Study of Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Practices

Emotions are the vital forces for the values and principles each one of us lives for and they drive one's focus, action and its speed. "Intelligence" is understood as "the ability to learn and understand from experience or to respond successfully to new experiences, the ability to acquire and retain knowledge". The concept of emotional intelligence is developed based upon a set of competencies like self awareness, self confidence and self control, commitment and integrity, the ability to communicate the influence, to initiate and accept change-these competencies are highly recognized in today's competitive market. Successful leadership today is about how well leaders manage themselves and how well they manage others. Successful leadership is not about intellectual ability or technical expertise; it is about personal characteristics and human qualities that include empathy and compassion, flexibility, and influence. Today's leaders must have the ability and flexibility to adapt to an ever-changing workforce, and it's these human abilities that set apart successful leaders. Emotional intelligence has become as important as, if not more important than, intellectual quotient (IQ) and cognitive abilities. Today, successful leaders are defined by inspiring and motivating others, promoting a positive work environment, perceiving and understanding emotions, and fostering an organizational climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into successes. This study is an attempt to examine the level of emotional intelligence through different dimensions of EI on the middle level managers. The data was collected from 150 middle level managers from banks using standardized scale i.e. Bhattacharya Instrument on Emotional Intelligence. Total of 8 banks from Delhi and NCR were targeted. The main objective of the research was to study the level of emotional intelligence with respect to gender and age of the respondents and explore the relationship between different factors of emotional intelligence. The results revealed that all factors of emotional intelligence were significantly correlated to each other except interpersonal conflict management. Level of emotional intelligence does not differ across gender and age of the leaders. The findings of the study strongly recommend improvement in developing leaders' capacity for empathy. If one lacks empathy, they can cut themselves off at the knees in many kinds of negotiations at the time of conflict resolution. This study supports the position that emotional stability and emotional intelligence are important factors for organizational leadership.