13 May 2005
Successful Intentions Newsletter
Hi ,
EQ is dead!
Ever since Daniel Goleman's first book on emotional intelligence hit the shelves in 1995, EQ has taken over the catwalk in the HR and L&D fashion stakes. But is it all it's cracked up to be?
There's no doubt that emotion plays a big part in our relationships. It turns out that we're actually hard-wired for about 7 or 8 emotions at birth: interest, joy, excitement, anger, shame, withdrawal, fear, and contempt! And our emotional circuitry is spread right throughout the brain, centred on the hippocampus, the most primitive part of the brain. Which means we actually feel first, and then think. Not the other way around!
It's also well known that we make decisions as much on feelings as thinking. For example:
- Surprising smaller wins can be more pleasurable than expected larger ones.
- A loss can feel like a win if an even larger loss was expected.
- A regrettable action can feel worse than a regrettable inaction if there was a perception of control over the outcome.
And when we feel good, our thinking becomes more creative, integrative, flexible, and open to information. We are more resilient in the face of crises. A positive mood creates an entirely different way of thinking than a negative mood.
But the workplace is an emotional jungle! Even if you could properly understand and manage your own feelings of disappointment, embarrassment, anger, or envy, how do you manage them in others?
Despite the need for further research to properly identify what emotional intelligence really is, Goleman and his colleagues promote the popular belief that, "purely mental abilities help - but EQ competencies help far more". The four emotional intelligences of Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management are meant to describe ways of being in relation to feelings. But how do you do emotional awareness?
For a start there seems to be a significant overlap with personality factors.
- Conscientiousness (responsible, careful, persevering, orderly, hardworking, and planful) is similar to the EQ dimension of self-regulation of emotions,
- Emotional stability, (secure, stable, relaxed, self-sufficient, not anxious, and tolerant of stress) sounds like stress management EQ,
- Extraversion (talkative, assertive, adventurous, energetic) is closely aligned with social skills EQ, and
- Agreeableness (good-natured, flexible, cooperative, caring, trusting, tolerant) matches the EQ dimension of empathy.
Even though there's already a lot known about emotion from the fields of personality, intelligence, and applied psychology, the notion of emotional intelligence has wide appeal. Perhaps EQ is indeed a stand-alone characteristic. For example, a recent study by Ben Palmer from the Organisational Psychology Research Unit at Swinburne University found that 41% of the reason for effective leadership was explained by the EQ competency of understanding emotions, over and above personality alone.
But can you do emotional intelligence? Even Goleman recognized the problem of converting emotional intelligence into behaviour by renaming the EQ dimensions Emotional Intelligence Competencies (EIC).
Professor Neil Ashkanasay from the University of Queensland Business School comes close to specifying how to demonstrate emotional competence. He outlines a number of approaches for managing emotions in the workplace, including:
- Maintain open and quality communication: Provide regular, high-quality information to team members to help reduce uncertainty and anxiety.
- Display interpersonal sensitivity: Quickly and appropriately express regret for any adversity experienced by team members as a result of your decisions. This displays personal ethicality and trustworthiness.
- Manage "emotional events": Deal directly and immediately with emotions expressed by team members or felt by you personally. Accurately identifying emotions in the moment shows understanding and empathy.
- Engender a positive outlook: A creative intuitive style to management is associated with positive mood in the team as long as the manager keeps his or her focus on the task.
But just like IQ, EQ is in fact "dead" unless you can demonstrate it through behaviour. The way to train your team to be more emotionally self-aware is to teach the skills of emotional behaviour. And a framework already exists to do that. It's called Behavioural Coaching.
, if you want your team to really do EQ rather than simply know about it, then give them clear, practical, evidence-based training in how to be One Minute Coaches!.
Coming up in the next edition of the Successful Intentions Newsletter - Ethical Corruption!
Keep your intentions clear,
Peter Webb
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