Why Emotional Intelligence Alone Isn’t Enough: How Cultural Awareness Transforms Leadership
Both emotional intelligence (EI) and cultural awareness can have significant impacts on leaders' communication styles and overall effectiveness.
Author: Dr. Aria Jones Revised: 2024-Jan-21 Initial Publication: 2021-Jul-07
Both emotional intelligence (EI) and cultural awareness can have significant impacts on leaders' communication styles and overall effectiveness. Leaders lacking EI (i.e., having low emotional intelligence quotients or EQ) may struggle to regulate their own emotional responses as well as to recognize the emotional responses of others.
Such a lack of self-regulation and cognizance of others can prove detrimental to leader effectiveness. Likewise, leaders lacking diverse knowledge of cultural norms around communication expose themselves to the possibility of inadvertently offending others as well as of taking offense to some communication that was intended to be inoffensive.
Importance of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence encompasses the reciprocal relationship between people's emotions (affective domain) and their thinking (cognitive domain). Unlike intelligence, which refers to the ability to learn and apply information to life's experiences and tasks, EQ focuses on utilizing one's understanding of emotions in these experiences and tasks.
Leaders having adequate EQ will demonstrate three key abilities: (1) understanding and reasoning with emotions, (2) facilitating thinking using emotions, and (3) managing emotions effectively within oneself and one's relationships. Leaders lacking these abilities may expose themselves to increased risk of unintentional damage to their own reputations and credibility and their relationships with others, perhaps irreparably.
Importance of Cultural Awareness
Culture is defined in this context as a dynamic, customary way of life consisting of a group of shared qualities and a collective accumulation of traditions, rules, norms, In this context, culture is defined as a dynamic and customary way of life that includes a set of shared qualities and a collective accumulation of traditions, rules, norms, values, learned beliefs, and symbols common to a specific group of people, while also being transmittable to other groups. As cultural diversity in today's global marketplace continues to expand, organizational leaders must remain aware of and empathetic toward the diverse communication norms that originate from the original cultures of the organization's members.
Leaders who lack awareness, empathy, and related adaptation skills may face similar risks as those who lack the previously mentioned abilities concerning emotional intelligence.
How about you?
Consider an instance where you've encountered an organizational leader who lacked either emotional intelligence or cultural awareness, preventing them from effectively adapting their leadership or communication style to the situation. Think about how they might have done some things differently with the proper information and training on this topic.
Sources
Gudykunst, W. B. & Ting-Toomey, S. (1988). Culture and interpersonal communication. Sage.
Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2000). Models of emotional intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence (pp. 396–420). Cambridge University Press.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership theory and practice seventh edition. SAGE Publications, Inc.
