Focus on building EQ

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic. Most commonly accepted belief is that EQ can be acquired over time and comes to most with age.

There is also lot of discussion on what is more important – IQ or EQ.

Whereas academic success is largely attributed to IQ, professional success is largely attributed to EQ. In fact, psychologists generally agree that among the ingredients for success, IQ counts for roughly 10% (at best 25%); the rest depends on everything else—including EQ. (Bressert, 2007)

• "…a national insurance company found that sales agents who were weak in emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, and empathy sold policies with an average premium of $54,000. Not bad, right? Well, compared to agents who scored high in a majority of emotional competencies, they sold policies worth an average of $114,000." (Cooper, 2013)

• "Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price." (Jensen, 2012)

All of this leads us to believe that the most important attribute that a leader can have is EQ and EQ is simply an ability to perceive, control & evaluate emotions.

A leader who often loses temper at her people has low EQ and such leaders typically lead by their power or position and rarely by influence or persuation. Leading by power rarely builds loyalty or self motivated teams and hence most EQ deficient leaders often wonder "Why can't my team get it?" and are therefore often found to function at levels far lower than where they must operate, which further directly impacts their ability to build strong leadership pipeline because they leave no room for others to grow or operate.

This article is inspired by Kendra Cherry's compilation of articles. Kendra is an author on psychology for About.com

Boss, stop adding Value!

Surprised? I am sure you are not because most of us have wished this at some point in our career where we want our managers to stop adding value. I spent some time studying this in little more detail as part of my Psychology curriculum and here is what I discovered.

Disclaimer: This blog is specifically meant for team of high performers where not only the leader but a number of direct reports are high performers, self motivated and truly charged up to make a difference. Wherever this isn't the case either because of lack of skill/experience or motivation of the team, bosses need to use little autocratic styles of leadership and this article is irrelevant for such situations.

However what has been observed in high performing teams is that leaders often have a tendency to add value by always having an opinion in everything that their team does. Interestingly various authors who have studied this behavior argue that often there isn't more than additional 10% a leader can add to what the team has already thought through and planned. However in an attempt to add small incremental value the leader often ends up demotivating the team from executing 90%. Why ? Because the idea isn't their's anymore!

Those of you who understand what execution is all about would appreciate that any business plan executed to even 90% can do wonders! 

So why try to extract another 10% right away ? And why does a leader knowingly jeopardizes 90% execution by merely trying to add 10% value. Two reasons:

A. Not knowing how others feel and the impact their action has on others

B. Serious gap in the team's thought-process

Whereas A) is related to leadership maturity and EQ, B can perhaps be handled using 1-on-1 communication - Phone and/or email. I remember reading about leaders who would listen to a business plan very carefully and keenly and then later write a long email describing what they liked and what could be improved rather than react during meetings.

At the end a great leader is one who keeps a close eye but mostly stays out of the way of her team after having assured that she is always available to help, whenever anyone needs her.

It has been my fortune to have worked for several such leaders  and I wish one day I could stand in their league !

Always trying to add value isn't great leadership because it doesn't help in building a great team.