Emotional Intelligence At Work

By Kevin Dwyer

Emotional intelligence is more than 90 % of what makes the difference between one leader's success and another leader's failure. Intelligence measured by IQ is less than 20% of what makes the difference.

This is a popular refrain of Emotional Intelligence devotees. Is it true? My experiences with a group of twelve people in a hospitality organisation strongly suggest it is true.

The twelve people were part of a leadership development programme. In two groups of six, they attended face-to-face training over six months consisting of:

Leading yourself (two days)
Leading others (two days) and,
Leading change (two days)

During the three months between the face-to-face training, each team of six was required to complete a project in their own time, which would take them out of their individual comfort zones. As a team, they had never worked together before. Their backgrounds were as far apart as massage therapy, financial control, event management, kitchen and golf course maintenance.

As part of the two days on leading yourself, they completed an analysis using the Simmons EQ profile ably administered by Bob Wall.

Over the six months of training and the following three months after the training I came to a number of conclusions from observing their behaviour and relating it to their EQ profile.

The "after you" team

One of the teams had the following profile of Assertive, Tolerance, Considerate and Sociable attributes on a scale of one to ten:

Assertive: mostly unassertive - five at or below 5, one at 6.5 (10 is very unassertive)

Tolerance: very tolerant - six at 7 or higher (10 is very tolerant)

Considerate: generally not considerate of others - four below 5 and two between 5 and 7 (10 is very considerate)

Sociable: at the extremes of sociability - three at 4 or less, three at 7 or more, (10 is very sociable)

The first three months of their project meetings were depicted by no-one leading. Everyone refused to make an assertion about what they thought should happen and who should do it.

The sociable group met separately from the non-sociable group. Whilst they were not willing to assert what they believed they were coincidentally the group who were less considerate and spent much time criticising other's commitment.

They achieved little during those three months. All bar the project manager had a courage score of less than 5. Being risk averse as a group and generally unassertive, they did not want to challenge others at the property to get information to them on-time and in the manner they needed it.

Team selection was made before the EQ profiles were completed. If, however, their Emotional Intelligence could have been tested before selection, this team would not have been selected to achieve the difficult outcome they were given in their project.

At the end of three months they were required to make a report on their project progress. It was not pretty. They did poorly and the general manager let them know.

Their reaction to the feedback was dramatic. They changed both as a group and as individuals. The next three months were much more productive as they worked on improving their individual limitations, having experienced what impact they, as individuals, were having on the group.

The "Let ME do it" team

The other team had the following profile of Assertive, Tolerance, Considerate and Sociable attributes on a scale of one to ten:

Assertive: mostly very assertive - one below 5, five at 6 or higher (10 is very unassertive)

Tolerance: at extremes of tolerance - three below 5, three above 5 (10 is very tolerant)

Considerate: mostly inconsiderate of others - five below 5 including two below 2 and one above 5 (10 is very considerate)

Sociable: mostly sociable - one at less than 2, one at less than 5, four at 6 or above (10 is very sociable)

This team was expected to interact better because of the diversity of attributes and the combination of sociability, low tolerance and high assertiveness of most individuals. They did. They started with the speed and power of an express train. The very afternoon their project was explained to them, they started work contacting people, setting up appointments to get information and brainstorming ideas.

They all had high (greater than 6) change attribute scores and coped well with new ideas and changes in direction over the first three months. Their high work scores (five well above 5) and energy scores (five above 5 with two above 6.5) predicted they would work hard. They did.

Their mid-term project review was excellent. If we rated it out of ten, the score would have been seven or eight. The first team would have scored two or three.

With the positive feedback they received one might have expected them to power on. They did not. The general work environment outside the project was challenging. Time started to become difficult to set aside and fatigue was a factor. The low consideration levels kicked in and self preservation became the order of the day for four of the team.

This manifested itself in two ways. Two people withdrew, doing the minimum required to stay attached to the programme. Two people shifted their focus to where they thought the highest level of recognition lay on any one day. The other two, which included the project manager, soldiered on to complete the project as best they could, maximising their learning along the way. The project manager was the only one with a high consideration score.

The learners versus the deniers

The group of twelve as a whole can be split into:

those who learnt a lot about themselves and who are, today, better leaders,

those who learnt a little and can talk about what's needed to be a better leader and,

two who did not identify with the work required to change their profile and made no progress.

