ABSTRACT
Emotional Intelligence appeared more than a decade ago in the psychology literature (across the applications of counseling, psychiatry, coaching and leadership development). Today there are several tools for measuring Emotional Intelligence and this specialization within psychology has been growing at a pace (in 1999, there were 3 hits on the internet for the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’, today there are over 1,800,000 hits on the internet using Google and over 23,000 on Google Scholar). Through this time professional coaching has been increasing in popularity as an organizational intervention to support executive development and performance. The two fields are increasingly intersecting; with most coaches starting to pay some attention to Emotional Intelligence in their work with clients (though the way this is done, the rigor and the use of best practices dramatically varies between coaches). As coaching based on Emotional Intelligence can be considered to be a contemporary approach to coaching, this chapter is designed to serve as a helpful introduction to its challenges and controversies.
