While technical skill and cognitive ability are essential competency areas for leaders, emotional intelligence has been shown to be twice as important in outstanding performance as other two competencies combined! In fact, 80-90% of difference between outstanding and average leaders is linked to EI. The abilities that drive successful execution of vision – motivating, guiding, inspiring, listening, persuading, and creating resonance – are emotional competencies. If you want exceptional business results, you should assess your EI or your team’s EI, for these are abilities that can be developed.

What is emotional intelligence? Dr. Daniel Goleman, a thought leader in field, defines it as “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.” Thus, emotional competence integrates thought and emotion.

There are four domains of emotional intelligence - self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management – within which are eighteen competencies that have been identified as differentiating characteristics in outstanding performers. Effective relationship management is at heart of great leadership but self-awareness is considered linchpin for developing other three domains. Emotionally intelligent leadership, then, builds up from a foundation of self-awareness.

Furthermore, a leader’s EI creates a certain culture or work environment. Organizational research done by Hay Group, co-creators of Emotional Competence Inventory (a 360 assessment of EI), discovered that “EI is carried...like electricity through wires....the leader’s mood is quite literally contagious, spreading quickly and inexorably throughout business.” Feelings and emotions have a direct impact on effectiveness, efficiency and ultimately bottom line.

Leaders need to understand that their single most important task is to create resonance. Put another way, they must create a positive emotional environment that frees best in people. Climate, or how employees feel about working in organization, accounts for 20-30% of business performance; and 50-70% of how employees perceive their organization’s climate can be traced to actions of one person - leader.

How does this translate to bottom line? In one study, experienced partners in a multinational consulting firm were assessed on EI competencies plus three others. Those who scored above median on 9 or more of 21 competencies delivered $1.2 million more profit from their accounts than did other partners – a 139 percent incremental gain. Another study of 130 executives found that how well people handled their emotions determined how much people around them preferred to deal with them.

We communicate to influence others. We are either on giving or receiving end of an endless stream of influencing, persuading, requesting, demanding, cajoling, exhorting, inveigling and manipulating each other to further our ends. Think about how many times a day you request others to do things, seek buy-in to a strategy, encourage greater productivity, suggest how people should think about things, or offer thoughts on attitudes or behaviors others need to change.

While there are a number of relationship management abilities critical for people who want to be outstanding leaders, influence is core competency in domain of relationship management according to Hay Group, creators of Emotional Competence Inventory.

Influence effectiveness depends on a combination of factors including: choice of influence tactic, your skill at using tactic, your organizational power base, and your personal power base. There are ten common influence tactics that people can use ethically: