Optimal Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Abstract Daniel Goleman is best known as the psychologist/author who brought the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) to a wider audience in the mid‐1990s. His coauthor Cary Cherniss was a founding member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (CREIO), where he served as its director and co‐chair for 25 years. They note that when they co‐founded CREIO “more than 25 years ago, there was sparse evidence for the role of EI in optimal leading. Now there is substantial data from studies of hundreds of organizations that reveal a wide range of benefits when leaders, teams, and employees embody EI.” The authors further state that “the impact of a leader’s emotional intelligence goes beyond business performance to include optimal well‐being . For example, information‐technology employees working at a large medical facility who had more empathic managers reported fewer complaints like headaches and upset stomachs.” They provide numerous workplace examples to back up their research, and acknowledge the research of others such as Richard Boyatzis and his team at Case Western Reserve University and Jean Decety at the University of Chicago on the importance of empathy and the three types Decety has found: cognitive, emotional; and empathic concern.