Emotional Intelligence

The Problem

$16.8 Billion Lost – Emotional Intelligence (Consortium for EI)

Daniel Goleman, EI Expert – “Curiosity is the key  competency of the future.”

We know we are losing billions of dollars each year due to low levels of emotional intelligence. Two of the most important elements of emotional intelligence are interpersonal skills and empathy.

If we have good interpersonal skills, we get along with other people.  These are critical skills because if they are developed, we experienced less conflict, less cost involved with conflict, and more productivity.

If we have empathy, we are able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to see things from their perspective. That can help develop those key interpersonal and soft skills and again, that leads to less conflict and more productivity.

Employees give a lot of weight to empathy – 96% of employees believe showing empathy is an important way to advance employee retention.

HR is the mediator between employees and leaders.  You are the heart of your organization and the people who can help create a more curious culture.  A huge challenge for HR is overcoming and breaking through the lack of emotional intelligence at the top – the lowest levels of emotional intelligence are found in CEOs. We promote the people who are good with people to supervisory positions, but as they continue up the ladder, past the middle management level, they enter an environment that can chip away at their level of EQ. They spend less time in meaningful interactions and get out of touch. CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training. Developing empathy would drastically improve their ability to communicate.

How do we develop empathy?  We ask questions…which requires curiosity.

The golden rule of treating others as we would like to be treated is no longer the best practice.  It can be more important to follow the platinum rule which means we should treat others how they would like to be treated. To understand how they want to be treated, we must do some exploration. As we incorporate what we know about how to interact with others, we improve our emotional intelligence and that leads to all kinds of better outcomes from improved leadership skills, promotability, likeability, and more. It’s intuitive.  It all begins with discovery and questioning to broaden our perception.

The Solution

• Improve relationships through asking questions to develop empathy and interpersonal relationships, which are a big part of EI.
• We can stop educating our people out of our competencies.