Emotional and Social Intelligence Competencies of Incident Team Commanders Fighting Wildfires

Abstract

Incident Management Teams (IMTs) combat the toughest wildfires in the United States, contending with forces of nature as well as many stakeholders with different agendas. Prior literature on IMTs suggested roles and cognitive sensemaking as key elements for success, but the possible importance of emotional and social intelligence competencies in leadership has not been empirically explored. Sixty critical incidents from interviews of 15 incident commanders were analyzed for emotional and social intelligence competencies in incident management leadership. Seven competencies were found to significantly differentiate outstanding leaders from average leaders. Emotional self-control, adaptability, empathy, coach/ mentor, and inspirational leadership significantly or near significantly differentiated the outstanding leaders. Five additional competencies appeared as threshold competencies: achievement orientation, organizational awareness, influence, conflict management, and teamwork. Implications for further research, training, and development are explored.

The Role of Leadership in a Digitalized World: A Review

“…A tough debate is raising awareness as to whether robots can be programmed to express emotions and how this fosters the possibility that robots may be better leaders than humans (Avolio et al, 2014). Complementing the literature that has so far stressed the importance of emotions and emotional intelligence for leaders' performance (see for instance Boyatzis, 2006; Boyatzis et al, 2017), future research should shed light on whether and how robots, algorithms and technological tools substitute or complement leaders.…”

The cross‐cultural moderators of the influence of emotional intelligence on organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior

“…Emotional intelligence has been argued to be the sine qua non of leadership (Goleman, ) and it is one of the most studied topics in the domains of emotions and management (Ashkanasy, Humphrey, & Huy, ). The popularity and significance of emotional intelligence has been documented by a stream of primary empirical studies (Boyatzis, Brizz, & Godwin, ; Boyatzis, Thiel, Rochford, & Black, ; Petrides et al, ; Petrides & Furnham, , ; Petrides, Pita, & Kokkinaki, ), conceptual studies and qualitative reviews (Boyatzis, ; Goleman, ; Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, ; Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, ; Petrides, , ; Petrides et al, ; Walter, Cole, & Humphrey, ), and quantitative reviews (Andrei, Siegling, Aloe, Baldaro, & Petrides, ; Joseph & Newman, ; Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, ; Schutte, Malouff, Thorsteinsson, Bhullar, & Rooke, ; van der Linden et al, ). Meta‐analytic findings have demonstrated that emotional intelligence contributes not only meaningful incremental validity but also noticeable relative importance in predicting job attitudes and job behaviors after cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits are controlled (Miao, Humphrey, & Qian, , , , ; O'Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, ).…”

Significance of Coaching in the Context of Emotion Regulation

“…We distinguish some additional competencies, as well. Achievement orientation, influence, teamwork, conflict management and organizational awareness are considered to be the crucial (Boyatzis 2017).…”