So! Emotional Intelligence! If you are unfamiliar with it, I strongly advise that you explore it because Emotional Intelligence is a critical component of good leadership. 
Very basically, The Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EI) allows you to identify, understand and manage your emotions and use them to create rich relationships in your organization and, of course, in other areas of your life too.
The notion of Emotional Intelligence began as far back as the 1930s but it stayed pretty much in the psychologists’ world until the mid 90’s when Daniel Goleman made it popular through his book, EI: Why it can matter more than IQ
After that, the idea of Emotional Intelligence moved from its fuzzy place in psycho-babble land into the mainstream where leaders and others everywhere found it to have some very real, valuable and practical application.
In a nutshell, EI helps us to examine and understand ourselves on four fronts:
- Self-awareness
- Self-Management
- Social Awareness
- Relationship Management
When leaders are self aware it means that they have a pretty good handle on how their emotions affect others; their strengths and limitations and; their ability to accept challenges with confidence.
Leaders who self-manage well are generally controlling their more disruptive emotions and impulses. More specifically, when crises happen, people who have the ability to self-manage well, do not panic or put everyone else in a tizzy. And believe me, that is something to strive for! Among other things, Self management is also about transparency. That means that they are clear about their feelings and actions and ‘fess up when they mess up.
Leaders who are socially aware, demonstrate empathy for others; are usually good at picking up on things like atmospheres and body language and; appreciate and use diversity positively.
Finally, leaders who manage relationships well tend to be good at motivating and inspiring others. They maintain a positive influence on the people around them and take a genuine and active interest in their development. Good relationship managers are also good at leading people through change and managing conflict. And they are collaborators and team builders extraordinaire. Whew!
Okay, so the number of leaders that excel in all these areas is rare indeed. So don’t panic. But, the EI Quotient gives us a benchmark for goal setting and improvement. And that can only be a good thing.
So how Emotionally Intelligent are you? Check out this web-site and for a small fee, you can find out!
Here’s the link Have fun! It doesn’t hurt a bit.
You're Not the Boss of Me 
I’m the CEO and founder of http://www.BuildDirect.com and I am a big fan of your blog. This post is another great one. Self awareness is a huge part of true success, as it leads to authenticity.
Awareness that almost everything in your life (friends, love, success, etc) is a direct reflection of how you feel about yourself allows you to make changes in yourself to achieve anything you want.
Hi Jeff,
Yes, authenticity is key for many reasons and also because people can smell contrivance a mile away!
And I agree that good knowledge of self has a sort of “law of attraction” flavour simply because it allows for clarity of purpose in terms of the choices we make.
As well, it allows us to be mindful of areas in our own behaviour that could use some work. (I suppose there’s a down-side to everything :))
Thanks for checking in and for your encouraging comments!
I look forward to “chatting” again!!