Abstract
In recent years companies begin to realize the pivotal position of emotional intelligence and attach more importance on leader’s emotional intelligence development. Actually the emotional intelligence enables leaders to better perform in the workplace. This essay will come to an understanding of emotional intelligence on the basis of the author’s opinion. The first part of the essay includes the historic root of emotional intelligence, its definition and the five dimensions. The second part of the essay will demonstrate the implication of emotional intelligence in service operation leadership.
Key words: emotional intelligence, service operation leadership, better performance
Introduction
Emotional intelligence has been one of the most popular fields to be developed in educational and psychological communities over the past few decades. Evidence suggested that cognitive ability was not sufficient for the success of a service operation leadership. Especially in today’s society, challenges and competitions coexist, companies call for innovation and reformation. In such a complex environment, service operations leadership is of critical importance in terms of service organizational performance for every single service organization. Meanwhile, the strength of the service operations leadership has a close relationship with emotional intelligence. Leaders could score high on traditional intelligence tests yet do poorly in other areas in the workplace such as social relations and self-assessment. Therefore, for a service operational leader, it is unavoidable but practical to strengthen emotional intelligence as well as to enhance leadership.
Historic Development of Emotional Intelligence
As early as in 1920, the Columbia University professor EL Thorndike first proposed the concept of social intelligence. He stated that people with high social intelligence “has the ability