In the February 2017 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis wrote a short article entitled Emotional Intelligence has 12 Elements. Which do you need to work on? that I not only thought was interesting, but captured a lot of the misconceptions that I see about emotional intelligence.
They discuss a manager of a small team who is very well liked, kind, respectful, sensitive to the needs of others. She is always engaged and is a source of calm to her colleagues. She’s a good problem solver, and tends to see setbacks as opportunities. Despite her boss complimenting her on her high levels of EI, and her even considering EI as a strength of hers, she feels stuck in her career, unable to demonstrate the kind of performance her company is looking for. She thinks to herself so much for emotional intelligence.
The trap that she’s found herself, and her manager, in is that they are defining emotional intelligence much too narrowly. They’re thinking of emotional intelligence as only sociability, sensitivity and likability. They’re missing things that are important but overlooked by many: the ability to deliver difficult feedback to employees, the courage to ruffle feathers and drive change, and the creativity to think outside the box. These are examples of a case when someone has uneven emotional intelligence skills, or emotional competencies. Goleman states that people often have an imbalance in their EI skills, especially those that are viewed as having high EI, but having a well-balanced array of specific EI capabilities actually prepares a leader for exactly the kinds of tough challenges as those listed above.
There are a number of different models for the different aspects of EI, and even I have a different “5 Aspect” model shown above, but Goleman prefers to use a four domain, 12 aspect model as shown below.
Goleman and Boyatzis Emotional Intelligence Model
G and B, as I shall refer to them, prefer to use a model of emotional intelligence that utilizes the four domains of Self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, and relationship management. Within these four domains they define twelve EI competencies that are learned and learnable capabilities that allow outstanding performance at work or as a leader. To relate back to their original example, our small-team manager is strong in empathy, positive outlook, and self-control, but she appears to be lacking in conflict management, influence, and inspirational leadership, which are skills that require just as much engagement with emotions as her strengths, and should be worked on just the same as other EI competencies.
If one has strength in conflict management they will be skilled in giving people unpleasant feedback. If one is more inclined to influence the group, they would also want to provide that difficult feedback as a way to lead her direct reports and help them grow.
The next example they give I love, and hope a friend of mine reads this as it’s pretty related to a conversation we were having yesterday about EI (*cough* Annie *cough*). “Say, for example, that Esther has a peer who is overbearing and abrasive (or has any other quality that is against the House Style of the organization). Rather than smoothing over every interaction, with a broader balance of EI skills she could bring up the issue to her colleague directly, drawing on emotional self-control to keep her own reactivity at bay while telling him what, specifically, does not work in his style. Bringing simmering issues to the surface goes to the core of conflict management. Esther could also draw on influence strategy to explain to her colleague that she wants to see him succeed, and that if he monitored how his style impacted those around him he would understand how a change would help everyone.”
G and B conclude by stating the importance of taking a comprehensive “formal 360-degree assessment, which incorporates systematic, anonymous observations of your behavior by people who work with you, have been found to not correlate well with IQ or personality, but they are the best predictors of a leader’s effectiveness, actual business performance engagement, and job (and life) satisfaction.” One thing that is worth noting here, is this is just another example of the importance of coaching in professional and personal life. I will discuss this later, but coaching goes far beyond the athletic world, and should be used as frequently as possible. It is very easy for someone to think they are doing one thing, only to be told by a competent second set of eyes that they are doing far from what they think they are.