Key component of leadership

Persistence of effective leadership in the workplace promotes and bolsters teamwork, motivation, provides direction, inspires trust, and maximises business opportunities to accomplish organisational predefined goals. It is identified that having effective and strong leadership can positively influence overall business performance by maximising employee productivity. Thus, the following subsequent section aims to provide a brief evaluation of the contribution of leadership to business performance and analyse the effectiveness of emotional intelligence in leadership by considering examples of global business leaders.

The thesis statement of the present study is to “analyse whether leaders who are expressive and can perceive emotions of employees are more influential than the leaders without these skills”.

The rapid enhancement of pressure on business entities and organisations to implement change for business survivability as well as maintaining relevance of business may not be overemphasised in the present globalisation era. In this 21st Century, leaders are found to have a wide range of responsibilities to lead successfully the probable changes in the workplace (de Araujo et al. 2021). In most of the cases, it is identified that due to a lack of support from the leaders, employees fail to show their proactive engagement with their allocated activities leading to a decline in overall organisational productivity. Leaders are found to be key assets and the pillar of any business organisation upon which overall business failure or success depends.

In this regard, Lee (2019) mentioned that “emotional intelligence” is one of the most important leadership skills that support leaders to establish a suitable and collaborative work culture that positively drives business success. It can be mentioned that emotional intelligence and leadership practices are interconnected to each other. The key reason behind this statement is that leaders are required to be proactive in terms of managing strong relationships with their respective team members in a positive way. Leaders with strong emotional intelligence can improve team performance that positively influences business efficiency and productivity.

According to Gómez-Leal et al. (2022), emotional leaders are found to emphasise self-awareness and by regulating their emotions, they have the ability to express their perspectives in front of others in a positive manner. In this highly competitive business environment, employees are found to show their willingness to work for an organisation where they can present themselves effectively without any fear of discrimination. In this context, leaders play a significant role in building a suitable workplace environment by perceiving the needs and expectations of their subordinates or employees. Emotions are found to be highly contented with one’s performance and working relationships at the workplace. The reason behind mentioning this statement is being highlighted in the next adjacent paragraph.

Emotions affect working relationships and performance

Change is often found to be associated with emotions as people commonly show their preferences to obtain comfort and flexibility at the workplace. Determining the change in the business environment and requirements, leaders are found to be responsible to implement organisational change by motivating others so that employees can adjust themselves to the change easily. Emotional intelligence is an effective leadership skill that enables leaders to manage and understand their emotions and influence the emotions of the people around them in a positive manner. As mentioned by Ferreira et al. (2019), emotions influence decision-making, commitments, work quality, and creativity of employees. Employees who fail to meet the expectations or working needs, they may fail to show their proactive engagement towards accomplishing business goals. Leaders with emotional intelligence (EI) skills in this regard plays a crucial role in managing and understanding the needs of their employees in accordance to which they can enhance job satisfaction. The leaders need to manage and monitor the emotions of their respective people or team members so that they can influence them in such a way that positively maximises the chance for accomplishing organisational predefined strategic goals.  

On the other hand, it is identified that leaders who are able to improve their EI skills can successfully manage stress, coach teams, collaborate with teams, and deliver feedback that positively influences their professional careers as well. For example, leaders are found to portray a variety of emotions including negative and positive to influence team members and guide them in an appropriate direction to accomplish goals (Elrehail et al. 2018). In most of the cases, it is identified that leaders portrayed an authoritative leadership style to influence others. However, these types of leadership styles negatively influence team members at the workplace.

The reason behind this statement is that these types of leaders do not have effective EI skills; rather they try to impose their perspectives, thoughts, and orders on employees without analysing the consequences of their decision on others (Purwanto et al. 2019). This, in turn, creates a toxic work culture leading to a higher employee turnover rate. In contrast, some leaders show democratic or transformational leadership styles with high EI skills. These leaders are found to work collaboratively with their co-workers to understand their difficulties and consider the perspective of employees while making any kind of decision. This type of leader has the potential to drive long-run business success by retaining employees and maximising job satisfaction.

