Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to accurately identify, understand and manage your own emotions and those of others. The World Economic Forum ranks emotional intelligence as one of the top skills needed to excel at work. The McKinsey Group identifies the need for social and emotional skills to grow at a much faster pace than cognitive skills. And Experts assert that these soft skills are essential for success in today’s global market. Josh Millet, founder and CEO of Criteria Corp, is one of those business leaders who believes emotional intelligence is increasingly viewed as a critical and strategic ability for the modern workforce.
Benefits Of Emotional Intelligence
“In practical terms, people with well-developed emotional intelligence can create and manage relationships more effectively,” Millet told me by email. “They can work well with others, regulate their emotions appropriately, understand how others are feeling and influence and inspire people. Many researchers have found strong links between EI and important organizational behaviors including leadership, performance on the job, organizational citizenship, commitment and teamwork.”
Now more than ever, employers want to hire emotionally intelligent people, and why wouldn’t they? Employees with a high degree of emotional intelligence (EI) know what they’re feeling, what their emotions mean and how these emotions can affect other people. They’re also adept at harnessing their emotions to help them solve problems effectively. Emotionally intelligent workers make better collaborators, they reduce toxicity in work environments and overall, cultivate a less stressful workplace for themselves and their colleagues.
Millet explains that EI is especially critical in roles that require building and maintaining positive interpersonal relationships (such as leadership or sales roles), roles that require emotional resilience (like healthcare or emergency response) or where emotional labor (managing feelings and emotions to maintain a job or a relationship) is central to the work role.
How To Know If You Have EI
But is emotional intelligence actually quantifiable? How are employers evaluating the friendliness, personability and sociability of workers before they’ve even seen them interact with others? Millet says typically an objective test is used because job seekers aren’t always good judges of their own emotion-based abilities and tendencies. They might be prone to select the answer that they believe will be most impressive, rather than the most accurate answer. Plus, as a general rule we tend to overestimate our own self-awareness. He cites research in the Harvard Business Review showing that 95% of us think we are self-aware, but only 10 to 15% actually are self-aware. For that reason, standardized objective assessments are the best measurements of emotional intelligence.
Practically speaking, Millet lists ten questions to ask yourself to see if you have emotional intelligence. Are you:
- Able to recognize what you and others are feeling?
- Pick up on subtle emotional cues from others?
- Identify your own emotions?
- Discriminate between genuine and inauthentic emotions?
- Possess a strong understanding of complex emotions and how they can change over time?
- Understand different, and possibly contradictory blends of emotions?
- Understand the causes and consequences of different emotions?
- Understand “chains” of emotions (e.g., someone starting off disappointed and then transitioning to anger)?
- Able to manage emotions in yourself and others?
- Develop strategies that will lead to positive outcomes (for example, could you in an interview scenario describe a time you’ve put an emotion on hold because it wasn’t beneficial to a particular situation, or a time where you managed the emotions of others to inspire or motivate them?)
Millet points out that high levels of emotional work are central to breaking bad news in such settings as patients in healthcare, laid-off employees or supporting clients in therapeutic settings. Managing multiple demands under time pressure such as emergency services or navigating challenging relationships between coworkers also require a level of emotional intelligence. “In the face of emotional demands, employees who can draw on emotional intelligence competencies are likely to be better equipped to maintain their well-being and performance at work,” he notes. “In sales roles, for example, employees may need to display positive emotions when they are selling, regardless of how they feel. Sales roles present an added layer of emotion-led work as they require a greater focus on the emotions of the customer or prospective customer and requires employees to adapt their own behavior to that emotional state. Someone in a supervisory or management position will at some stage experience the requirement to navigate a difficult conversation with a colleague.”
How Leaders Can Apply EI Skills
An EY Consulting survey found that 90% of U.S. workers believe empathetic leadership leads to higher job satisfaction, and 79% say it decreases employee turnover. Business leaders report that they’re pressured to care more, show more empathy and compassion and be kinder. While those soft skills are essential, many leaders—especially men—often look with a blank stare, clueless on how to apply those skills. What does this mean for leaders who don’t know how to express their own feelings or deal with those of others? Do they sit and cry with employees? Do they try to counsel them or try to be vulnerable when they don’t know how? Maybe it’s time to explicate exactly how leaders who have been trained only in hard skills can learn ways to show emotional intelligence.
“When emotions are accurately perceived, understood and harnessed, they can enhance a team’s ability to flourish,” Millet points out. “Conversely when emotions are ignored or mishandled, they can cause teams to spiral in a negative direction. Fortunately, employers are increasingly acknowledging the powerful role that emotions play at work and their ability to impact business outcomes.”
He suggests that the bottom line impact is particularly evident for managerial and supervisory roles. Unwanted turnover is one of the most significant (and costly) challenges faced by many organizations, he notes. “It’s a reality that poor management can contribute to an employee’s decision to leave an organization. A lot of these poor management skills can stem from a lack of emotional intelligence. Perhaps an employee feels that their contributions aren’t being acknowledged; or a new colleague feels excluded from the social environment at work; maybe a new parent feels as if their need for flexible work is dismissed; or worse, an employee lodges a serious workplace complaint that gets ignored. These are all reasons that might drive a person to seek new employment but could also have been alleviated if the leader was able to demonstrate more awareness and empathy.”
On the flip side, Millet explains that a keyed-in manager who gets to know what motivates their employees, understands their needs and listens when conflicts arise are in a position to drive better engagement for the team. This ultimately increases a feeling of connectedness to the organization and discourages employees from thinking about finding a new job.
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