Good moods galvanize good performance, but it doesn’t make sense for a leader to be all jolly and gay if sales are tanking or the business is going under. The most effective executives display moods and behaviors that match the situation at hand, with a healthy dose of optimism mixed in. They respect how other people are feeling – even if it is glum or defeated – but they also model what it looks like to move forward with hope and humor.

This kind of performance, which we call resonance, is for all intents and purposes the four components of emotional intelligence in action.

Self- awareness, perhaps the most essential of the emotional intelligence competencies, is the ability to read your own emotions. It allows people to know their strengths and limitations and feel confident about their self- worth. Resonant leaders use self – awareness to gauge their own moods accurately, and they intuitively know how they are affecting others.

Self- management is the ability to control your emotions and act with honesty and integrity in reliable and adaptable ways. Resonant leaders don’t let their occasional bad moods seize the day; they use self- management to leave it outside the office or to explain its source to people in a reasonable manner, so they know where it’s coming from and how long it might last.

Social awareness includes the key capabilities of empathy and organizational intuition. Socially aware executives do more than sense other people’s emotions, they show that they care. Further, they are experts at reading the currents of office politics. Thus, resonant leaders often keenly understand how their words and actions make others feel, and they are sensitive enough to change them when that impact is negative.

Relationship management, the last of the emotional intelligence competencies, includes the abilities to communicate clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds. Resonant leaders use these skills to spread their enthusiasm and solve disagreements, often with humor and kindness.

As effective as resonant leadership is, it is just as rare. Most people suffer through dissonant leaders whose toxic moods and upsetting behaviors wreck havoc before a hopeful and realistic leader repairs the situation.

Adapted from Harvard Business Review – Primal Leadership: The Driver of Hidden Performance by D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis, & A Mckee