel optimistic, confident, creative and compassionate, the employees will tend to feel the same. The direction of emotional flow is always top-down.

 

We are all working in an organisation context where the pressure of accountability is increasing day by day for delivering results in your own area. The pressure to deliver your numbers and the pressure to deliver on your commitments is becoming more and more important. Market pressures and competition pressures are increasing. Under the circumstances, it is tempting to defer soft issues like communication, transparency and open collaboration and slip back into silos of command and control.

 

The challenge is not to give in to  this temptation but to work on these every day, every hour, even when there are inevitable set backs and everyone tells you that emotional intelligence is unworkable.

 

Top leadership must continue to send strong positive message on what good open, collective and collaborative leadership is all about.

 

Determine your future

 

Dr Goleman, the guru of emotional intelligence, believes that how you deal with your feelings at the workplace could well determine your future – as a leader and as an individual. Goleman contends that a leaders behaviour and actions drive the emotional climate within the organisation. By controlling and calibrating his emotions with those of others, a leader can create a positive work culture, with happier, more productive employees.

 

In the modern organisations, people with “petty tyrant” old style of leaderships have little chance of success. When you have a boss who doesn’t really care about you, who yells at you and is abusive, you are not going to help him out. You are going to do just enough to keep your job, doing nothing extra for him.

 

A good leader, according to Goleman, is able to tune in to the mood in a room or in a group, and also act in such a way that he moves the mood in a positive direction. In other words, the moods and emotions of the leader resonate with those of the people around him. Dissonant leaders create and emotionally toxic environment with stressed-out employees and, consequently, poor performers.

 

When people are highly distressed, when they are anxious or overwhelmed, the emotional centres of the brain cripple the thing centres. You can’t take in information well, or process it deeply, or respond flexibly and adaptively if you are in high anxiety. Performance is bound to suffer.

 

Johnson Odesola (PhD) is a Regional Coordinator in the Redeemed Christian Church of God and a Professor of Divinity with European Theological Seminary UK & Trinity International University. He is presently a missionary in Southern Africa based in Zambia