Leaders better able to identify and manage emotions are also better able to motivate others, and most of the variability in transformational leadership arises from levels of EQ.

As this book has tried to show, organizations can take concrete steps both to improve the performance of their leaders and to increase the representation of women in leadership. They can stop interpreting displays of overconfidence, narcissism, psychopathy, and charisma as signs of leadership potential. They can also acknowledge the importance of EQ, which should be a core competency in any data-driven model of leadership potential. Paying more attention to EQ would augment both the quality of leaders and the number of female leaders, increasing the overall levels of personal effectiveness, self-awareness, and transformational leadership in organizations.

There are five key areas or competencies that make up emotional intelligence, and there is a great deal of agreement about (and research confirming) the benefits we get when we cultivate these areas:

• SELF-AWARENESS: knowing our internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.

• SELF-MANAGEMENT: turning compulsion into choice; managing our impulses, resources, and intuitions.

• MOTIVATION: knowing what is important to us, aligning with our values, and knowing when we are not in alignment with our values; cultivating resilience.

• EMPATHY: awareness of the feelings of others; cultivating connection and trust.

• SOCIAL SKILLS: cultivating our communication skills, especially listening, engaging skillfully with conflict, and leading with compassion.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren’t important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation—all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.

Empathic (from empathy) listening gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel. Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgment. And it is sometimes the more appropriate emotion and response. But people often feed on sympathy. It makes them dependent. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.