What Makes a Leader Harvard Business Review - Article Example

For each of these classes of authority, job descriptions hat define the duties of that specific entity and his area of expertise come handy. While all these entities are considered controllers of some department or business area within the company, they are separated from one another by the number of characteristics that guide their line of duty. Hence fore, there is a difference between leadership and other categories of authority. A leader is an entity that does not command any line of business to a number of subjects but rather an entity with various characteristic attributes that guide the entity’s choices, approach to problems, and inclusion or exclusion of other entities in the decision making process.

A leader is therefore an individual in charge of a certain line of operations or a number of people with a common goal. However, to be a leader, an individual must have self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill as his/her core attributes. Self-awareness is the wholesome of the person in terms of how they understand themselves and how they make decisions that have an impact in their lines of duty. For a self-aware individual in the line of leadership, personal decisions are a reflection of personal abilities.

Hence fore, self-awareness helps the leaders to take or turndown duties that are in or out of the scope of their abilities. Self-regulation is a second attribute of leadership that cultivates behavior and habit of a leader. When faced with a crisis, self-regulation helps a leader to limit his reaction in terms of outburst or emotional instability. Empathy is the third attribute of leadership and helps a leader to understand the emotional status as related to how people react in the line of duty.

The discussed three leadership attributes make up the most important component of leadership, emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage and control emotions and channeling one’s line of thought to productivity. It is through emotional intelligence that various companies thrive or fail with regards to their management’s embrace of emotional intelligence. Data Analysis and Opinion: Following a study to test the competency of some 188 companies in terms of IQ, professional skills, emotional intelligence, and other management attributes, it was observed that leaders who applied emotional intelligence were 20% more productive than their own expectations forecasted.

Those leaders who do not exercise emotional intelligence were found to be 20% less productive than their counterparts who use emotional intelligence. However, while emotional intelligence can be appraised as a very important management tool, it is important too to understand that leaders are required to have personal skills that relate to IQ. Being smart is one thing, and being a leader is another. Therefore, while the characteristics of being a leader work hand in hand to create or manifest emotional intelligence.

Research has found that emotional intelligence is more a genetic capability than it is a learnt attribute of leadership. Research analyzes programs designed to manifest emotional intelligence but has found out that there are attributes that can be learnt and others that cannot. For example, empathy is a major installment in emotional intelligence. However, it is one of the most difficulty attributes that can be learned especially from a manager’s or an executive’s position. For example, an executive may be interested in