Many law enforcement leaders are beginning to accept that emotional intelligence (EI) is an essential quality of good leadership. Popularized in the 1990s by the work of psychologist Daniel Goleman and others, the concept of EI includes many essential elements such as self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills, and motivation. Some have defined EI as the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to emotions in social interactions, or social intelligence, but like other aspects of intelligence, EI involves the ability to adapt and shape the environment. The emotionally charged and complex environments faced by law enforcement leaders, including the need to navigate social interactions both within the department and externally with community members and stakeholders, demand leaders demonstrate good EI. Perhaps a fitting definition for EI in law enforcement would be “making your emotions work for you instead of against you.”³ Better yet, in leadership, EI can be defined in a way that includes the ability to motivate, inspire, and transform an organization.

Higher levels of EI have been associated with positive individual outcomes such as better job satisfaction, career commitment, and work engagement. In leadership roles, EI is believed to be critical in helping to develop collective goals, motivate others, build a collective sense of identity, maintain morale and trust, and be flexible in decision-making. EI is critical not only to leaders as individuals, but also to teams in the workplace; when there is better EI among team members, better cohesiveness occurs through the shared abilities and desires of members to work together toward their common goals.⁶

Despite the incorporation of EI in training and improvements in law enforcement leaders’ appreciation for the importance of EI in policing, there has been surprisingly little research on EI that involved police leaders. This fact led the authors to conduct a study with police leaders attending the FBI National Academy (FBINA), a 10-week residential leadership program for law enforcement executives from around the world. The study’s initial results demonstrate some of the key factors related to command-level officers’ EI, including better command staff collaboration, better cultural competence (cultural intelligence), better perceptions of relationships with the community, and better hope for the future of policing.