Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Article critique

Niranjan Shrestha, MBA Fall 2012, Roll No: 12132 Page 1

Introduction
In the following article by Daniel Goleman, published in the Harvard Business Review, focuses
on the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership. Although traditional leadership qualities
such as toughness, vision, intelligence and determination are important they are insufficient in
the face of dynamic business environment. He describes the importance of five basic components
in order to become a emotionally intelligent leader namely; self awareness, self regulation,
motivation, which is classified under self management and empathy and social skill under
relationship skills. His work although a serious departure from conventional theories of
leadership which sticks to proper articulation of vision and getting people to follow through the
vision and leadership to achieve results. His use of the term mood contagion, which he says is a
neurological process to create positive connections among various members in the firm, is also a
racial development in the field of leadership. He instead focuses on the organizational climate,
the mood of the leader and the ability of the leader to instill faith and confidence in employees
through continuous efforts to learn from the surroundings and of being adept at understanding
the follows at an emotional level. Goleman does not however neglect the importance of
knowledge and technical underpinnings that are vital for success in any business organization.
Issues and arguments
Goleman attributes leadership as a function of strategic choice rather than personality. Flexibility
to choose between different leadership viz. coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic,
pacesetting and coaching are hallmarks of effective leaders. Instead of relying on just one finding
the right mix of these different styles in different situation can really drive leaders to be
successful. Also different leadership styles emerge in individuals based on the components of
emotional intelligence that they possess. The article also discusses six factors that affect the
working environment namely; flexibility, sense of responsibility, performance standards,
performance feedback and aptness of rewards, clarity of purpose and commitment. Leaders
ability to affect these variables would certainly pay off enormously in the long run.
The article describes the emotional attributes that effective leaders should possess. It also
describes six different types of leadership and the necessity for leaders to practice among them
interchangeably in order to succeed. It also provides evidences stating that different kinds of
leadership styles can be learned and it ultimately leads to effective leadership overtime. Similarly
Goleman also highlights the leaders state of mind or mood in particular has a profound effect on
the organizational climate. It therefore focuses on the need of leaders to highlight sound traits
and warm personality in order to be able to get the best out of people. Organizational
performance and retention rate can be correlated to leadership qualities that are high on
affiliative qualities. Finally it describes the oscillation tendencies or reflective tendencies that
humans tend to depict when faced with situations they do not have predisposed response cues.
In such cases they rely on the leaders to learn the desired traits. According to the research by
David McClelland in food and beverage companies in 1996 pointed that there was almost 20 %
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Article critique

Niranjan Shrestha, MBA Fall 2012, Roll No: 12132 Page 2

increase in yearly earning goals owing to leaders having critical mass of emotional intelligence
in them. And those that did not have them underperformed by the same percentage amount. Also
organizational climate can affect financial performance by almost 30%.
Methods
Goleman has tended to focus more on qualitative analysis in reaching the conclusions. He has
researched nearly 200 global companies where he was involved in discussions with the followers
and leaders alike to examine the vital traits of leadership. He has then conducted a multi variable
analysis to find correlations on leadership effectiveness and organizational performance. He also
studied the competency models of 188 companies to find out the traits that were common among
leaders. Competency models are designed by psychologists that aid companies in identifying,
training and promoting likely stars in the organization. From subjective identifiers like
subordinates perception, Goleman also conducted objective evaluations like divisions
profitability and capability comparison among individuals which were grouped into three
categories like technical abilities, cognitive abilities and emotional intelligence.
Contribution and Gaps
Starting from trait analysis and charismatic leadership to the effect of transformational and
transactional leadership on organizational performance, the study of emotional intelligence
provides further insights that are more related to the emotional aspects of human drive for
performance. The results have shown direct relationship between emotional intelligence and
business performance. He found that compared to cognitive and technical skills emotional
intelligence had twice as much effect in influencing the profitability of the company. At the
higher levels the importances of cognitive and technical skills were almost negligible. In fact the
differences in performance were driven by almost 90% trough emotional intelligence. He has
gone to challenge the conventional belief of leadership as both an art and a science by suggesting
that it is more art than science. Thus he has regarded it to as sine qua non of leadership. It
focuses its attention on the fact that such behaviors can be learned.
However in the analysis the serious shortcoming that I have found to be is that managing human
beings seldom is very predictable that can be provided by a framework. In fact Leader follower
relationship depends on the interchange that has been shared for a considerable period of time.
Leadership by designation often does less to reinforce leader follower relationship. Also there are
plenty of firms that are pretty much result oriented. The leaders there focus on authoritarian
leadership. Yet these companies tend to do very well. As the author himself describes leaders
like Bill Gates who often imposes and expects so much from his employees that he can be
characterized by being low on emotional intelligence. Yet his organization tends to be very
successful. Yet in other incidences organizations with great inspirational leadership have failed
for lack of standard business practices and work ethos or for failure in retaining employees and
of giving them enough credit for their work. It therefore seems evident that different businesses
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Article critique

