I recently interviewed the best selling author Kevin Allen about the topic of women leaders and how their emotional intelligence compares to man. It was interesting and he had some very interesting insights.
You can watch the interview here:
http://planetjockey.com/blog/do-women-have-more-emotional-intelligence-than-men
And I would love to hear what you all have to say about it? Do you think it will put women in the running to becoming better leaders than men?
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Replies
That's an intereting question isn't it? The evidence I've seen does indicate that women are pre disposed to have better social intuition, also however that men seem to be pre disposed to have better spacial awareness. Does that create a new and also controversial question. Are men better at parking than women ? :-)
In the CIPD paper "Fresh thinking in L&D" part 3 Insights and Intuition, the findings have been that there are no substantial differences between men and women in using intuition, other than in the area of social intuition (where women score better).
Social intuition, I would say is that "interpersonal" part of emotional intelligence...... so the research shows that women do score more highly in this area... what do you think of that chaps (lights blue touch paper and walks away slowly...)
Having said this, the "interpersonal" is only one part of EI....
There has been a lot of research conducted in this topic as you would see just with a simple Google search. The conclusions of those research pieces do vary, however, I would be inclined to agree with Mr Jordan below about respect having to be mutual. Cole (2004) conducted some research into how effective leadership differs in relation to gender. Her research concluded that women did show evidence of being more effective leaders for this very reason.
Debbie
Emotional intelligence may be coming increasingly to the fore, but I think the presumption that it is exclusive to women is just a sexist as the "badass" behaviour it is looking to redress. At the end of the day it is - or should be - self evident that organisations are made up of people and that people respond better when they are treated with respect. It boils down to the 3 elements of engagement that Daniel Pink writes about, Autonomy; Mastery and Purpose. Call that emotional intelligence if you will, but create it and you will create more effective leaders and more effective organisations with more effective people, and gender will become as irrelevant as it ought to be.