Explain emotional intelligence and its components. How would you evaluate your personal competency with respect to the components of emotional intelligence? How might a person's level of emotional intelligence influence his/her effectiveness as a leader?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is both the ability to understand emotions in one's self and others and the ability to use that understanding to guide behaviour. There are five components of emotional intelligence in which people should strive to develop competency. The students should evaluate themselves against these components, which are:
• Self-awareness--the ability to understand one's own moods, emotions, and drives, and how they affect others.
• Self-regulation--the ability to think before acting and to control disruptive impulses or moods.
• Motivation--the ability to work for more than money or status, and to work with perseverance and high energy.
• Empathy--the ability to understand the emotions of other people and deal with others according to their emotional states.
• Social skill--the ability to manage relationships, build interpersonal networks, and establish social support.
Technical (or knowledge-based) skills and cognitive (or analytical) skills are threshold or baseline capabilities for leadership. Leadership excellence depends on emotional intelligence in addition to these threshold capabilities. Thus, a person's effectiveness as a leader will be diminished if he/she does not possess sufficient emotional intelligence in addition to technical and cognitive skills.