Ross McLelland, Pacific Consulting
What is EI?
Business Importance
The Performance Linkage
Australian Implications
Australian Workplace
Culture Survey
Practical
Application for EI in Australia
Moving from Leaders
to Staff
The Behaviour Model
Conclusion
Example EI Questions
Related site: Emotional Intelligence Profiling (BarOn EQi)
What is EI?
What is it about the people we really like to work with? What is it about the people we see as leaders that inspires us to follow and do anything for them? What is the difference between those whom we respect and follow and those whom we do not respect, do not trust and would not follow?
Great leaders are those who inspire and mobilise the people around them. They are aware of and take an interest in other people’s viewpoints and goals, are good at listening and communicating, and are successful in achieving results for themselves and for those around them. Above all, great leaders are aware of their own emotions and reactions, and of how these drive their behaviors and impact on others.
This awareness is known as Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is about being able to assess your own feelings and thoughts, gauging the feelings and thoughts of those around you, and adjusting your behavior to respond to the right things in the right way at the right time.
It is about integrating feelings, thoughts and behaviors to deal appropriately with any set of circumstances that arise.
These qualities have traditionally been recognised by labels such as “maturity”, “common sense” or “wisdom”, yet recent authors see it as something more than this. Dulewicz and Higgs identified seven key elements of
EI:
- Self awareness: being aware of and managing self
- Emotional resilience: the ability to bounce back
- Motivation: energy, drive, setting high targets
- Interpersonal sensitivity: being sensitive to others’ needs and feelings, listening and using others’ ideas
- Influence: persuading others
- Intuitiveness (decisiveness): using ‘gut feeling’, making decisions
- Conscientiousness (and integrity): practicing what you preach
- There are four fundamental features that underlie the concept:
- Passion
- Optimism
- Self-regard
- Regard for others
EI is not just another name for competencies or management skills. It is about underlying personal capabilities.
It is about values and attitudes, such as self-regard and concern for others. This means that EI is an important component in a person’s ability to be a successful manager, as reflected in the following formula:
|
An individual’s IQ is determined to a significant extent in the womb, peaking at the age of about 20 years.
Management skills can be taught as concepts throughout life, and are likely to be adopted by individuals differently, according to their underlying talents. An individual with a talent for numbers may take easily to financial management, while a natural analyst may take well to strategic planning.
The ability to assess another person’s response at an emotional level, however, requires the learning of new behaviours and thinking styles. It also requires the ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions. While it can be difficult to bring about change in others, we can change how we think about and respond to them.
Where a person has a higher EI, the tendency is that they will also have better general health, fewer bad habits, better relationships with others and improved standards of work performance.
Through effective self-management, mood management and relationship management, individuals are more effective and more able to motivate, lead and develop others, which in the workplace leads to better business performance.
Business Importance
Research linking leadership practices to ultimate business performance is highly relevant to the application of EI (Gantz Wiley Research 1996). The performance linkage model set out below reinforces that good leadership values and practices will lead to a higher level of employee results. This in turn will provide a positive workplace environment leading to a higher level of customer results and, over time, in increased business performance.
The Performance Linkage
The linkage research model explains that leaders who have expressed values and actual practices, which focus primarily on quality and customer orientation, will gain a high level of respect from employees. Further that if employees are provided with 3 key pre-requisites they will perform at a higher level. That is:
-
Employees need to be provided with the necessary support, resources and training
-
They need to be involved in decisions that affect their work
-
They need to be empowered to do what is necessary to complete their work and meet customer expectations.
Employees can be seen to be performing at a higher level when they being to take the ‘extra step’ that results in product or service delivery that delights an organization's customers, thus increasing repeat business and therefore improving business performance.
These days, more than ever, an organization's ability to delight a customer depends as much on the quality of customer service as much as, or more than, the quality of the product or service alone. This emphasizes the importance of attracting and retaining staff who are able to deal well with customers. Those people who are high in
EI are able to keep customers happier, they lack angry, belligerent and troublesome behavior, are more likely to be tactful and are more ethical than those with low EI. Only in organizations where EI is a core leadership quality can such behavior be confidently predicted throughout all staff levels.
On the other hand, people with low levels of EI, who exhibit inappropriate or negative behaviors, do not create a positive work environment, do not gain the trust of others and their behaviors do not make people feel good about themselves.
Australian Implications
The concept of ‘quality’ in the business context varies between countries and cultures as well as between organisations. The Telstra Australian Archetype study (1994) examines these cultural differences, revealing that:
- in Japan, quality is the pursuit of perfection;
- in France, quality is viewed as luxury;
- in the United States, quality means it works;
- in Germany, quality is an obsession with standards; and
- in Australia, quality is about relationships, both staff and customers
The research concludes, “relationships are very important to Australians. Good relationships reinforce the individual’s or group’s identity while providing them with recognition and a level of security. For our people the quality of any experience or product is clouded by the quality of the relationship that sits around that experience. If that relationship is not positive, then the rest of the experience is de-valued.”