Leaders with or without EI

With the growing business competitiveness, leaders across the world from different business industries are trying to adopt a suitable leadership style to develop an effective working environment for their employees. Working flexibility is found to be one of the key aspects and growing preferences among employees. As mentioned by Issah (2018), organisations that are able to provide working flexibility have witnessed employee productivity growth as compared to the companies that fail to provide flexible working arrangements. Lack of EI can lead to a higher employee turnover rate as leaders without EI may fail to recognise the emotions and needs of their employees due to which they fail to influence them positively towards their respective field’s job.

In order to analyse the effectiveness of EI among leaders, the examples of leaders such as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Jefff Bezos, CEO of Amazon can be interlinked. Both of the mentioned leaders are found to follow a transformational leadership style to influence their respective employees towards their work. However, EI of Satya Nadella is found to be effective as compared to Jeff Bezos due to which employee turnover rate at Amazon is found to be high as compared to Microsoft. The key reason behind this statement is that Jeff Bezos is found to portray an autocratic leadership style instead of transformational style in practice and imposed orders to employees that need to be adhered to without perceiving employees’ emotions (Newton, 2020). In contrast, Satya Nadella is found to be emotionally connected with each of its employees. Understanding the emotions and needs of employees Satya Nadella establishes a flexible and collaborative working environment that positively influences employee engagement and job satisfaction (Microsoft, 2022).

Conclusion

In the context of the overall discussion, it can be mentioned that leaders are the key pillar for business as their performance and activities highly influence organisational productivity and performance. From the discussion, it is identified that leaders are required to have high EI to understand the needs and influence the emotions of people around them. It is also seen that emotions are highly influential aspects that directly affect performance and overall business stability. From the examples, portraying the same leadership style, the CEO of Amazon fails to prove or build a suitable working environment get for employees that meet the employee’s emotions and needs. In contrast, the CEO of Microsoft is found to show their ability to control his emotions as well as influence the emotions of their employees positively that enhances their chance to drive continuous business success across the market. Thus, the thesis statement can be restated as “leaders who are expressive and can perceive emotions of employees are more influential than the leaders without these skills”.  

References

De Araujo, L.M., Priadana, S., Paramarta, V. and Sunarsi, D., 2021. Digital leadership in business organizations. International Journal of Educational Administration, Management, and Leadership, pp.45-56.

Elrehail, H., Emeagwali, O.L., Alsaad, A. and Alzghoul, A., 2018. The impact of transformational and authentic leadership on innovation in higher education: The contingent role of knowledge sharing. Telematics and Informatics, 35(1), pp.55-67.

Ferreira, A.I., da Costa Ferreira, P., Cooper, C.L. and Oliveira, D., 2019. How daily negative affect and emotional exhaustion correlates with work engagement and presenteeism-constrained productivity. International Journal of Stress Management, 26(3), p.261.

Gómez-Leal, R., Holzer, A.A., Bradley, C., Fernández-Berrocal, P. and Patti, J., 2022. The relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership in school leaders: a systematic review. Cambridge Journal of Education, 52(1), pp.1-21.

Issah, M., 2018. Change leadership: The role of emotional intelligence. Sage Open, 8(3), p.2158244018800910.

Lee, Y.H., 2019. Emotional intelligence, servant leadership, and development goal orientation in athletic directors. Sport management review, 22(3), pp.395-406.

Microsoft, 2022. Empowering our employees. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/empowering-employees> [Accessed on 25 March 2022]

Newton, C., 2020. Amazon’s poor treatment of workers is catching up to it during the coronavirus crisis. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/4/1/21201162/amazon-delivery-delays-coronavirus-worker-strikes > [Accessed on 25 March 2022]

Purwanto, A., Wijayanti, L.M., Hyun, C.C. and Asbari, M., 2019. the Effect of Tansformational, Transactional, Authentic and Authoritarian Leadership Style Toward Lecture Performance of Private University in Tangerang. Dinasti International Journal of Digital Business Management, 1(1), pp.29-42.