Is emotional intelligence a product of pop psychology or a meaningful business tool? Nicholas Bateson looks at how managers can reap its benefits at work.
The research and thinking behind emotional intelligence (EQ) is that IQ, or conventional intelligence – IQ – is not, by itself, a good predictor of success in organisations. It was Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ[1] that gave the concept more prominence. Goleman, an international business psychologist,[2] maintains that individuals are born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their potential for learning emotional competencies and sets out what they are.
Most of us have encountered highly intelligent – even brilliant – individuals who are socially and personally out of touch. Gordon Brown’s ‘Gillian Duffy moment’ during the 2010 general election campaign is just one example of this. The skills for running the country’s finances are not the same as those needed to lead a government. In other words, the effective awareness, control and management of individual emotions and those of other people is a vital ingredient in all aspects of business relationships.
Personal and social competences
There are many definitions but for the purposes of this summary article the main two aspects are personal competence and social competence and the ‘Emotional Competence Framework’ provided by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence is a helpful summary of what each of these comprises. See figure 1.
Figure 1: The Emotional Competence Framework
PERSONAL COMPETENCE
Self-awareness
EMOTIONAL AWARENESS: Recognising one’s emotions and their effects. People with this competence:
- Know which emotions they are feeling and why.
- Realise the links between their feelings and what they think, do, and say.
- Recognise how their feelings affect their performance.
- Have a guiding awareness of their values and goals.
ACCURATE SELF-ASSESSMENT: Knowing one’s strengths and limits. People with this competence are:
- Aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
- Reflective, learning from experience.
- Open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self-development.
- Able to show a sense of humour and perspective about themselves.
SELF-CONFIDENCE: Sureness about one’s self-worth and capabilities. People with this competence:
- Present themselves with self-assurance; have ‘presence’.
- Can voice views that are unpopular and go out on a limb for what is right.
- Are decisive, able to make sound decisions despite uncertainties and pressures.
Self-Regulation
SELF-CONTROL: Managing disruptive emotions and impulses. People with this competence:
- Manage their impulsive feelings and distressing emotions well.
- Stay composed, positive, and unflappable even in trying moments.
- Think clearly and stay focused under pressure.
TRUSTWORTHINESS: Maintaining standards of honesty and integrity. People with this competence:
- Act ethically and are above reproach.
- Build trust through their reliability and authenticity.
- Admit their own mistakes and confront unethical actions in others.
- Take tough, principled stands even if they are unpopular.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: Taking responsibility for personal performance. People with this competence:
- Meet commitments and keep promises.
- Hold themselves accountable for meeting their objectives.
- Are organised and careful in their work.
ADAPTABILITY: Flexibility in handling change. People with this competence:
- Smoothly handle multiple demands, shifting priorities, and rapid change.
- Adapt their responses and tactics to fit fluid circumstances.
- Are flexible in how they see events.
INNOVATIVENESS: Being comfortable with and open to novel ideas and new information. People with this competence:
- Seek out fresh ideas from a wide variety of sources.
- Entertain original solutions to problems.
- Generate new ideas.
- Take fresh perspectives and risks in their thinking.
Self-Motivation
ACHIEVEMENT DRIVE: Striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence. People with this competence:
- Are results-oriented, with a high drive to meet their objectives and standards.
- Set challenging goals and take calculated risks.
- Pursue information to reduce uncertainty and find ways to do better.
- Learn how to improve their performance.
COMMITMENT: Aligning with the goals of the group or organisation. People with this competence:
- Readily make personal or group sacrifices to meet a larger organisational goal.
- Find a sense of purpose in the larger mission.
- Use the group’s core values in making decisions and clarifying choices.
- Actively seek out opportunities to fulfill the group’s mission.
INITIATIVE: Readiness to act on opportunities. People with this competence:
- Are ready to seize opportunities.
- Pursue goals beyond what’s required or expected of them.
- Cut through red tape and bend the rules when necessary to get the job done.
- Mobilise others through unusual, enterprising efforts.
OPTIMISM: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks. People with this competence:
- Persist in seeking goals despite obstacles and setbacks.
- Operate from hope of success rather than fear of failure.
- See setbacks as due to manageable circumstance rather than a personal flaw.
SOCIAL COMPETENCE
Social awareness
EMPATHY: Sensing others’ feelings and perspective, and taking an active interest in their concerns. People with this competence:
- Are attentive to emotional cues and listen well.
- Show sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives.
- Help out based on understanding other people’s needs and feelings.
