Developing Emotional Intelligence for Entrepreneurs:The Role of Entrepreneurship Development Programs

Extant research has shown that as much as 75 percent of business success is driven by Emotional Intelligence (EI). EI is considered as a crucial personal ability that is required to be successful in today’s chaotic business environment, and is critically significant for entrepreneurs. Promotion of entrepreneurship has received much impetus in recent times, owing to the dynamism that has been witnessed lately in the globally converging economy. It has a crucial role to play in performance enhancement, stress reduction, improving strategic leadership capabilities and harnessing creativity. It has been found to influence various critical entrepreneurial dimensions like initiation, innovation, decision-making, risk-taking, motivation and resilience. This study examines the relationship between EI and key entrepreneurial dimensions through empirical analysis and also attempts to find out the role of Entrepreneurship Development Programs (EDPs) on the development of EI of entrepreneurs. The study attempts to find out whether EI development should be one of the components of training for budding entrepreneurs.