Hence the key point to remember is, that “Quality” for the Australian culture means first and foremost: Quality of Relationship.
Attraction and retention surveys conducted in Australia and internationally confirm that the primary criterion in a person’s engagement and staying with their current employer is whether they respect their manager.
Further, the management style that appears to best suit the Australian archetype is that of a ‘Captain Coach’ i.e. someone who works with people, provides leadership from inside the group and who creates stability, rather than one that creates instability (the ‘Task Master’).
In order to be a successful Captain-Coach, a manager must be able to exude and generate passion, optimism and self-regard. This will in turn lead to an environment of trust and self-satisfaction which motivate employees to perform. The following model illustrates how these two factors work together to provide this motivation.
Australian Workplace Culture Survey
Where trust and satisfaction are both present, the employee will operate in ‘volunteer’ mode, which is the state of mind required to generate the additional discretionary effort that is the cornerstone of high performance.
Conversely if an employee does not trust their manager or their organisation they will move back to a ‘survivor’ mode. Even worse if for a range of reasons they also don’t feel good about themselves they will fall into the ‘prisoner’ mode.
They move below the positive impact line and become a potential handicap to the organisation in achieving its business results, as they emotionally hijack themselves and hijack those around them, forcing them away from volunteering or even being a survivor.
Practical Application for EI in Australia
While Emotional Intelligence may on the surface appear to be an academic concept it is in fact a practical everyday explanation of the way we think and act in the workplace and in our daily lives. It acts as a framework on which we can build a positive workplace environment.
If we accept that the leaders of an organisation largely determine its culture and climate then it seems sensible that we should focus on the leadership values and practices first. We need to work with them to draw out the key values of the organisation and have these defined and described in simple English that can be communicated down through the organisation. We need to set standards of appropriate and acceptable behaviour for people working in the organization, and we need to establish these at the leadership level as the starting point.
We then need to assess whether the leaders are applying the agreed behavours and practicing them in the way they conduct themselves in the organisation and to its customers. We can achieve this through a number of assessment approaches involving the views and perceptions of themselves and the people with whom they most frequently interact, both within the organisation and externally if appropriate. Usually a multi-source/360º feedback system is used to facilitate this assessment.
We can then feed the information back to each leader to discuss their strengths and development needs and to identify future action to obtain improvements that will lead to more effective leadership practices, and therefore to a more positive workplace environment.
We can then provide group and preferably individual coaching over an extended period to ensure that improvements are demonstrated and sustained and this leads to improved business results.
Moving from Leaders to Staff
If we are to improve individual and organisational performance we need to do more than just have good leaders. We need to ensure that all staff exhibit behaviours that enhance quality and customer relationships.
Leaders in the organisation need to act and be seen as effective ‘Captain Coaches’ not ‘Task Masters’, and they need to provide a positive work environment where people have trust and feel okay about themselves.
The Behaviour Model
In providing further practical guidance to leaders and managers we now need to introduce the behavioural model. This model indicates that behaviour is a function of person and environment ie. Bƒp+e. Hence if we wish to change our own or another person’s behaviour we need to change the environment or change the person or a combination of both. As leaders and managers we can change the workplace environment by turning it into a positive experience and we can change a certain degree of the person’s feelings about themselves through effective leadership values and practices. Hence under this notion, leaders and managers can influence a person’s behaviour in a positive or negative way by impacting on the quality of the work environment and the quality of the relationship.
Relating to the Australian archetype model we can then provide a positive workplace environment where people can readily move from ‘prisoner’ to ‘survivor’ to ‘volunteer’. As volunteers are associated with high performance individuals and high performing organisations this is a strong business case for focusing on leadership abilities which build trust and make people feel okay about themselves.
Conclusion
For those who think that EI can be simply copied or superficially play-acted it is well to know that true EI is also being authentic in the eyes of others. Also, that unlearning old habits and consistently adopting new EI habits is normally a slow process acquired, practiced and demonstrated over several years.
The importance of EI for business is that it unlocks a key to improved performance of individuals and to organisation – better people, better results, better relationships, a more positive working environment, more satisfied customers, and improved business results.
To achieve such results it takes a change in approach to people and management generally. This to some executives will be a fundamental shift in their normal practices.
We can develop and implement people strategies to maximise the positive impact of effective leaders and staff development practices to increase organisation effectiveness and business results.
Some examples of EI focused assessment questions are:
To what extent does this person:
-
Seek information or input from others in order to achieve the best outcomes.
-
Listen attentively and respond with empathy to other people’s issues.
-
Give regular constructive feedback to others on how they are performing (both positive and critical).
-
Lead by example and model positive behaviours.
-
Confront challenges with enthusiasm and energy.
-
Remain positive and enthusiastic about pursuing goals and objectives despite frustrations and setbacks.
-
Stay calm and responsive to others even when confronted with others’ hostility.
-
Seek to understand the take into account the circumstances and perspectives of others.
-
Realise the impact of their behaviour on others.
Related site: