Leadership Excellence and the "Soft" Skills: Authenticity, Influence and Performance

While leaders need analytical competencies such as those associated with strategy, finance and all the planning processes, research on Emotional Intelligence (as reported by Goleman, “What Makes a Leader?”, HBR, 1998) suggests it is increasingly the “soft” skills that differentiate those who are highly successful from those who just get by. This shift in emphasis is largely due to a series of fundamental changes in organizations over the past decades.