Revision summary
Emotional intelligence is perceiving and managing emotion in self and others while staying lawful. Goleman’s set — awareness, regulation, motivation, empathy, social skill — maps onto office work. It steadies crisis orders, makes hearings real, and builds campaign coalitions. The Second ARC’s citizen-centric aim needs this labour, not only a charter board. EI is not people-pleasing; it still applies the same rule to the silent poor.
Model answer
Introduction
Good governance is more than a correct file. It is a relationship under stress. Emotional intelligence is the officer’s skill of reading feelings — one’s own and others’ — and still steering the office toward a lawful public end.
Body
Meaning
- Mayer and Salovey defined emotional intelligence as perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotion.
- Goleman popularised self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill as the working set for leaders.
- In administration it is not softness; it is the opposite of a panicked shouting chamber or a numb counter.
Role in good governance
- Self-awareness stops the officer dumping private anger onto a clerk or a petitioner after a political meeting.
- Self-regulation keeps a riot, a flood, or a viral video from becoming an impulsive order that later fails judicial review.
- Empathy makes grievance redress real: the Second ARC’s citizen-centric chapter fails if the hearing officer cannot hear fear and fatigue.
- Social skill builds coalitions for a campaign — pulse polio, ODF, or a vaccination drive — where the State cannot police every household.
- Motivation keeps a team on a long land-record or scholarship backlog when applause is absent.
- Nolan’s leadership and the Sevottam courtesy standard both assume this emotional labour as part of public service, not as an extra.
Role in administration
- Personnel: an emotionally intelligent HOD reduces transfer-panic, rumour, and learned helplessness in a collectorate.
- Field: disaster camps, eviction with dignity, and police-public meetings succeed when the officer names grief without taking a communal side.
- Conflict: a wise SDM uses listening and a cooling interval before force, which is EI as crowd ethics.
- Digital governance still needs EI: a chatbot that cannot escalate a distressed farmer is efficiency without governance.
- Case-ready: COVID ward visits by district officers, and night flood rounds in eastern Uttar Pradesh, worked when presence communicated care as well as command.
Limit
- EI must not become people-pleasing that bends the rule for the loud; empathy serves the silent eligible person too.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD EI[Emotional intelligence] --> S[Self regulation] EI --> E[Empathy] S --> G[Good governance] E --> G G --> D[Trusted delivery]
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence turns power into usable authority. For good governance it steadies the self, hears the citizen, and holds the team. Without it, rules remain, but trust and delivery fail.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What is the role of social influence in public administration? Elucidate with examples.
Next question in the 2023 paper (Q10). View answer →
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Is emotional intelligence manipulation?
It can be misused as charm to hide a bad file. Ethical EI serves a public reason that can be written on the noting.
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Can a technically brilliant but cold officer govern well?
The file may be correct and still fail in a camp, a riot, or a help-desk. Governance includes the relationship that makes compliance possible.
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More from this paper
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2023 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
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Q2 · UPSC Mains 2023 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
Examine the relevance of the following in the context of civil service: a) Spirit of service b) Courage of firm conviction.
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Spirit of service treats the chair as a means to the weakest citizen’s welfare, as in Gandhi’s talisman. The Second ARC and Sevottam make that spirit a delivery and courtesy duty, not a slogan. Courage of firm conviction holds a lawful reasoned view against pressure. Nolan integrity and dissent notings are that courage in rules. Flood camps, clean rolls, and written illegal-order requests show both on the ground.
Q3 · UPSC Mains 2023 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
“A child learns values by what he observes around him.” Discuss the role of family and society in the formation of values in light of this statement.
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Children copy rewarded and repeated conduct more than lectures, as Bandura’s social learning says. The family is the first school of trust, fairness, gender, and truth about money. A closed home can plant caste pride and violence as normal. Society — peers, media, market, and the visible State — confirms or corrupts that map. Speed-money culture and queue-breaking teach cynicism; clean counters and shared meals teach dignity.
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