The common attributes of the two who did not learn were low consideration, very high assertiveness, low optimism, moderate work, and low detail.

When life got tough, they worked for themselves only.

Overall learning

What I learnt during this six month period was that before people can utilise their emotional skills and have the drive to improve where they are weak, they must have a sense of direction. The sense of direction must first and foremost be personal. Without a personal goal people get lost. They have nothing to calibrate their current status in life against and no creative tension to drive the formation of skills, including emotional skills.

The behaviour of people in both teams changed for the better when they had a goal to believe in and for the worse without one. The first team as a whole, improved greatly. They developed skills and improved their emotional intelligence. When they knew they had done poorly in the first report out, their goal was simply not to feel that way again.

The second team tasted too much success and praise too early. After receiving the praise most of the team had a goal of completing the project with as little disruption to their normal work hours as possible.

The project leader of the second team had a goal to learn as much as he could about financial planning, project and people management. He wanted to improve his emotional intelligence attributes where he thought it would improve his people management skills. He remained constant, learnt the most and grew the most.

What I have also learnt is that emotional intelligence does indeed have a large bearing on how people cope. Not just with day-to-day life, but more importantly in times of stress. What I also unexpectedly learnt was that The Simmons EQ profile is an accurate predictor of behaviour and competence at work.

Kevin Dwyer is the founder of Change Factory. Change Factory helps organisations who do not like their business outcomes to get better outcomes by changing people's behaviour. Businesses we help have greater clarity of purpose and ability to achieve their desired business outcomes. Visit our website to learn more or see more articles on Leadership ©2008 Change Factory

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Executive Coaching For Visionary Leaders - A Leadership Map For The Future

By Maynard Brusman

Visionary Leadership

Leaders need to create a vision for the future. It is human nature for people to want to know where the organization is headed and how they fit into the strategic plan.

I frequently consult with companies to help them develop competency models as part of their selection and succession management processes. The challenge is to change the competency models to reflect any changes in the strategy and vision so that all processes are aligned.
How well do you do as a leader in predicting the future?

Keeping up, staying up and getting ahead are now more difficult than we have previously imagined. There is no turning back, but there is turning forward. Mike Jay.

Predictions for the future can be stimulating and challenging, especially if one is a top executive in a business enterprise attempting to make strategic decisions. Our rapidly changing global environment presents problems never before encountered. No one knows what will be required of leaders in the future, but some speculation is worthy of our attention.

Predictions from experts in their fields have not always been accurate. Here are a few examples:
o In 1899 the U.S. Commissioner of Patents, Charles Duell, declared, Everything that can be invented has been invented.

o In 1905, President Grover Cleveland prophesied, Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

o When Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, wrote a student paper proposing an overnight delivery service, his professor wrote: The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible.

o Even Bill Gates once mused, 640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody.

New industries are in their gestational phases. Some are already well on their way to becoming established products and services.

- Micro-robotics or miniature robots built from atomic particles that could unclog arteries

- Machine translation or devices that will provide real-time translation between people conversing in different languages

- Digital highways that will make available to any home instant access to knowledge and entertainment

- Urban underground automated distribution systems to reduce traffic congestionVirtual meeting rooms to eliminate business travel

- Bio-mimetic materials that will duplicate properties found in living organisms

- Satellite-based personal communicators that will allow instant communication to anyone anywhere in the world

-n Machines capable of emotions, inference, and learning that will interact with human beings in entirely new ways

- Bioremediation or custom-designed organisms that will help clean up the environment of the earth.

Each of these opportunities is by nature global, with no single nation or region likely to control all the technologies and skills required to turn them into reality. Any firm wishing to become a leader will have to collaborate with and learn from leading-edge customers, technology providers, and suppliers wherever they are located (Hamel & Prahalad, Competing for the Future, 1994). Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a a more inspiring and visionary leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted advisor to senior leadership teams.

We provide strategic talent management solutions to select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders and lawyers.

The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded two rare "Board Approved" designations for Dr. Maynard Brusman in the specialties of Executive/Leadership Coaching and Trusted Advisor to Attorneys and Law Firms.

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P.O. Box 471525San Francisco, California 94147-1525Tel: 415-546-1252Fax: 415-721-7322E-mail: mbrusman@workingresources.comWeb Site: http://www.workingresources.com

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