UTILIZING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SKILLS TO ENHANCE LEADERSHIP AND RESILIENCE-BUILDING PROCESSES

Purpose: Effective leadership requires one to be resilient in order to surmount obstacles and setbacks. Additionally, the effective leader must create an environment of resiliency within the organization to assist others in overcoming challenges and dealing with failure. The purpose of this paper is to describe how the skills affiliated with emotional intelligence can be utilized to enhance the leadership resilience-building processes and to develop an assessment questionnaire to assist leaders in the application of emotional intelligence to build resilience.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Goleman’s [1] and Boyatzis’ et al. [2] four elements of emotional intelligence and the associated 20 behavioral competencies are analyzed to develop a methodology for the practical application of emotional intelligence skills to leadership resilience-building within the organization. Expanding on the work of Hess and Bacigalupo [3], this methodology focuses on the analysis of the emotional intelligence behavioral competencies from the perspective of leadership resilience, resulting in the development of an assessment questionnaire for the enhancement of both emotional intelligence awareness and resilience-building processes.

Findings: The application of emotional intelligence skills may improve resiliency in organizational leadership. The utilization of an emotional intelligence/resiliency assessment may improve the leadership process, as well as the processes associated with resilience-building within the organization.

Originality/Value: While emotional intelligence has been the subject of a significant amount of literature over the past two decades, the literature is thin on how the behaviors associated with emotional intelligence may be applied to enhance resilience and resilience-building within the organizational environment. Organizations may benefit from the practical application of emotional intelligence skills to develop resilience and resilience-building processes.