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EQ for Leaders E-ZINE - ISSUE NO.48/ January 2011

Dear Reader,

Happy New Year to you! Wishing you all the very best for 2011!

In the first ezine of this year, my colleague Sebastien Henry shares with you a book review of “Emotional Intelligence 2.0”

There is one interesting finding that “... the more senior the job title gets, the lower is the EI level...”, concluding that there is a tendency that CEO’s have the lowest emotional intelligence in general.

We could, of course, conclude from this research that high emotional intelligence is a hindrance for getting into more senior positions.

I reflected for a while over this question and came to the conclusion that while decreasing EI levels towards senior management might be a reality, it might also be the source of many challenges organizations face nowadays, especially problems with high staff turnover and low engagement levels.

Perhaps driven by Generation Y employees, there is an increasing number of people who simply won’t accept low EI levels anymore and react with either leaving or low engagement.

I think it would be the wrong conclusion to believe that low EI helps getting in senior positions as also an increasing number of progressive organizations transition to a more successful culture where high EI becomes an asset or even a necessity for career success.

What is your take? Feel free to contact us and share your view.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor

Emotional Intelligence 2.0
By Sebastien Henry

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Dear Reader,

Let me introduce you to an interesting book, ”Emotional Intelligence 2.0”, by Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves, the founders of Talentsmart, an EQ solution consultancy based in California, USA. I was certified as their first facilitator in Asia five years ago.

The book offers several things:

First, it has an online assessment of one’s level of Emotional Intelligence (EI).

I have never been a big fan of self-assessments on EI. This is because from my point of view and experience, people with the lowest EI get the highest scores. Their lack of self-awareness leads them to rate themselves high in EQ, higher than the score they deserve to get. I prefer 360 assessments on EI whenever possible because people with low EI do not get off the hook.

However, the book’s online assessment can give one an idea of which part of your EI is strong, and which needs to be developed.

Secondly, out of the dozens of books I have read on EI, this book offers the most practical tools (called “strategies”, which I find a bit flattering for the authors). There are 66 tools, some of which may sound like an advice from your grandma dressed in fancy clothes. But many will probably be quite fresh for you.

For example:

• “Keep a journal about your emotions” (what I call “Emotions Log”) – This is a decisive step for higher self-awareness.
• “Feel your emotions physically”- This entails paying attention to how an emotion manifests in your body so that you can act on it early.
• “Acknowledge the other person’s feelings” - this makes a huge difference on creating deep relationships. But, based on my own experience, very few people are able to do this.

These “strategies” are not particularly for leaders, but they can certainly benefit from them. In line with Daniel Goleman’s model, the strategies are classified in four categories: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

Finally, this book’s last section is about Talentsmart’s latest discoveries in Emotional Intelligence. Two are particularly interesting.

The first one is a study about the correlation between a person’s Emotional Intelligence and job title. The study concluded that the more senior the job title gets, the lower is the EI level (Thus, on the average, CEOs have the lowest scores in the workplace).

Another study compared the EI levels of American and Chinese executives. One key finding is that on average, American executives have an EI 15 points lower than Chinese executives in the areas of self-management and relationship management. (Relationship management is as the ability to be aware of emotions and utilize them to manage interactions successfully.)

Apart from its merits discussed above, the book still has some aspects that need to be improved. The online assessment presented transparent questions, letting the person know what to answer if he/she wants to look good. Through my own practice, I have learned to be very cautious in interpreting EI self-assessments. People with high self-awareness and are willing to admit their weaknesses may get lower EI scores than people with low self-awareness who answer the questionnaire with an intention to obtain good-looking results.

Another room for improvement is the title, which I find more fashionable than accurate. True, the book comes with an access code to a free online EQ self-assessment developed by Talentsmart, but the authors have done this before on their first book, The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book and other authors like Marcus Buckingham have done this as well. Secondly, the book uses Daniel Goleman’s model. More than a decade ago, Daniel Goleman was the first to promote the Emotional Intelligence outside the academe. The book follows a classical structure: why Emotional Intelligence (EI) is crucial, what are the different skills related to it, and how to develop these skills.

That being said, the book is an interesting read and gives a good contribution to the field of EI. Last but not least, it is quick and easy to read: within a couple of hours, you will learn significantly. I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I did!

Warmly,

Sebastien

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