Emotional intelligence involves three aspects which are 1. consciousness of self, 2. consciousness of others and 3. consciousness of context. I'm not trying to be philosophical here but bring out an awareness for your self esteem, confidence, commend your intelligence and other capacities. Emotional intelligence can help us become good leaders and help us along to achieve desired outcomes.
People often assume that 1. leadership is available to all individuals, 2. leadership is learnable, and 3. leadership requires inner work among other assumptions.
But notice that you do not need to have a title to become a leader. What does that mean for you and I? Well, that means that anyone can be a leader if they put their mind to it. Sometimes we might make a conscious decision to pursue a leadership role and other times the opportunity can come about for us to pursue a leadership role. Just as Joseph Rost once said, leadership is "an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual progresses." Even the followers have a role to help make the changes. After all, what good is it to have a leader if he or she has no one behind them or have their backing. The bottom line is that leaders and the followers often collaborate toward a common end point.
Each one of us will never just be a leader forever or be just a follower forever, we move from leader to follower or follower to leader depending on the context. So emotional intelligence is not just about leadership but also followership.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post about emotional intelligence. If you haven't figured by now, I have started school and so I hope to share some of the information I am learning in my classes. I hope you join me on the journey!