There is no question that we are living in a world that is fast paced and competition is growing stronger day by day. We are in a relentless business environment regardless of the niche or industry and anyone who wants to be a leader needs to be able to maintain a very high level of emotional control. In this article, we are going to be talking about what emotional intelligence is all about and how a leader needs this as an essential part of his personality in order to find success.

What is emotional intelligence?

You are going to read all kinds of fancy talk about what emotional intelligence means, but the truth is that there is no need to complicate things with long explanations and strange terms. Emotionally intelligence is the art of being able to control your emotions, but this is not as simple as it seems.

If you are a person who has a very bad temper and you learn to hide this from others even if you are very angry, you are not emotionally mature. You are simply good at masking that temper and making it seem like you are under control. Once you are able to turn those intense emotions down and you are no longer feeling angry for any reason that is when you are exercising your emotional intelligence.

“If you want to avoid emotional mediocrity, be on time for every present moment.”
― Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana, Ph.D, MBA

Emotional intelligence is not something that you learn in a few days, weeks or even a couple of years. It takes time for you to be able to learn to control your emotions, but most of all, you need to experience a great number of things that are going to make it easier for you to experiment with your ability to control your emotions.

Most people never really know how much control they have over their emotions, but the leader seeks that challenge as much as possible. Everything in life that is worth learning is going to require that we expose ourselves as much as possible. This separates those who evolve into stronger people and those who get stuck in the safe zone.

Exposure is key

Some people think they are in control of their emotions, but the average person has never been in situations of enough intensity to know just how much control they really have. This is the main reason why most leaders are people who have experienced a good number of emotionally charged situations in life and they have learned to make the most out of those issues.

When people are able to control a full range of emotions, they are not only controlling them partially so that they look calm and under control on the outside. They are controlling them and lowering their intensity so that they can perform properly. If a person only pretends to be under control, their actions will still be affected by their internal struggle to be in control. This is the main reason why a large number of people seem to be calm, but they make serious mistakes when handling intense situations because they are not in true control of their emotions.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence is extremely important for a leader because it will earn them the respect of those around them. That is the main reason why you should always strive to experience as much emotional turmoil as possible. It will make you tougher and it will give you the opportunity to see how you react and it will provide a very healthy exercise on emotional control, which is an essential requirement when you want to be able to become emotionally mature.