A Leader’s Guide To Emotional Intelligence (Part 2)

There were two key messages in part 1.

First, that Daniel Goleman’s model of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), has five dimensions.

Second, that all growth in a person’s emotional intelligence starts with the first dimension, Self-Awareness.  This flows into greater Empathy (the second dimension) and capacity to Self-Regulate (the third dimension) and emerges as improved Social Skills (the fourth dimension).  Motivation, the fifth dimension, provides the fuel for this growth.

Now we start to bridge from theory to practice…

Emotional Competencies – EQ Potential Turned Into Ability

Goleman goes on to list the 25 emotional competencies that underpin the 5 dimensions of emotional intelligence.  This is where EQ becomes more practical.

What are emotional competencies, you ask?  In essence, they are abilities you can learn that combine the power of thought and feelings.  As Goleman sees it, “Our emotional intelligence determines our potential for learning the practical skills”… and our “emotional competence shows how much of that potential we have translated into on-the-job capabilities.”

His list of 25 competencies is useful because it gives you the opportunity to appreciate your strengths and notice which competencies need more attention.  Below is his list of competencies, split by each of the five EQ dimensions:

Self Awareness Competencies

1  Emotional awareness: Recognising your feelings and their effects on you and others.

2  Accurate self-assessment: Knowing your strengths and weaknesses

3  Self-confidence: Based on a positive, healthy sense of self-esteem.

Self-Regulation Competencies

4  Self-Control: Keeping unhelpful feelings under control

5  Trustworthiness: Consistently displaying honesty and integrity

6  Ownership: Taking responsibility for your own performance

7  Adaptability: Flexibility during periods of change

8  Innovation: Being able to accept challenges to old mind-sets and explore new ideas

Motivation Competencies

9  Achievement drive: The inner push to improve and to meet goals

10  Commitment: Readiness to make sacrifices

11  Initiative: Readiness to grab opportunities and not let a fear of failure hold you back

12  Optimism & Perseverance: The ability to keep going despite setbacks

Empathy Competencies

13  Understanding Others: Sensing and feeling others’ needs, emotions and perspectives

14  Developing others: The ability, interest and desire to help others’ personal growth

15  Service orientation: Understanding and striving to meet customers’ needs

16  Leveraging diversity: Being able to work well with different kinds of people

17  Political awareness: Detecting an organisation’s mind-sets and power sources

Social Skill Competencies

18  Influence: Rapport-building and persuasion skill

19  Communication: Being able to listen well, act authentically and connect with others

20  Conflict management: Ability to act diplomatically

21  Leadership: Inspiring and setting direction

22  Change catalyst: Ability to begin and direct change

23  Building bonds: Creating and preserving personal relationships

24  Collaboration: Working with others towards shared goals, balancing task and people needs

25  Team abilities: Being able to build team spirit

The Minimum You Need

To be clear, you don’t need to be perfect on all 25 competencies!  But Goleman argues that you probably do need to be strong in at least 6 of them.  Not only that, the minimum 6 competencies must cover all 5 dimensions – it’s not enough to have 3 competencies in one dimension and 3 in another.

Emotional Intelligence & Uniqueness

This leads us to a key conclusion: that one leader’s EQ “mix” is not the same as another’s.  In other words, we can be equally emotionally intelligent, but in different ways, unique to us. 

In part 3, we will at look at tips for improving your emotional competencies.