Sarah Denio Industrial Seminar Lit. Review #2 November 19, 1999
Here is a quick test of your Human Resource expertise: What characteristic most distinguishes star performers from average workers? If you said IQ, you answered incorrectly (Harrison, 1997).
��Emotional intelligence�� is a term that was coined by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990, with the publication of their article by the same name. Nearly a decade later, their definition of this intangible concept is still used by researchers in this domain. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one��s own and others�� feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one��s thinking and actions. According to Dalgeish & Power (1999), it encompasses four specific abilities:
1) perceiving, appraising, and expressing emotions accurately,
2) using emotions to facilitate thought,
3) understanding and employing knowledge about emotions (i.e. Being able to name emotions and distinguish among similar ones), and
4) regulating emotions to promote growth.
The connection to use in organizations is quite clear: we should employ workers who exemplify these characteristics. Often, people who are not emotionally intelligent cannot recognize emotion in themselves and are therefore unable to plan lives that fulfill them emotionally (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). This can influence all aspects of their lives, including their jobs and the organizations for which they work. In turn, such a lack of direction can result in problems such as higher turnover in companies resulting from workers�� inability to decide what they want.
Although Salovey and Mayer were the first to study it, emotional intelligence was popularized by, and therefore is most often associated with, Daniel Goleman. Goleman is the author of the unexpected best selling book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ (1995). This book revealed many advances in the understanding of the physiology of the brain and its impact on emotional functioning. Emotional intelligence encompasses a variety of characteristics, which may be easily understood from looking at the diagram, ��Conceptualization of Emotional Intelligence.��
Here we may see how emotional intelligence may be broken down into the appraisal, regulation, and utilization of emotion. These concepts refer to how we apply our emotional intelligence to our ��self�� and to ��others,�� both verbally and non-verbally. Goleman called these emotional facets competencies. According to The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, these competencies may be separated into two broad categories: personal and social. The personal competency is broken down further into ��self-awareness,�� including emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence, ��self-regulation,�� including self control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, and innovativeness, and ��self motivation,�� including achievement drive, commitment, initiative, and optimism. The social competency is broken down into ��social awareness,�� including empathy, service orientation, developing others, leveraging diversity, and political awareness and ��social skills�� which include influence, communication, leadership, change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, collaboration and cooperation, and team capabilities.
Several studies have demonstrated the utility of emotional intelligence in business:
�h On an annual basis, salespeople at L��Oreal selected on the basis of emotional competence sold $91,370 more than other salespeople did. They also had 63% less turnover in their first year of employment.
�h In a beverage firm, 50% of division presidents hired using standard methods left within two years. When they started hiring based on emotional intelligence (initiative, self-confidence, leadership, etc.), only 6% left in two years.
�h For sales representatives at a computer company, those hired on the basis of emotional competence were 90% more likely to finish training than those hired on other criteria.
�h Finally, in a study of 515 senior executives, emotional intelligence was a better predictor of success than either relevant previous experience of high IQ. This study included executives from Latin America, Germany, and Japan and the results were almost identical in all three cultures. These findings suggest that emotional intelligence may be a good predictor across cultural boundaries (Cherniss, 1999). (The article I read did not go into detail, but I wonder if the criteria they used to assess emotional intelligence was uniform across cultures or if they used criteria that would be considered to exemplify emotional competence in each specific culture.)
��How can this be true?�� one may wonder upon viewing these results. The human brain is still a mystery for the most part. Fortunately, there have been advances that allow us to better determine where things such as our emotional patterns come from, and who we become as a result (O��Brien, 1996). In the first six months of life, the human brain doubles in neural capacity. It doubles again by age four and then grows rapidly until adolescence. The brain is made-up of about one hundred billion nerve cells and every experience we have triggers a neural response that literally shapes our senses. During a single three-week period in adolescence, the metabolism of the brain is cut in half. With this, we are ��biologically wired,�� as Dr. Robert Levingston puts it (as quoted by O��Brien, 1996). Our ��world view�� is set. Fortunately, it is not only possible to change your world-view, it is actually said to be easier than overcoming a chemical addition. It just takes a great deal of discipline.
It is due to the recent discovery of a lone neuron, that we are able to better understand the functioning and importance of emotional intelligence (Holt, 1995). This lone neuron bypasses the neocortex, where rational decisions are made, and goes straight to the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. Here the more primitive, ��fight or flight�� responses occur and are stored for future use. Emotions are thought to typically arise in response to an event, either internal or external, that has a positive or negative meaning to the individual (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). If the emotions that are stored in adolescence are ones of restraint, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, hope and optimism, we are endowed with emotional intelligence that serves rather than enslaves us for the rest of our lives. If the emotional memories that are stored are ones of fear, frustration, anxiety, depression, and impulse, there is a higher chance that the amygdala will flood the brain with inappropriate emotions, resulting in low emotional intelligence (Holt, 1995). In order to improve our emotional intelligence, we must focus on weakening these negative neuronal connections and strengthening the positive ones. Then, when we are faced with, for example, an unexpected dilemma, our brain will be more apt to default to the positive, appropriate response, not to the negative ones we may have programmed in adolescence.
Goleman claims that our emotional make up�X for example to display resilience in the face of personal setbacks�Xis at least as much a determinant of how far we go in life, personally and professionally, as our brains or an Ivy League education. He believes approximately 80% of our success to be related to EQ, and only 20% to the traditional IQ.
