Introduction
The term “emotional intelligence” (EI) is actively used today in the corporate setting in order to describe the capability of a manager, a leader, and a coach to address the emotions of the personnel, as well as to manage personal feelings and reactions. From this perspective, in addition to the developed leadership qualities, leaders in the organization should also demonstrate a high level of EI (Hess & Bacigalupo, 2013; Stober & Grant, 2006). This requirement is also applied to the activities of the executive coaches whose role is to support and motivate the employees for personal and career growth with the focus on their emotions and intentions (Ward, Loo, & Have, 2014). It is important to note that emotional intelligence is discussed in the context of executive coaching only during recent decades, and this tendency should be examined in detail. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on emotional intelligence in corporate settings, determine the aspects of the executive coaching, and reveal associations between emotional intelligence and coaching from the perspective of the past, current, and predicted trends.
Definition of Emotional Intelligence
EI is defined in the literature on the organizational development and leadership as the ability of a person to notice, interpret, and address the emotions of other people, to respond to the variety of feelings appropriately, to identify the personal emotional state and reactions, and to manage them according to the situation (Du Plessis, Wakelin, & Nel, 2015; Hess & Bacigalupo, 2013). Trong (2013) states that the definition of EI developed from the discussion of intrapersonal and social intelligence that meant the ability to effectively interact and operate in different social contexts.
The focus on emotions, attitudes, motives, and intentions was added to the traditional vision of the social intelligence, and the researchers began to identify EI as the independent phenomenon (Hess & Bacigalupo, 2013; Patti, Holzer, Brackett, & Stern, 2015, p. 98). Du Plessis et al. (2015) note that as the EI concept developed, the emphasis was added to the ability of persons to recognize emotions of different people to respond to them effectively, to motivate the persons to cope with them and to provide the appropriate stimuli and reinforcement. Trong (2013) claims that in the corporate setting, this vision of EI was supported with the necessity of focusing on the employees’ job attitudes and job satisfaction. From this point, the definition of EI developed along with the progress of psychological, leadership, and organizational theories.
Emotional Intelligence in Real-Life Situations
In organizations, the ability of leaders and coaches to apply EI to real-life situations is often observed in situations associated with the project work, teamwork, training, and learning sessions. Du Plessis et al. (2015) state that the level of EI directly influences the manager’s ability to organize the effective work of a team when all team members have a different vision of objectives and their own interpretation of the plan of actions. One more typical situation is the necessity to demonstrate the attentiveness to the employees’ needs, emotions, and interests when leaders plan to implement the change in the organization (Trong, 2013). Additionally, EI is important when trainers, counselors, and coaches plan the sessions in order to address the individual features of employees and benefit from developing the employees’ potential referring to their emotions and motives. Another typical situation when the developed EI is critical is the process of managing the conflict (Patti et al., 2015). The reason is that the conflict involves a high level of emotional tension, and the leader’s task is to address it effectively, to find a compromise, to achieve the goals, and to receive positive outcomes.
Background of Coaching
The history of coaching in the corporate setting is viewed as a point that needs further discussion because the variety of theories and practices influenced the modern vision of executive coaching. According to Bozer, Sarros, and Santora (2014), coaching developed from the basics of psychological counseling and therapies, and the first usage of this term for the corporate setting is typical of the 1980s. Ward et al. (2014) associated the term “coaching” in organizations with the procedure and strategy of training sportsmen in order to achieve higher results. Thus, in the 1990s, the process of forming the concept of executive coaching was most active (Bozer et al., 2014; Ward et al., 2014). Coaching in organizations became to develop, and it had the features of the psychological counseling, sports training, and professional training in order to orient the employees to professional success (Boyatzis, Smith, Van Oosten, & Woolford, 2013). Today, coaching is discussed as a specific relationship between a coach and an individual, the purpose of which is to improve certain aspects of the individual’s performance, attitude, or behavior among other factors. The expected result of coaching is improvement and change. Therefore, leaders in many organizations choose to coach as a way to develop the potential of their workers.
Associations between Emotional Intelligence and Coaching
The links between emotional intelligence and executive coaching are mentioned by many researchers with a focus on the necessity for coaches to develop effective strategies for productive interaction with clients. According to Ward et al. (2014), coaching means helping the employee understand his potential and develop certain qualities and attributes; and EI is an important factor in this process in order to create the comfortable environment and address the emotional needs of an employee, as it is noted by Patti et al. (2015). From this point, the first link between these two concepts is the necessity of using EI while interacting with a client in order to reach the objectives of coaching.
The second link is associated with the necessity of developing EI in an employee in order to increase his or her productivity effectiveness and satisfaction. Bozer et al. (2014) state that while developing a respectful relationship with the employee, a coach needs to help him pay attention to his personal emotions and the feelings of colleagues in order to improve experiences. When emotional intelligence is taken into account, the chances to build the effective dialogue between leaders and employees increase, there are more opportunities to inspire and reinforce employees, and there are more ways to reduce the stress level in workers (Patti et al., 2015). All these tasks that are directly related to the idea of EI can be realized in coaching.
Emotional Intelligence in the Coaching Process
The researchers pay attention to the fact that emotional intelligence is not only referred to as the coaching process in terms of developing the employees’ competence, but it also influences the process itself because of the level of EI that is typical of the coach. In the coaching process, the coach with the developed EI can easily understand what emotions and motives dominate in the behavior of the client, and he can teach the person how to modify them in order to improve the communication, achieve the career growth, cope with such negative emotions as anger, frustration, and anxiety, and increase the job satisfaction (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Du Plessis et al., 2015). Patti et al. (2015) claim that a coach should find the balance between the effective response to the client’s emotions and teaching of how to recognize these emotions and attitudes in other people. Coaching is viewed as an effective way to improve the social and emotional interactions between colleagues in order to achieve the high results in the work process because their skills in reacting to the other people’s emotions and managing one’s responses can improve significantly.
Recommendations for Future Research
The area of using emotional intelligence in the coaching process needs to be examined in detail because the nature of the coaching practice depends on building rapport with the client and achieving the emotionally effective interaction. From this point, further research is important in order to identify what aspects of EI can be additionally used in the coaching practice. As emotional intelligence and coaching are closely related to each other, it is significant to study more how the developed EI in coaches can influence their effectiveness in working with the clients (Hess & Bacigalupo, 2013; Ward et al., 2014). Moreover, further research is expected to explain how the employees’ EI developed as a result of the coaching sessions can influence their performance, effectiveness, and communication. In this context, emotional intelligence obviously influences coaching, and the details of this process require further examination in order to propose more variants of applying EI in organizations. If emotional intelligence in leaders, managers, and employees is studied in detail, it is possible to find new ways of improving the coaching sessions.
Conclusion
The existing literature on connections between the EI concept and executive coaching is characterized by the in-depth discussions of the processes of the concepts’ development. The reason is that emotional intelligence and executive coaching are results of developing the previous concepts that were typically used in organizations. Therefore, there is a point where these two concepts are interconnected, and the researchers mention emotional intelligence in the context of the coaching process, and coaches are selected according to their levels of EI in order to build the mutual understanding with the client and their abilities to improve emotional intelligence in employees. From this point, emotional intelligence can be seen as an important aspect of effective coaching in companies.
References
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