I recently attended a training by David Caruso, one of the preeminent researchers of Emotional Intelligence and co-author of the highly regarded MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) assessment instrument. In the training, he discussed the development of the MSCEIT® 2 instrument and why the ability model of emotional intelligence is important to leadership development.

Some people consider emotional intelligence to be a personality trait, which would make it difficult to c...