A Different Kind of Smart - Emotional Intelligence

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Oakwood Solutions, LLC,
d/b/a The Conover Company

An Introduction to a series on emotional intelligence...

You know I think in general people want to be considered smart. That's a word that has been in my vocabulary since a young age. My parents wanted me to be smart reflected primarily in academic achievement and career success. They pushed for learning, getting good grades, and even what fields of study to consider. 

My understanding of smart growing up then was shaped by that experience. Smart to me was getting good grades and being intellectually developed. I think it's safe to say for most people today, their experience with smart is similar. 

Yet, emerging research over the past 20 years suggests a different kind of smart; one that is essential to mature adulthood, one that is an underpinning to satisfaction, happiness, and more broadly life and business success and it's identified as emotional intelligence -- also known as EQ or EI.  

Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence characterizes the elements of this kind of smart as "aptitudes for living" and "human competencies".

The research suggests that it's this kind of smart that has carried the better known smart - IQ - to greater success. Consider the story of a well known technology company as described in the book How To Be Super Star at Work by Robert E. Kelly, who engaged a consulting group to determine why very smart people (those with high IQs), recruited from some of the top academic institutions in the country turned out to be only "C" employees rather than A.  

To answer that question, the consultants observed and surveyed the high achieving group - the A group - and determined that their success was not the result of their IQ, but rather their EQ or practical intelligence.  

Their success was characterized not by what they knew but what they did and how they behaved in the work, projects, and roles assigned to them. Some of the "high achieving" behaviors were: initiating, flexibility/adaptability, the ability to influence (which he calls "show and tell"), organizational savvy, self- management, skilled at maintaining an effective working rapport with colleagues and get this - followership...to name a few.

Now here is the key (and the motivation for doing this series), when you look at many of the employee performance challenges in today's workplace I guarantee you the majority of them are not IQ,  knowledge based, or the ability to acquire a functional skill issue, but are more behavior based issues - in fact issues of emotional intelligence. 

And there in is the reason every decision-maker, HR professional and business leader needs to know and understand how this fits into what they are trying to accomplish both internally and externally. The issues surrounding emotional intelligence impacts a company's bottom line and yet it is still barely understood, practically used or recognized in most workplaces.

As I've traveled through-out North American over the past years delivering a variety of professional development workshops, I have surveyed attendees on their knowledge of EQ.  Please note that many people in my classes were management and hr professionals.  Many of them had never heard of it or barely knew anything about it.  And here's what's crazy, Dr. Goleman's book, which made it's initial impact on the mainstream business community, was released in 1994.  That's 19 years ago!

So I'd like to start an EQ campaign and though this blog is written more for managers, leaders, and HR professionals - the campaign is for everyone.  I suggest that if every member of an organization developed more EQ, client-customer satisfaction would increase, profits would rise, leaders would lead more effectively and employee performance problems would decrease.  

Now there are some decision-makers who already have experienced that and are working to embed it more into their culture. My client in New York is launching a complete company culture initiative around the topic. Every single employee will be involved in a launch workshop over the next month. Wow...that's vision, conviction, and commitment! She knows that all that emotional intelligence offers is a win for everyone.

So as I launch this series, let's start with - a simple definition of a very academic and highly researched term - emotional Intelligence.  Simply put it is the ability to be intelligent in how we use our emotions and how that translates into how we behave.

Even more simple - let's look at the definition of intelligence: The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. So putting the two together - emotional intelligence is having the  ability to learn about emotions and having the skills to deal with them. Or in Dr. Goleman's terms, "bringing intelligence to emotions."

To varying degrees and levels, emotions comprise everything we do and are. Isn't it a reasonable expectation then that we should know how to effectively manage them for our good and the good of those around us? 

Ideally it should start in our development as children, but if you're like me, this was not on my parent's radar. (As a side note, many schools are now implementing EQ programs.)

In my HR Short posted a few days ago, there was a statistic that the number of "toxic" employees in on the rise. This number is a reflection of low emotional intelligence. Stay tuned to learn why.

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...If you think someone could benefit from this series, pass it on.
...If you already know you need a EQ training company-wide, for your management and/or leadership team, or an individual -  you can contact me direct: joann@thehumansphere.com or go to my EQ Resource Page for additional information.
...If you want to follow this series - click here to read instructions in the announcement post.