Enhancing Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence: Why Mindfulness?

Journal of Leadership Education

ISSN: 1552-9045

Open Access. Article publication date: 15 January 2019

Issue publication date: 15 January 2019

828
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Abstract

As an adult-learning practitioner, I am intrigued by the process of helping learners, especially leaders, develop through the affective domain. Although leaders in my experience often comprehend the lexicon of emotional intelligence (EI), incorporating EI for leadership developmenthasprovenelusive.WhileresearchsuggestsEIisdifficulttodevelopinpeople,this paper argues that leaders can do so by tapping into a higher mental and emotional state, and that such mindfulness practices can enhance leaders’ EI. Findings suggest that (a) EI positively impacts leadership effectiveness, (b) mindfulness can serve as a method for growing EI, and (c) mindfulnesscanenhance thepracticeofleadership. Thepaperoffersrecommendationsforadult- learning practitioners who create EI- and mindfulness-based training and provides directions for future research.

Citation

Kaoun, T.M. (2019), "Enhancing Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence: Why Mindfulness?", Journal of Leadership Education, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 200-212. https://doi.org/10.12806/V18/I1/T2

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, The Journal of Leadership Education

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/


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