From my own personal work and work with others, including business executives, I see EI as encompassing even more than is traditionally thought. Someone high in EI is typically more situationally-aware—can see the “big picture” underlying events, behaviors and varying viewpoints. This includes a personal toolkit that includes intra-personal and inter-personal skills such as empathy, compassion, patience, openness, collaboration and linguistic capability, to name a few. This quality becomes more and more important as executives move up the ladder.
These skills are valuable in any human system, but their criticality has been recognized in the corporate world, where time and again, an aspiring leader hits a ceiling in the organization, unable to get further promotions into positions of higher authority and influence.
It is not uncommon for hitting this covert ceiling is the lack of emotional intelligence. Proven skills as logical thinkers and problem-solvers are only able to take a high-potential leader so far up the corporate ladder. At some point, those vaunted individual contributor skills have to give way to the higher-level leadership skills that leverage EI.
If you would like to develop more in the area of Emotional Intelligence.