How to Get a Job: Why Employers Value Emotional Intelligence

How to Get a Job: Why Employers Value Emotional Intelligence

Check out why it is so important to understand how your emotional intelligence may impact your ability to get a job.  If you are interested in reading the book by Daniel Goleman that I refer to here, it is called Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ.   In our book,  It’s Not You It’s Your Personality, Toni Rothpletz and I write about the major personality tests that employers use.  We include a very detailed chapter about the importance of understanding emotional intelligence in the workplace.  

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Star Trainer Recommends Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for Effective Instruction (Interview)

With the upcoming release of our book, It’s Not You It’s Your Personality, there has been a lot of interest in interviews about personality assessments and training.  In our book, Toni Rothpletz and I dedicate a chapter to each of the important personality tests, including a chapter for Myers-Briggs and Emotional Intelligence.

I recently was interviewed for a piece on Bloomfire.  Some topics we discussed included:

• Things that  have influenced my approach to training
• The importance of EQ
• Valuable books to improve EQ levels
• How to apply learning about EQ to corporate training

   To read the entire interview, click here.

How is Your Job Satisfaction? It May be Based upon Your Personality Type

If you are having difficulty enjoying your job, recent research indicates that the problem may be due to your personality type.  The research, in November’s issue of The Journal of Psychological Type, is based on the Myers-Briggs MBTI personality assessment instrument and the EQ-i which is an instrument that measures your emotional intelligence level. 

The MBTI breaks down personalities into 16 different types, based on how we prefer to process information.  Those types are listed as follows:

In the recent issue of The Journal of Psychological Type, the authors found some new things about how our “type” can affect our job satisfaction.  They stated, “Extraverted and Thinking types scored higher on emotional intelligence and job satisfaction than Introverted and Feeling types.  Emotional Intelligence, however, was a more effective predictor of job satisfaction and organizational commitment than were any of the type dichotomies.”

I wrote my dissertation on emotional intelligence and its impact on performance.  While doing my research, I became a qualified Myers-Briggs instructor also received my certification in emotional intelligence testing. 

If you are not familiar with emotional intelligence, it has been defined in many ways.  I prefer the following definition:  Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions as well as those in others. 

If you have not read Daniel Goleman’s books about emotional intelligence, I highly recommend them.  Goleman has made emotional intelligence a popular buzz word in the last 15 or so years.  His work explains the importance that employers put on your emotional quotient (EQ).  In fact, employers may not be more concerned with your EQ than your IQ. 

What do the results of this study mean to you?  The research from Myers-Briggs shows that your basic personality preferences don’t really change.  If you are an extrovert, you probably will remain an extrovert.  However, you can change your emotional intelligence levels.  Goleman has done a great deal of research into this area. 

That is the good news as one’s emotional intelligence played a more important role in one’s job satisfaction and organizational commitment than did the Myers-Briggs personality “type”.  In our book about personalities in the workplace, we discuss the importance of emotional intelligence.

I think it is important to constantly work on developing our EQ.  I became qualified in emotional intelligence by training through Marcia Hughes.  She has written books for ways to improve your EQ. 

The first step to improving your emotional intelligence is reading about what it is.  If you want to improve your EQ, and improve your job satisfaction as demonstrated by this study, I would recommend looking into Daniel Goleman’s books and check out It’s Not You It’s Your Personality:  Skills to Survive and Thrive in the Modern Workplace, due to be released in the next month.

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Stephen Hawking’s IQ – How Yours Compares to His and Other Famous Persons’ IQ

There is a lot of talk recently about Stephen Hawking since his recent comment about God and the creation of the universe and the release of his upcoming book.   This has led to many searching for information on Hawking.  Interestingly his IQ is reported around 160.  Hawking claimed, “people who boast about their IQs are losers”.  In our book about understanding personalities and intelligence, my daughter, Toni Rothpletz, and I wrote about the importance of IQ and EQ (emotional quotient or measure of emotional intelligence).  Many organizations now are putting more of a focus on hiring those with a high EQ.  However, it may be fun to see how your IQ compares to some famous people in history.  The following chart is from aceviper.net:

Top 10 Personality, Career, IQ and EQ Tests