SERVICE ORIENTATION: Anticipating, recognising, and meeting customers’ needs. People with this competence:
- Understand customers’ needs and match them to services or products .
- Seek ways to increase customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.
- Gladly offer appropriate assistance.
- Grasp a customer’s perspective, acting as a trusted adviser.
DEVELOPING OTHERS: Sensing what others need in order to develop, and bolstering their abilities. People with this competence:
- Acknowledge and reward people’s strengths, accomplishments, and development.
- Offer useful feedback and identify people’s needs for development.
- Mentor, give timely coaching, and offer assignments that challenge and grow a person’s skill.
LEVERAGING DIVERSITY: Cultivating opportunities through diverse people. People with this competence:
- Respect and relate well to people from varied backgrounds.
- Understand diverse worldviews and are sensitive to group differences.
- See diversity as opportunity, creating an environment where diverse people can thrive.
- Challenge bias and intolerance.
POLITICAL AWARENESS: Reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships. People with this competence:
- Accurately read key power relationships.
- Detect crucial social networks.
- Understand the forces that shape views and actions of clients, customers, or competitors.
- Accurately read situations and organisational and external realities.
Social Skills
INFLUENCE: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion. People with this competence:
- Are skilled at persuasion.
- Fine-tune presentations to appeal to the listener.
- Use complex strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and support.
- Orchestrate dramatic events to effectively make a point.
COMMUNICATION: Sending clear and convincing messages. People with this competence:
- Are effective in give-and-take, registering emotional cues in attuning their message.
- Deal with difficult issues straightforwardly.
- Listen well, seek mutual understanding, and welcome sharing of information fully.
- Foster open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good.
LEADERSHIP: Inspiring and guiding groups and people. People with this competence:
- Articulate and arouse enthusiasm for a shared vision and mission.
- Step forward to lead as needed, regardless of position.
- Guide the performance of others while holding them accountable.
- Lead by example.
CHANGE CATALYST: Initiating or managing change. People with this competence:
- Recognise the need for change and remove barriers.
- Challenge the status quo to acknowledge the need for change.
- Champion the change and enlist others in its pursuit.
- Model the change expected of others.
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: Negotiating and resolving disagreements. People with this competence:
- Handle difficult people and tense situations with diplomacy and tact.
- Spot potential conflict, bring disagreements into the open, and help deescalate.
- Encourage debate and open discussion.
- Orchestrate win-win solutions.
BUILDING BONDS: Nurturing instrumental relationships. People with this competence:
- Cultivate and maintain extensive informal networks.
- Seek out relationships that are mutually beneficial.
- Build rapport and keep others in the loop.
- Make and maintain personal friendships among work associates.
COLLABORATION AND COOPERATION: Working with others toward shared goals. People with this competence:
- Balance a focus on task with attention to relationships.
- Collaborate, sharing plans, information, and resources.
- Promote a friendly, cooperative climate.
- Spot and nurture opportunities for collaboration.
TEAM CAPABILITIES: Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals. People with this competence:
- Model team qualities like respect, helpfulness, and cooperation.
- Draw all members into active and enthusiastic participation.
- Build team identity, esprit de corps, and commitment.
- Protect the group and its reputation; share credit.
Source: www.eiconsortium.org
Fad or business tool?
However many commentators have noted that EQ is not much different from the old ‘social skills’ e.g. assertiveness, presentation, managing conflict, group and leadership and Goleman's model of EI has been criticised in some research literature as mere ‘pop’ psychology[3] without academic rigour and based on a projected concept of human behaviour. In other words, is EQ simply a repackaging of old concepts with a fancy new title?
All these skills can indeed be learnt, but what is often missed by the champions of the EQ concept is that underpinning these skills are individual personality constructs and beneath these genetic factors in an individual. There is some evidence that when the self regulation concept (such as delaying gratification) is deployed, there is a connection with future success. Research has demonstrated that children who can regulate their emotions is predictive of both future academic and work success. It is not entirely clear however whether self regulation can be developed or that there is a strong genetic component. There is good evidence that children and adults can learn to regulate their emotions to some extent by good role models such as parents, teachers and in the work context, colleagues and managers. However what is also clear is that for children or adults who have poor role models then their chance of developing these attributes, are correspondingly poor.
Benefits of EQ at work
Despite some of the prevailing scepticism surrounding EQ, there are some clear benefits of introducing the concept into the workplace if it is not there already, not least of which the model is very easy to implement. The following suggests where EQ could be deployed.
