Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

An experience that resonated with A9 was his observation about the perils of
emotional unintelligence manifesting at senior leadership levels, within the context of a
technical organization. Unfavorable consequences result.
(engineers, lot of (agency name) is a highly technical organization: lot of scientistsoccupation) guys and they get promoted up through the , lot of
ranks because of their technical skills, largely. And what we have found
here at (agency name) is that very few of them have the soft skills that are
needed to be good supervisors. And they ... get into a lot of trouble – one
of the offices that I managed at one point was our EEO (Employment Opportunity) office and I also created the (agency nameEqual )
ombuds(man) office here. And in both cases, you know, one of the major
things we saw was ... a complete lack of emotional intelligence on the
behalf of a lot of our senior executives. So it manifested itself in ways like
bullying, favoritism, and ... staff got out of control, the staff revolts.^
Participant R1. Participant R1 is a retired female who worked in a scientific
environment. Although she initially did not have a favorable impression of the Federal
government, she viewed it as conducive to starting a career and raising a family. Her
career became immersed in complex problems at the national level. Her EI maturity
evolved over the course of her career, in part because of family dynamics (becoming a
grandmother), the ageing process, and navigating through challenging interpersonal
situations.
I have 5 grandchildren now and in many ways a large staff is not unlike
raising children or grandchildren. You learn each one’s strengths, each
one’s weaknesses; you learn to pull out the best in people by getting to
know them.
Different things are important to you and you wouldn’t get offended by a
comment that you might get offended by when you’re 35. When you’re in
your 60s and you’re managing people, you’ve heard almost everything
before.
To R1, gender differences relate to EI and leadership. R1 recalled the gender
disparity during parts of her career, and how perceptions about gender evolved.