Ei and Active Leadership in Health Care, Research Paper Example

Effective nursing leadership in an organization requires numerous talents, skills competence and different type of knowledge. At its core, effective leadership pertain relationship between leaders and other people.  The achievements of a leader are achieved through individual and coordinated efforts with others. It is the reason leadership is often considered people oriented business.  Therefore, a good leader enables the people to be happy and productive, support the growth and development of their workers and work successfully as a committed organizational agent. This paper highlights Emotional Intelligence and how it contribution in effective leadership in health care.

EI is a set of abilities that enable a person to express, generate, and recognize, understand and evaluate their own and other emotions to guide thinking and action as wells as enabling coping with environmental stress. EI is also often called, personal intelligence, social intelligence, emotional literacy and interpersonal intelligence. EI can be measured using a self-report questionnaire of typical behavior or by maximum performance measure that quantify actual performance. There is multiple intelligence including, linguistic, logical- mathematics, musical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal.  Emotional competencies are learned capabilities based on the emotional intelligence that contribute to effective performance at work.

Essentially, EI was the ability to process emotional information. But with time theories has emerged that tend to refine the definition to include several other things. For instance, Miller et al., (2011), refined definition and eventually presented a four-branch model. That is perception and identification, emotional facilitation of thoughts and emotional understanding and emotional management. The other EI model, which has been very popular for developing and understanding leadership, is known as Goleman model. The model mixes the abilities and personality traits (Goleman, 2009). The model contains five competencies, and that is; self-regulation; empathy, self-awareness; motivation; and social skills. Other EI theories that have been developed include, Friedman model.

As seen from the existence of different theories, EI is multidimensional. However, there are some of the common elements in each of these models. The elements include the elements of recognizing and understanding emotion, empathy, the ability to control emotions and adept interpersonally. These elements are crucial to supporting and improving the performance of leaders in health care setting.

The hospital environment is highly complex environment; they are composed of multiple stakeholders including skilled employee and patient interacting in an intense emotional environment. It is the reason Healthcare providers are required to show a high degree of emotion that display caring, understanding and compassion toward patients. The role of hospital leaders is critical in creating working environments that is supportive and which help nurses to cope with the stress of managing the emotion as well as the emotion of others. Being emotionally intelligent is, therefore, a key requirement for all healthcare administrators. The EI framework provides for understanding the way in which leaders behaviors are necessary for the creation of a positive emotion intensive work environment.  As indicated by available EI models, EI framework is composed of two dimensions that are, to understand oneself and relate well with others.

An emotionally intelligent individual is aware of feeling as they emerge, understand them and have the self-confidence to continue performing their duties within their context regardless of their emotions. A person having low self-awareness might affect reactions in social situations, shows rigidity or bitterness when faced with the difference in opinion. Such persons are also defensive when criticized, act contrary to their values or project insecurity when around others.

Additionally, an emotionally intelligent person can build a successful team. A team leadership is viewed as an oversight function with the intention of the leader doing what is essential for the team to be effective. In this regard, an effective leader has the abilities to determine the kind of leadership intervention is required to solve a particular problem. An effective team leader demonstrates the following behavior, keep his team members focused on set goals. Maintain a collaborative climate, build confidence among the team members, demonstrates technical competence, can set properties and manager performance. To determine the need of other, a leader has to listen and understand first then articulate a direction of the future a leader accepts and emphasizes. Most importantly, a self is aware of values, belief, strengths weakness and their tendencies are crucial.

In conclusion, EI is a critical component to effective leadership. EI requires self-awareness and can be enhanced through feedback. Emotionally intelligent interaction with others builds a person’s strength in self-awareness as well as self-management. Without a solid, base of self-understanding it very hard to interact with others and develop constructive work relationship. In this regard, a good leader must know them well and be able to choose how they respond to the social situations. This strength is the foundation for working with others.

References

Miller, S., Ellis, D., Timmons, K., Bayard, C., Meshelski, T., Fisher, R., & CRMlearning. (2011). Emotional intelligence. Carlsbad, CA: CRMlearning.

Goleman, D. (2009). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.