CHOPRAA, Parvesh K.

Emotional intelligence : a catalyst for inspirational leadership and management excellence - Oxfordshire : Routledge, Sept./Oct. 2010

Although a centuries-old phenomenon, emotional intelligence has received an enormous amount of attention and popularity in various academic and non-academic circles during the last two decades. Emotionally intelligent abilities, capacities and skills are increasingly becoming significant and inevitable almost in all works of life ranging from effective leadership, building teams, to the globe-spanning network of communication, development of human potential and performance, social skills and economic and political life. In this dynamic and complexly integrated international economic system, tomorrow's leaders will have to facilitate others to develop their own leadership, skills and potential with the help of emotional intelligence. Be that as it may, there still exists continuing debate among researchers pertaining to the best method for measuring this construct of emotional intelligence. Keeping this in view, the present paper aims to introduce a new measure, based on a holistic and system modelling approach, to conceptualise and measure the phenomenon of emotional intelligence. It develops, constructs and validates a model that conceptualises and measures the phenomenon of emotional intelligence by constructing and using a latent variable structural equation model within the certain boundaries of the psychosocial system. It will provide us with a measurement or index of emotional intelligence at individual level. An emotional intelligence index will indicate the extent to which a particular individual or a group of people is emotionally intelligent and which areas lack this intelligence, if any. Strengths and weaknesses of various components of the model will also indicate characteristics at a certain level in order to pinpoint what exactly an individual or group of individuals requires to improve its emotionally intelligent capabilities