RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies: Emotional and Social Intelligence

Andrea Boley
Siena Heights University

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies: Emotional and Social Intelligence

Great leaders have their own set of unique qualities that allow them to entice others to
follow them down the path of success. Though each great leader may have different
personalities they may share the same leadership competencies such as social and emotional
intelligence. These components make up the leadership competencies throughout this paper.
Leadership Competencies are leadership skills and behaviors that contribute to superior
performance. By using a competency-based approach to leadership, organizations can better
identify and develop their next generation of leaders. (SHRM, 2008). Using this method for
grooming future leaders is done all the time throughout corporations who are looking to keep
their companies going in the long run. Each company wants to be able to find individuals who
have the social and emotional intelligence to keep their corporations afloat regardless of the
economic status. No corporation plans to fail, but failure may come with the wrong leader.
Social intelligence is quite broad, but can best be seen in terms of understanding of
social situations and dynamics, and ability to operate effectively in a variety of social situations.
Social intelligence can be developed by exposing yourself to different people, different social
situations, and work to develop your social perceptiveness and ability to engage others. (Riggio,
2014). A great leader will use his social intelligence to seek out innovative ways for keeping his
company successful. A prime example of a CEO planning ahead using his social intelligence is
the CEO of Proctor and Gamble. His marketing strategy was to have the Chinese use more
Proctor and Gamble products such as Crest toothpaste. He lived in China on a rice farm so he
could learn their way of life. He learned what they valued, in this instance their teeth, and what
they knew about teeth so he could grow his product in that country. Then he took his knowledge
and applied it to his marketing strategies so Proctor and Gamble could become more successful

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in China. This example is perfect in showing how social intelligence can be used by leaders to
grow a company from nothing (in this case, China) to billions of dollars over a two year period.
(Cloud, 2006, p. 112-113).
Emotional intelligence is our ability to communicate at the emotional level. Emotional
intelligence is defined as the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to enhance
thinking. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate
emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to
reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. (Sadri, 2012).
Leaders must develop and fine tune emotional intelligence. They cannot afford to show their
emotions or allow their emotions to get in the way of making business decisions. If they did,
they would not be as successful as those that have control over their own emotions. If they show
absolutely no emotion then they are considered to be cold-hearted and ruthless. If they come
across as too emotional then they are not taken seriously, so there must be a line between one
extreme over the other.
Leaders that have a handle on emotional intelligence have the ability to use emotions to
their advantage because they can identify emotions, regulate their own emotions, and use others
emotions to benefit the company. There are some leaders who make decisions based on
emotions. An example of this is a CEO of a dog food company. He decided his company could
do better if they had the right advertising company so he fired their current advertising company.
The new advertising company went about with a better advertising campaign but the results were
the same. The CEO became so angry that he allowed his emotions to keep him from seeing any
other solution than firing his own marketing team and hiring new fresh employees. When that
approach failed one of the CEOs managers mentioned that the dogs just did not like the food, it

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was not an advertising issue. (Cloud, 2006, p. 99-100). The CEO allowed his own emotions
from seeing that it just may be the actual product instead of the advertising of the product as
being the problem.
There may be leaders who have the knowledge to help companies succeed but lack the
emotional or social intelligence to get the most out of their people. When this is the case the
leaders may use feedback from the employees as to why the employees do not respond well to
their leader. For example: a Fortune 500 company hired a new marketing manager for her
knowledge in marketing to get their company further ahead in their field. After six months the
new manager found she could not get her team to respond to her in a friendly way. So her boss
decided to find out why her team was not being as productive as they should be. They used
feedback to find out that her team members found her low on managing conflicts, empathy,
flexibility, and people skills. So the company hired a coach to help her in the areas that were
considered her weaknesses. (Goleman, 2014). This example shows even though some leaders
may lack emotional and/or social intelligence does not mean they cannot learn to develop the
skills it takes to become more emotionally or socially intelligent. In order for a leader to become
a great one they must develop emotional and social intelligence.
Leadership competencies, such as emotional and social intelligence, are important to
have in business. Though they may have the knowledge to make the company great they cannot
get their team members to be as productive without having these leadership competencies. Some
leaders may have the emotional and social intelligence because that is part of their personality
while others may need to learn how to acquire these skills.

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References

Cloud, H. (2006). integrity the courage to meet the demands of reality (p. 99-113). New York,
NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Goleman, D. (2014, November). What It Takes to Achieve Managerial Success. In Talent
Development. Retrieved from EBSCO.
Leadership Competencies. (2008, March 1). In Society For Human Resource Management.
Retrieved from Google Scholar.
Riggio, R. E. (2014, April 27). The Top 10 Leadership Competencies. In Psychology Today.
Retrieved September 24, 2015, from Google Scholar
Sadri, G. (2012). Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Development. Public Personnel
Management, 41(3), 535-548. Retrieved from EBSCO.