Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Goleman's study suggests that leaders who have mastered Authoritative, Democratic, Affiliative and coaching styles have the best climate and have the highest performance.

Effective leaders have the flexibility to switch among these leadership style as needed.

This ability depends on a person's emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage our relationship and ourselves better. Although our intelligence (IQ) is largely genetic, Emotional intelligence can be learned (and improved) at any age.

Source :- Daniel Goleman, Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence, Harvard Business Review March 2000.

  

       

The Six Leadership Styles (Goleman)

Effective Leadership

A manager who is the leader of a Branch probably approaches subordinates in different ways to exercise leadership over them. For example, a manager may say, "Let's get on with our jobs or "I'm counting on you for this job," and so on.

How do the subordinates respond to such approaches? The responses of subordinates can be considered as having two phases.

In the first phase, we can evaluate whether or not the purpose of the manager is accomplished as he or she intended; in other words, whether the manager's approach succeeded or failed. Although it will probably be rare for any manager to fail completely, subordinates can cleverly cut corners.

In the second phase, we can evaluate the degree of subordinates satisfaction when the manager succeeded, whether the subordinates worked willingly or reluctantly. If they work reluctantly, the effect will probably not last long. The kind of influence which makes subordinates work willingly is an effective one. That is, leadership which can respond to the needs of the company and satisfy the needs of subordinates is effective leadership.
  

Best Recipe for Effective Leadership

Source : Linkedin https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/d5fef249-bdcf-4801-8d05-a6a8ec943d39-original.jpeg

Leadership that Drives the Workplace

Leadership is influence

The essence of leadership is the influence which people exert  on others; in other words, leadership is interpersonal influence.

If we define leadership, it is "Exerting influence in order to move a group or group members in a certain direction". 

As we can see from the definition, leadership originally has nothing to do with position or authority (if you do not agree with this statement, please write your comments). A subordinate may exercise leadership over his or her superior. In our Cricket Team, star players may be more influential than managers or coaches (that is sometime back, i am not sure about current situation). 

However, a manager or a supervisor who is the head of a workplace is officially expected from organization to exercise great leadership. Therefore, if the definition described above is applied to a workplace manager, it becomes thus;"Managerial leadership is a process of influencing others to move in a direction for the realization of workplace goals, while encouraging the demonstration of individuality and the voluntary actions of workplace members".    

Visionary Leadership without Good Governance was destructive

Good governance and visionary leadership are essential for a country or an organization to be considered successful in the eyes of all population/stakeholders in the 21st century. There is a direct link between Good Governance, visionary leadership and economic prosperity.

Visionary leadership and Good Governance are two sides of the same coin. The two have many elements in common. Without an effective leadership we may not envisage Good Governance in its totality. In fact, Good Governance may not be achieved in its totality because of cultural, psychological, social and sociological impacts and differences. Its implementation and perception also varies in line with the level of development and demands of the society. Due to this, the practice shows that very few countries and societies have come close to achieving good governance in its totality.

I am inviting all my friends to share your thoughts with related to good governance and visionary leadership considering foreign and local examples, such as Volkswagen emission scandal (http://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2015/09/27/volkswagen-and-the-failure-of-corporate-social-responsibility), Former chairman of SEC of Sri Lanka fraud (http://www.asianmirror.lk/top-news/item/13487-nalaka-godahewa-indicted-over-financial-fraud) and recent Central Bank case of Sri Lanka.