- Training and development. The framework (see Figure 1) is a really useful tool that can be used, almost as a checklist, for HR and line managers to include as part of an individual’s personal development plan. For example, self regulation could be highlighted as a competency underpinning skills such as working in groups, and effective leadership.
- Recruitment and selection. Job roles can be defined with the addition of EQ factors and the recruitment process could include competency based interviews, and emotional intelligence tests such as Bar-On,[4] and other selection instruments.
- Coaching. EQ provides a great template for coaching, particularly coaching which emphasises not only skills development but also emotional control in organisational settings such as assertiveness, group work, presentations and leadership. Good methods include cognitive behavioural, interpersonal and psychodynamic forms of coaching which are perfectly aligned to develop self regulation.
- Cost/benefit. At the most basic level EQ is FREE! The frameworks such as those in Figure 1 are already freely available with associated templates and all that is required that the organisation applies the common language of EQ in the context of its own business needs and culture. At a more sophisticated level this could involve psychometric testing, use of assessment centres, more complex coaching, training and development programmes, all of which do incur costs.
- Qualifications- the EQ framework can be cross referenced to National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) giving staff the opportunity to acquire credits. Also in future it is likely that staff with be able to obtain EQ type qualifications at various levels.
Caveats
However despite all these positive factors, managers do need to be circumspect before going down the EQ path:
- Not enough on its own. EQ is only one component of job success. Intelligence is certainly important for many roles (verbal and numerical reasoning), EQ for others. For example the I facilitated at an assessment centre for one international professional services organisation. One candidate had somehow managed to scrape through his professional exams but, because of his poor numerical skills was placed in agency (sales role) Here, some of his EQ skills were evident (e.g. influencing skills, presentation skills, social boldness, risk taking and so on) but as far as managing a team it was hopeless – he had no organisational skills at all. This illustrates the vital importance of having the right fit between job and person. In this particular case it was hardly worth evaluating this individual with personality tests, leaderless groups and so on. In one nano second it was possible to identify what kind of person he was and where best he might be placed. He strode in with a bright, wide-striped shirt and immediately engaged with the people around him. When asked about his hobbies he said he enjoyed the Isle Of Man TT race, hang gliding and bungee jumping…
- Money doesn’t buy engagement. It follows from the above that it is no use pouring money into developing some peoples’ emotional intelligence. Furthermore they have to want to want to do it! I had a very interesting ‘encounter’ with a senior director of the same organisation. He asked me to carry out a 360 degree assessment of his board of directors.. This particular director was very lacking in EQ components. In fact not many of his team lasted more than six months under aegis. He also sailed very close to the wind in his business transactions. However he was the top revenue generator in the company. When the author fed back his rather ‘negative’ profile he leant back in his chair, smiled and replied “I don’t give a ....” The company did send him to a top business school psychotherapist to attempt to alter his behaviour – at significant expense. After his ‘treatment’ he declared to me he had gained a lot of ‘insights’ to his behaviour but had no intention of making any changes! Five years on, he is still with the same organisation, but buffered by a ‘minder’.
- It cannot all be learnt. Not all EQ is developable in certain individuals – the truth is that being able to work in teams and leadership requires emotional resilience and stamina; traits that are largely genetic. For example, although assertiveness is considered to be a skill that can be developed, is either present in an individual or it isn’t. Learning to say ‘no’ brings up various emotions, particularly anxiety and guilt which need to be confronted with great skills. There comes a point when you have to look at what your people can do – and not try to bash on with what they can’t.
- Dishonest responses. EQ suffers the same fate as all personality instruments as the questions are quite transparent (e.g. “do you find yourself getting very anxious before an important presentation?” ) and candidates nearly always manage their image by not answering the questions entirely honestly.
- No room for individual principles. A telling experience I had was in a talent management programme in a large City organisation. The technical division (full of analysts, economists etc) had been merged with the trading and business development division. The director of the technical side has become increasingly distressed and had to take time off work. After discussions and psychological tests it emerged that his values (Christian) clashed with the money-making values of his employers. He resigned, but to the benefit of both parties he became an outside consultant for the organisation and ended up as a professor of ethics at a well-known university.
- Perceived as another fad. Managers quickly disenchanted with yet another new management fad if implementing EQ is presented as more forms to fill and boxes to tick. The human aspect of the tool must be ingrained as something that develops staff skills to improve staff retention and overall employee engagement.
[1] www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055309503X
[2] www.danielgoleman.com
[3] Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, ‘Human Abilities, Emotional Intelligence’, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 59, January 2008
[4] www.eiconsortium.org/measures/eqi.html