Emotional Intelligence For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Becoming an Emotionally Intelligent Leader

In This Chapter

• Motivating others at work

• Becoming an effective leader

What does it mean to be a leader? People have written thousands of books about leadership. Who do you think of when you hear the word leadership? John Kennedy, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Teddy Roosevelt, or Margaret Thatcher?

Everyone has his or her own image of who a leader is or what a leader should be. To complicate matters even further, leadership experts have developed hundreds of theories about leadership. You probably don't really see yourself as a leader or aspire to become president, prime minister, CEO, director, or some other kind of leader.

In reality, leadership is easily defined. Leadership involves any situation in which you want someone else to do something. You can't have leadership without followership. Think of all the situations in which you've tried to influence the behavior of others. In those situations, in fact, you acted as a leader. If you try to influence your spouse, children, friends, colleagues, neighbors, subordinates, service people, or anyone else in your life, then you're a leader.

This chapter shows you what it takes to be a successful leader and what you can do to get better at leading others. Not everyone, however, is suited to be a leader at work. I look at how being a leader at work can have some benefits, such as increased status or more money, but also some liabilities, ...