Leadership and emotional intelligence for managers in Greek public organizations and in international organizations: Aristotle’s relevant legacy in Nicomachean Ethics

Abstract

Over the last decades, society tends to invest more in human behavior, promoting that self-development entails societal, economic and cultural development. Public organizations started to focus on the human factor, because they believed that human beings are the keys to success. Productivity, efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, only if the organizations invest in public servants as human beings by setting their characteristics at the center of every organizational plan. In other words, public organizations now work on how people’s competences get affected by organizational culture and what kind of reactions they tend to expose under which circumstances. Dealing with all these dilemmas, EI emerged as the most important competence that everyone should acquire in order to keep the balance in his personal and working relationships. And one of the most challenging issues is “EI and effective leadership” that is being developed in multinational literature worldwide. A high level of IQ is not sufficient for an effective leader/ top manager, because he is advised to be able to control, firstly, his emotions and, afterwards, to become aware of the emotions and ethics of his teammates. Therefore, he should attain a balance between his IQ and EI in order to achieve the best possible team and organizational performance. Many theorists and scientists discussed the reasons why EI is a very useful competence for top managers who desire to be effective leaders. However, Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics (NE) talked about how human beings can achieve EI. Specifically, he provided us with a philosophical and human-oriented work concerning how human beings are able to attain a balance between ancient logic and their emotions or between their excessive expressions of them. Aristotle maintains that emotionally balanced people are able to preserve the balance in every sector of their life. Therefore, top managers should be aware of what empathy means and how they can avoid IQ prevailing their EI making them unable to be effective leaders. Finally, it is very triggering to find a way to apply Aristotelean philosophy to New Public Management and understand that his legacy is still applicable in our modern world. Additionally, we should examine how Aristotelean human being succeeds in Greek public and international organizations and mostly, during the Covid19 pandemic. Undoubtedly, EI is required for an effective top manager in a demanding public sector where both public servants and citizens ask for an innovative and human-oriented public administration.