Niranjan Shrestha, MBA Fall 2012, Roll No: 12132 Page 3

call for different leadership styles in order to succeed and not all businesses require emotional
intelligence. Also another big question that surrounds Mr. Golemans study is whether or not
followers can identify leaders with more than one leadership style. Every individual has a set of
value, beliefs and opinions about leadership. The six types of leadership as discussed contain
various elements that are not compatible with one another. For example following a coercive
style and a coaching style fall on two ends of a continuum. How can a leader be expected to
exercise both? Would it not contradict with his values and beliefs? The ideas expressed by the
author are too optimistic and idealized and cannot be considered realistic.
The concept of emotional intelligence has less appeal when working in a team setting because
every individual has different values, beliefs, attitudes and motivations. Fostering effective team
calls for having likeminded individuals. Appealing to the emotions of each individual is often not
a choice or the way to go about in organizations. As reality has it, it is often not easy, sometimes
impossible to align the vision of the company with the individual expectations. There is a
tradeoff between skills and pay, short term effectiveness and long term commitment, good
working environment and opportunities for development and career advancement and so on.
While some employees experience higher job satisfaction some could be equally dissatisfied. So
effective leaders are characterized by the ones that focus on a important few and not the trivial
many. Thus empathy is a double edges sword that can often do more harm than good. Praise for
work is so uncommon at the workplace these days that it is often assumed as flattering and does
not drive performance upwards. Instead people expect tangible rewards for job done and are
demotivated otherwise. In the midst of growing competition leaders are so aloof from their
subordinates that they hardly have time to talk to them, leave alone coaching. Mr. Goleman was
maybe restricted to small to medium firms when conducting this research. Likewise all these
researches have been conducted on the basis of instinct, experience and inference and there are
little quantitative evidence to support the effectiveness of different styles.

In explaining mood contagion Mr. Goleman has neglected the fact that leaders experience
massive mood swings throughout the day. S/he can be warm and polite at one time to one person
whereas might be disrespectful to another at the same time. A leader experiences amongst the
highest stress levels in an organization. S/he is paid to deliver results and not to be in tune with
other members in the organization. Also there are examples of organizations that have ill
tempered leaders who show despise and anger most of the time. Yet such organizations have
reported good financial results. It is because the leaders have a reason to be angry and frustrated
which the followers can understand. The mood doesnt trickle down to all the members in the
organization as Goleman has suggested. Leaders are those that hold a strong vision and
determination to succeed. It does not relate with the mood of the individual. Likewise it has
seldom been seen that the leaders been involved in self assessment and feedback through others.
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They may be highly aware but at the same time they try and keep their weaknesses to
themselves. There are very few organizations that perform such emotional assessment of leaders.
Mood regulation can be a real challenge, although the article suggests that it can be regulated
with practice. If it is even possible it is very difficult to put into practice because a person reacts
out of how he feels. A way of getting things around by way of being good sounds too indirect
and manipulative. There are situations that demand a direct approach. They have shown good
results like warning a person of losing his job if he repeated unwanted behaviors again and again.
Also people do not take things seriously unless they are delivered in a cold manner.
Administering the right king of leadership in a given situation depends on just so many factors
that it is difficult, if not impossible to administer the right one. It has more to do with instincts
and experience and very difficult to fine tune. There have been incidences where good leaders
have failed to make that judgment.
Finally it has been seen that there are not much differences among the authoritarian, affiliative
and democratic styles in terms of performance in various situations. Thus a leader could be
equally off by following any of the three styles. A leadership style however has much to do with
the culture that an organization follows.
Scope for further study
The concept of emotional intelligence is intriguing for future managers because it outlines the
necessary mix of ingredients that are necessary to run high performance organizations with self
driven employees. The concept can be applied to understand leadership in the process of
persuasion. The concept of emotional intelligence can also be used to predict the level of
potential that an individual might carry for assuming various responsibilities at the individual
and group level. Similarly it can be used to gauge if an individual who likes to work in isolation
be made to work in a team setting by providing the necessary training and guidelines. It can also
pave the way for analyzing the various methods and tools that can be used to instill a particular
type of leadership trait in an individual or to transform a leader from a particular leadership style
to another. It can also lead to further studies on the combination of leadership styles at various
levels of different organizations to be assured of absolute success.