Emotional Intelligence and Financial Leadership: A Critical Review

Abstract

Abstract. Financial leaders today face a major challenge in ensuring the function adapts to the changing needs of the business. With growing stakeholder interest in the broader performance of organizations beyond pure financial measures, there is a growing focus on the need to drive improved business performance which can be sustained for the longer term. Finance leaders have a significant role to play in leveraging the capabilities of the finance function to provide insight and commercial support to drive sustainable decision making and bring a broader external market focus to support the strategy of the business, but critically this must be counter balanced by continuing to ensure their traditional fiduciary and controllership responsibilities are met. This need for balanced finance leadership is the hallmark of today’s CFO role. This paper examines CFO role in combining the intelligence of smart technologies with the brains, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills of talented people.