Forbes recently
published on 6 January 2015 a blog by Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional
Intelligence 2.0, Why Your Boss Lacks
Emotional Intelligence. The key message in the article was the following
graph.
According to
Bradberry “the EQ scores descend faster
than a snowboarder on a black diamond. CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ
scores in the workplace.” And
looking at the graph you would be hard pressed not to come to the same
conclusion. However if you have read
that great book How to Lie with
Statistics Daniel Huff you will realise that Bradberry has used one of the
oldest tricks in the book, rescaling the Y axis of a graph.
Look at this graph
which uses the same data but with axis rescaled 0-100%.
Now the graph looks
relatively flat and indeed one could conclude that the EQ levels across the
seven groups are roughly the same.
The real problem is
that EQ 2.0 is a self reporting test.
And like a sense of humour most of us will report that we are substantially
better than average. In addition you
would expect on a self-reporting test that CEOs would be slightly lower as they
would have be more likely to a more realistic self assessment.
Of course this
result does suffer from an internal self contradiction. One of the key messages of EQ proponents is
that while IQ gets you the job, EQ gets you the promotion. However if the group with the lowest EQ is the
most highly promoted then what is going on?
According to
Bradberry the answer is that for every title in the graph above, the top
performers are those with the highest EQ scores. Even though CEOs have the
lowest EQ scores in the workplace, the best-performing CEOs are those with the
highest EQs. You might get promoted with a low EQ, but you won’t outshine your
high-EQ competition in your new role. No
evidence is presented for this argument but intuitively I would actually agree.
Bradberry then goes
on to say there are five EQ boosting strategies leaders can follow:
1. Acknowledge Other People’s Feelings
2. When You Care, Show It
3. Watch Your Emotions Like A Hawk
4. Sleep
5. Quash Negative Self-Talk
While this are all
good motherhood statements these are not the most useful or practical
strategies.
Emotional
Intelligence is achieving self- and social mastery by being smart with core
emotions.
Self-Mastery
= Awareness + Management (Steps 1 & 2 as defined by Goleman)
Social
Mastery = Empathy + Social Skills (Steps 3 &4 as defined by Goleman
However
the key to emotional intelligence is understanding your core emotions compared
to your transient emotions. Your core
emotions are driven by your temperament – what you are genetically born with. Based on a study of 11,000 identical twins
nature is around twice as important as nurture.
I have found the Humm-Wadsworth model of seven core emotions the most
practical tool for people to use and once understood (takes a day) dramatically
lifts their emotional intelligence.
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