The world is changing at a pace faster than ever before and so are the people who are a part of it. This article highlights the way in which emotional intelligence has the ability to become a panacea for all ills of the modern day business organizations. The article discusses a model which illustrates how higher EI leads to better leadership and interpersonal relationships, which, in turn, results in improved organizational effectiveness. Finally, an outline to implement EI training programs is provided to help organizations develop emotionally intelligent employees for future challenging roles.

The genesis of the term `Emotional Intelligence' can be traced from the realms of psychology as it has been quite a dynamic area of study for the behavioral scientists since long. Even though psychologists vouched by its significance in attaining success, for the business and management experts the idea was quite soft or frivolous and of little use in the harsh realities of the corporate world. It was only in the year 1996 that Daniel Goleman came out with his trendsetting book Emotional Intelligence, which gave a pragmatic shape to this earlier rejected concept and for the first time caught attention of the business world.

According to Peter Salovey, Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Yale University, "Prior to 1995, only other psychologists had heard of emotional intelligence. Goleman's first book made the term a household word" (Simmons, 2001). He focused on four basic competencies—self-awareness, social awareness, self-management and social skills—that influence the way people handle themselves and their relationships with others. He argued that these human competencies play a bigger role in cognitive intelligence in determining success in the life and in the workplace (Ruderman et al., 2001). The reason behind his success and his predecessors' failure lies in the fact that Goleman advanced his model in a more generic way, with which everyone could relate to. For years, before HR professionals, management experts, educators and others had in some way or the other found evidence that these attributes—known then by more colloquial terms like people skills or soft skills—were instrumental in determining a leader's success and performance to a large extent. Goleman's work suggested the same and soon it brought the notion of emotional intelligence in the mainstream business world. After that, it did not take managers too long to comprehend the capacity of this concept to become a phenomenon. It was clear that knowing and understanding the connections between high emotional intelligence and skills/abilities required for better performance can give managers and executives extra ammunition in their efforts to enhance their effectiveness.

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