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Emotional Intelligence

Decent Essays

What is empathy? Empathy is “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions: the ability to share someone else’s feelings; the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better” (“Empathy”, 2014).
In his book Emotional Intelligence (1995), Daniel Goleman coined the term emotional intelligence, and discussed the importance of affective qualities in leaders, such as self-awareness, empathy, and social skill. In his article “What Makes a Leader?” (2004), published in the Harvard Business Review, Goleman discussed the necessary criteria for great leadership:
I have found… that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high …show more content…

According to Badea and Pana in their article “The Role of Empathy in Developing the Leader’s Emotional Intelligence,” (2010) a keen sense of empathy gives a leader an edge. “As a leader, by means of empathy we have the possibility to better understand our subordinates, to intuit their thoughts and feelings, to anticipate their behavior and even to act on it accordingly” (Badea & Pana, 2010, p. 71). Empathy allows people to interpret the non-verbal cues people send when they speak. Badea and Panea (2010) state that, “…in interpersonal communication, nonverbal communication is at least 60%...empathy is based on the ability to intuit people’s feelings” (p. …show more content…

147). In their study, Kellett et al, (2006) investigated whether or not empathy mediates the relationship between the ability to identify others’ emotions and relations leadership. They also hypothesized that empathy mediates the relationship between the ability to express one’s own emotions and relations leadership. Two hundred thirty-one undergraduate and graduate students, enrolled at a Southeastern university and working on obtaining some form of a business degree, received course credit for their participation in this study (Kellett et al., 2006). Participants were randomly assigned to work in groups of three. Both individual and group tasks were assigned. Participants were to simulate an assessment center, and told that companies often employed the use of assessment centers to make placement decisions (Kellett et al., 2006). Group members were instructed to act as if they were managers in a corporation. Their task was to get employees involved in helping needy people in the community. Groups worked together during two, one-hour rounds of tasks. Individuals in each triad could select complex tasks such as marketing, or simple tasks such as addressing envelopes to get the job done (Kellett

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