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What an Emotional Intelligence Program Can Do For Your Organization in 2004
The problems of low productivity, poor judgment, bad decisions, hiring the wrong people and losing the right people, unmotivated employees, lack of teamwork, and poor self-management lie wirh the emotions. So do the solutions.
Studies have shown that raising the overall EQ in an organization positively affects the bottom line.
We are not talking about a touchy-feely-huggy experience. Emotional Intelligence is based on empirical data, scientifically based, and consists of basic competencies that can be learned. It’s about some serious emotional management – accommodating various personalities and cultural backgrounds, maintaining respect, managing turf wars, resolving conflict, and building efficiency, flexibility and integrity through all levels of your organization.
Emotional Intelligence is non-invasive. It doesn’t go into “why”. Rather it teaches specific skills for understanding and managing emotions in everyday situations. If you think of a time when you saw an employee crater, because of fear or anxiety, you’ve also seen emotion at work.
Emotional Intelligence is learned behavior. It means being aware of your own emotions, understanding them, and managing them to bring about positive results, and being able to do this in regards to others.
MULTICULTURAL
It is particularly important in a diverse or multicultural environment to establish a company culture of Emotional Intelligence, because it means there will be one culture that employees can understand and adhere to.
Otherwise, because different cultures do things differently, they'll be forced to think when they should be acting.
For instance, if one department is Intentional, that is, they say what they mean and they mean what they say (deadlines for instance), and another department doesn’t, how is the employee to maneuver this situation? It means “learning” that Bill expects deadlines to be met, but Mary doesn’t, instead of having the company culture that deadlines will be met, intentionally.
EQ v. IQ
EQ is the measurement of Emotional Intelligence. We say that an individual has high EQ or low EQ. EQ can be developed over the lifespan, unlike IQ, which is more-or-less set in
early adulthood.
Many of your employees are probably competent in their jobs skills. They have the academic education, the vocational training, the computer skills, specific experience in their
fields, and the proficiencies to perform their jobs adequately, yet it is likely some are far better at getting the job done, and far easier to work with than others. The defining factor is Emotional Intelligence.
Here are three Emotional Intelligence competencies and how they work in the office environment.
RESILIENCE
One of the biggest detractors from concentration and productivity is stress. Building resilience is the best way
to tolerate stress according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Resilience, an EQ competency, means being able to bounce back after setbacks, disappointments, rejections and losses while retaining a hopeful and enthusiastic outlook.
According to Al Siebert, Ph.D., who has studied resilience for many years, one of the attributes of a resilient person is having many different characteristics, for instance being able to be rigid ORr flexible, analytical OR creative, as required by the particular situation. This requires also being able to access all parts of your brain – emotions and thinking, left and right brain. This is EQ in action.
FLEXIBILITY
Being flexible means being able to generate alternate solutions when you “hit the wall.” Whether it’s a person you can’t get around, or an idea you know will work but may not initially be popular, or a change in office systems, or a turf war that needs managing, having many alternate ways of approaching the challenge maximizes your chances of success.
POSITIVE ATTITUDE
Optimism is the facilitator of all the EQ competencies and fuels productivity and high performance. A high score in optimism is the single best predictor for successful sales peoples ( http://www.eiconsortium.org ), and is crucial to performance situations such as giving presentations and negotiating.
HOW TO INTRODUCE EQ
A model program begins with assessing each individual’s EQ ( http:/ inyurl.com/z94t ). Then start everyone on The EQ Foundation Course© which explains the competencies and raises EQ as it is taken. It is interactive and on the Internet, self-paced, active learning, 12 modules, and comes with a workbook.
Then each individual receives coaching weekly to work on the competencies that need improving. Weekly group meetings can facilitate group learning. 3 months is the recommended minimum amount of time for this sort of learning. A post-program assessment measures results.
Alternatively, managers and executives can take this program and learn how to coach others in EQ.
Participants in a well-designed and initiated EQ program will increase their ability to work together, to lead more effectively, to manage themselves and motivate others better, to be more flexible and creative in finding solutions, to focus better and act with intent, and to be more resilient, and therefore, ultimately, be more productive.
About the Author
©Susan Dunn, MA Clinical Psychology, The EQ Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc . Bringing the power of Emotional Intelligence to your organization through coaching, distance learning courses, The EQ Learning Lab™, and eBooks, http://www.webstrategies.cc/ebooklibrary.html . We offer the EQ Alive! program for those who want to coach others, www.eqcoach.net . Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE eZine. Put “EQ at Work” for the subject line.
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