Emotional intelligence for managers, which is most important: 1. Self awareness 2. Self regulation 3. Social awareness 4. Initiative 5. Empathy

INITIATIVE & SELF AWARENESS ARE TWO IMPORTANT THINGS TO BE NOTED IN YOUR QUESTION ,,, MR.HANI

For his emotional intelligence, a manager should be strongly social awareness 

I wil go with social awareness 

 Self regulation and Empathy

SELF AWARENESS 

Self Management

self awareness ...once that is done all the other traits comes naturally

I would go for (3 ) Social Awareness

Though this would be regarded as most important but there are other things that should not be regarded as less important. A successful manager would have many dominant qualities as opposed to a single one. Hire5 managers and most likely you will find the5 of them displaying different strength and weaknesses.

Generally i would choose Empathy as its quite important to practice this in order to guide our decision making process but in situation whereby a manager is concerned, self awareness supercedes empathy as a manager would only make adjustment and also entertain empathy if and only if he is aware of his strength, weaknesses,  the impact of his decision to subordinates, his attitudes towards employees and his managerial style. SELF AWARNESS is my answer as its four in one. With SELF AWARENESS  a manager will be self regulated, take intiatives which at the long run will influence his social awareness.