Leadership, Change & Employee Emotional Intelligence

Change leadership is the engine of change, it's about urgency, vision, empowering people, and seizing opportunity. Emotional intelligence is an important skill set in leading, hence leaders identified to be effective have an appreciable level of the skill set. Change can be exciting and stimulating in an organization, but it is often met with fear and resistance. How leaders manage the change still seems to be a challenge. Scholars and leaders have for long acknowledged the importance for transformation. This paper focuses on the impact of employees’ emotions on organizational change following a qualitative methodological approach through critical literature review of the role of emotions during change and the significance of emotional intelligence in leading effective change. The research posits that regardless of the quality of the change plan a leader might have, if the team he relies on to carry that change isn’t committed to do so, then the plan could meet its demise.