Leadership is deeply embedded in our emotions

About a year after I was hired as a researcher at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) a senior colleague, Prof Chin Ong gave me the most profound advice. He said, “Now that you are hired, just how smart you are is not enough to keep you in the job or in the organisation”.

Research shows that C-level executives who rise through the ranks on account of drive, self-discipline and intelligence later get fired for lacking basic emotional competencies. In leadership roles smarts in spades alone just won’t do.

It is not that IQ or technical skills do not matter. They do and to a very large extent. But they are only what is known as threshold abilities, the qualities that get you into the game. Think about a historian or surgeon or chef. There is a requisite level of technical ability and cognitive capacity that is expected.

In a leadership role technical and cognitive abilities are entry level requirements. Research in the last three decades is converging to confirm that as an ingredient of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as technical and cognitive skills for all jobs. A study by renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman shows that emotional intelligence factors explained 90 per cent of the difference between star performers and average leaders.

What is emotional intelligence (EI)? EI is as an assessment of how well one manages their emotions to facilitate mutually beneficial relationships that lead to social, familial and professional and even organisational success. EI seems to be responsible for more than 58 per cent of work performance variability, while IQ seems to be responsible for as little as four to 12 per cent of variability in performance.

Daniel Goleman has defined five components or EI competencies. They are: 1) Self-awareness, which is the ability to understand how one’s feelings affects them, other people and their job; 2) Self-regulation; the ability to re-direct impulses, defer judgement and to think before acting; 3) Motivation, which relates to the ability to pursue organisational goals with energy and persistence, even in the face of adversity; 4) Empathy means thoughtfully considering the feelings of others, listening actively and deeply tuned into non-verbal communication; 5) Social skills relate to proficiency in managing relationships, the ability to find common ground and build rapport, which is critical to building teams and leading change.

As Goleman says, EI or soft skills have hard value in leadership performance and organisational outcomes. Neuroscientists have long established that EI is born manly in the neurotransmitters of the brains limbic system, which governs feelings, impulses and drive. Emotions are important source of feedback, which contributes to cognitive processes; reasoning, conceptual thinking and decisionmaking, hence leadership performance.

Yes, there is such a thing as the biology of leadership, which is essentially EI competencies built on neural circuitry between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. In conclusion, leadership excellence lies not just in cognitive competence but in the wisdom of our emotions, which are embedded deeply in the emotional brain.