Jakob Rømer Barfod

Military leaders often have success in private companies (Groysberg et al, 2010). During their training, they learn how to build trust and nurture relationships. To obtain followership emotional competencies are essential. To make wise choices in business, emotional intelligence is key. In particular, this is the ability to reality test, to establish and maintain mutually satisfying relationships with others, to handle stress and to be optimistic among other things (Stein & Book, 2006). A military organization such as the Danish Army has a structured and a very unique training program to train various parts of emotional intelligence. The Danish Army Leader Development Program is a field of training using ‘real people’ and ‘real situations’, where emotional competencies can be trained in a structured way to turn them into real competencies.The Danish Army has more than ten years of experience working with developing emotional intelligence in the Royal Danish Army Officers’ Academy, and the Academy has developed leaders who have benefitted from emotional intelligence training, who are now better at understanding themselves as well as their ability to build relationships whilst under great pressure e.g. during combat operations. On the basis of field experience, qualitative research and quantitative data from MHS the effects of working with emotional intelligence in a structured way is presented and discussed. The novelty of this leader development program is developing leaders working in organizations under extreme pressure (war).