The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, mentioned earlier, is a group whose organizational and corporate members have made a commitment to furthering high quality research on the application of emotional intelligence in the organizational setting. Several of their programs have been shown to successfully raise the level of emotional and social competence for adults in the workplace. These programs may target any one of a variety of different groups, including executives, middle level managers, first-level supervisors, hourly workers, unemployed workers, police officers, medical students, and MBA students. The types of programs include: executive and management development, supervisory training, individual coaching, achievement motivation training, self-management training, stress-management training, and emotional competence training. The examples I gave earlier exemplify why we should incorporate emotional intelligence into our organizations. But how can this be done? As stated by Roy Harrison (1997), ��Achieving an emotionally intelligent organization demands high quality development. The HR function must enhance the capacity of teams to learn on the job; provide new sets of skills to improve individuals�� and groups�� abilities to self-learn; develop a new breed of leaders as developers and transformers of organizational culture; assess and develop emotional competencies; and build new skills for HR professionals themselves.�� The Consortium has developed what they consider to be the optimal process for developing emotional intelligence in organizations. They believe these 22 guidelines to represent the best current knowledge about how to promote emotional intelligence in the workplace. The process is based on an exhaustive review of the research on training and development and is broken down into four phases that correspond to the typical four phases of the development process�Xpreparation, training, transfer and maintenance, and evaluation. The preparation phase occurs before the individual begins the formal training. It involves preparation for change on both the individual and organizational levels. The second phase, training, involves the change process itself. Here we learn and begin to implement the processes that help people change the way in which they view the world. The third phase, transfer and maintenance, addresses what takes place following the formal training and the final phase, evaluation, monitors how effective the training has been in achieving its goals. Refer to the diagram below provided by Cherness & Goleman, 1998, ��The Optimal Process for Promoting Emotional Competence in Organizations," for an outline of the steps in the process of training workers to be more emotionally intelligent in the workplace.
As you can see from the above diagram, the preparation phase involves the following steps: 1) assessing the organizations needs; 2) assessing personal strengths and weaknesses; 3) providing feedback with care; 4) maximizing learner choice, which involves helping the trainee feel as though they have a choice to participate in the program; 5) encouragement of participation; 6) linking of learning goals with personal value; 7) adjustment of expectations, involving the setting of realistic goals, as people who are confident that they will succeed in training will be more motivated and thus more successful overall; and 8) gauging readiness for change. All of these steps serve to induce motivation in the trainees. The training phase involves: 1) fostering a positive relationship between the trainer and the learners; 2) maximizing self-directed change, as trainees are most successful when they decide for themselves what competencies they need to work on; 3) setting clear goals; 4) breaking goals into manageable steps; 5) maximizing opportunity for practice; 6) relying on experimental methods, meaning the trainees need to actually engage in the desired pattern of thought, feeling, and action in order to reprogram the neural circuits; 7) enhancing insight, which enhances self-awareness (the most important emotional competency); and 8) preventing relapse. These steps share the goal of fostering learning.
The transfer and maintenance phase involves only three steps: 1) encouragement of the use of the newly learned skills on the job; 2) providing an organizational culture that supports learning; and 3) removal of situational constraints, such as cues in the trainee��s natural environment which support the old pathways that training was designed to weaken. Upon this, we may evaluate how effective the training has been in modifying actual behavior in the workplace. It is hoped that this is exemplified through improved performance. To be effective, social and emotional learning experiences need not adhere to ALL of these guidelines, but the chances for success are thought to increase with each one that is followed.
Unfortunately, there is no simple way to measure emotional intelligence. In light of the ambiguity of some of the competencies it encompasses, it is easy to see that it does not lend itself to any single numeric measure (Park, 1995). Still, attempts have been made to quantify it. As always, some attempts have been better than others have. ��The Trait Meta-Mood Scale�� and ��The Emotional IQ Test�� were created by Salovey and Mayer in their original research (unfortunately I could not get a hold of these inventories), and many researchers and organizations have since then developed their own tests. The reliability and validity of most of these remains questionable. In conclusion, I consider it to be a viable argument that the amount of time we devote to incorporating the teachings of emotional intelligence into our lives can determine the degree to which we achieve a higher level of functioning, within ourselves and amongst each other. I believe there is a lot to be said for the concept of emotional intelligence and the impact it can have on our lives. It is possible that we all have something to gain, in some realm of our life�Xwhether it be in the workplace or not. Here are some final suggestions, provided by Michael O��Brien (1997), for cultivating emotional intelligence in your daily life:
1) Raise consciousness�Xnotice what you are thinking about and escape the conditioned confines of your past. This can be done by catching yourself in the act of thinking as often as possible. 2) Use imagery�Xto do this, you should set aside time each day to ��dream with gusto�� about what you want to achieve 3) Framing and reframing events�XIT ISN��T EVENTS THAT MATTER, IT��S OUR OPINION OF THEM�K So, every time something important happens, assign as many interpretations to it as possible. Then go with the interpretation that is most supportive of your dream. 4) Interpreting the perspectives of others�XBrain research shows that our view of the world is physiologically limited by our genes and experiences we have had.
As Oprah Winfrey said, �� You��re smarter than you��ve been told your whole life.��
References
Cherniss, Cary. (1999). The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. www.eiconsortium.org
Dalgeish, T. & Power, M. (1999). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
Goleman, Daniel. (1995). Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bloomsbury Publishing: London.
Holt, Patricia. (1995). ��The author talks about emotions: Success depends on self-control, he says.�� The San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, October 18. http://ei.haygroup.com
Koonce, Richard. (1996). ��Emotional IQ: A new secret of success?�� Training and Development, 50; p. 19.
O��Brien, Michael. (1996). ��Developing your EQ.�� HR Focus; 73, 3.
Park, Alice. (1995). ��One way to test your EQ.�� Time, 146; p. 64.
Salovey, p. & Mayer, J. (1990). ��Emotional intelligence.�� Imagination, Cognition, and Personality; 9(3), 185-211.
