Issue No. 420 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a WSJ bestseller that says you can improve your emotional intelligence. Buy the book and take the EQ test! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out this website for recent book reviews, including the HBR article, “Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It.”
You Can Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
Really, Pearson? You celebrated 50 years of marriage in 2019 and—just now—you decide to read Emotional Intelligence 2.0? Really?
OK...I confess. But does it count that the book has been on my “to-read-and-review” shelf since 2012? And I do agree—I should have read the book in 2012, not five months ago. Taking the online emotional intelligence test would also have been a good idea years ago! Why now? It keeps popping up on The Wall Street Journal’s business best-seller list (#7 last Saturday).
This will get your attention: “CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.” Authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves add, “Considering the mountain of literature about EQ, you’d think corporate executives would be pretty smart about it.”
By 2009, the authors had already measured EQ in half a million senior executives. Their Harvard Business Review article, “Heartless Bosses,” notes: “For each respondent, we measured self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management, and relationship-management skills to yield a cumulative EQ (or “emotional intelligence quotient”) score on a 100-point scale.”
Their findings: “EQ scores rise as executives climb the ladder, peaking at the manager level, falling off thereafter, and bottoming out, alarmingly, at the CEO level.”
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a fascinating read—and each book includes (like StrengthsFinder 2.0), a passcode for one person to take the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test. (More on my test results below!)
EQ is part of understanding the “whole person,” say the authors. Think a Venn diagram of IQ, EQ, and Personality. “Your IQ…is fixed from birth. You don’t get smarter by learning new facts or information. Intelligence is your ability to learn, and it’s the same at age 15 as it is at age 50.”
“EQ, on the other hand, is a flexible skill that can be learned. While it is true that some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, a high EQ can be developed even if you aren’t born with it.”
The authors define EQ as “your ability to recognize and understand emotions in others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”
So the bad news: you, your spouse, and team members are pretty much stuck with your current IQ.
The good news: “No matter whether people measure high or low in EQ, they can work to improve it, and those who score low can actually catch up to their coworkers.”
More good news:
• “The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary.”
• “EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.” (See also Marshall Goldsmith’s wisdom on blind spots and this: “The higher you go [in your career], the more your problems are behavioral.”)
• “Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we have found that 90 percent of high performers are also high in EQ.”
Like any good book, the authors usually get to the meat and potatoes (and a summary chart) by page 25. (See these page 25 phenomena in my reviews of Nonprofit Sustainability and Stewardship as a Lifestyle.) These co-authors are really good—their chart is on page 24!
EQ includes four skills:
PERSONAL COMPETENCE
• Self-Awareness (what I see)
• Self-Management (what I do)
SOCIAL COMPETENCE
• Social Awareness (what I see)
• Relationship Management (what I do)
“People high in self-awareness are remarkably clear in their understanding of what they do well, what motivates and satisfies them, and which people and situations push their buttons.” (Think triggers.)
“Self-management is what happens when you act—or do not act. It is dependent on your self-awareness and is the second major part of personal competence.” (For example, note their feedback for a regional sales director: “Mei has a hard time congratulating staff for their accomplishments, and it comes across as jealousy.”
“Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them.” (Example: “Maya has an uncanny ability to spot and address the elephant in the room.”)
“Relationship management [which taps into the first three EQ skills] is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully.” (Example: “He knows when to approach an issue sensitively, and knows when to give praise and encouragement.”)
In the chapter, “Get Mad on Purpose,” the authors quote Aristotle:
“Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.”
Chapter 14, “Make Your Feedback Direct and Constructive,” begins with this memory jogger: “Think about the best feedback you’ve ever received.” That was easy for me. I’d been a CEO for 17 years with minimal, if any feedback. Then a colleague, Don Cousins, gifted me with some honest insights that changed my game. I was grateful. And that gave me courage to give more effective feedback to others.
ONLINE RESULTS. After completing the online test in August, I received access to my results in a 16-page “Emotional Intelligence Appraisal” customized report—the first phase of a free customized learning program based on my EQ scores. The promise: “This program will teach you about emotional intelligence…reveal what your current skill levels are, and tell you what you can do to improve.”
The appraisal delivers a score for each of the four skills (“based on a comparison to the general population”) and an overall EQ score.
• 90-100…………..A strength to capitalize on
• 80-89…………….A strength to build on
• 70-79…………….With a little improvement, this could be a strength
• 60-69…………….Something you should work on
• 59 and Below…..A concern you must address
My scores? Let’s just say there’s room for improvement—and the customized report gave me three specific improvement strategies (referencing specific pages in the book), and where I should start. Brilliant and helpful. (Reminder: “EQ…is a flexible skill that can be learned.”)
You’re encouraged to retest again—after working on the customized lessons—and you can also schedule a retest reminder date. Helpful!
I’ve long been a cheerleader for what I call “The 3 Powerful S’s: Strengths, Social Styles, and Spiritual Gifts.” But today I’m updating my PowerPoints to read: “The 4 Powerful S’s,” with the addition of a fourth S (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.). You can teach an old dog new tricks!
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (The World’s Most Popular Emotional Intelligence Test), by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves.
To listen to the 4 hour, 17 minute audio version, visit Libro.fm here. NOTE! the audio version does NOT include access to the online assessment.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) According to the EQ gurus, one self-management strategy is to make your goals public. (A university prof “pays his colleagues $100 anytime he misses a deadline on a research article.”) Name a goal you have that needs to go public.
2) How’s this for counter-intuitive? One of the self-awareness strategies (#5) in EQ is “Don’t Take Notes at Meetings.” One reason: the head-in-tablet syndrome diminishes active listening. What’s your learning style? What’s your listening style?
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Avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to align your reading—and your team’s reading—with complementary books. Avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome,” says Scott Vandeventer.
Thus—one of the factors that caught my eye about Emotional Intelligence 2.0 was that I had already reviewed books by six of the endorsers, including Patrick Lencioni who wrote the foreword. (He urges us to read the book twice!) Other endorsers included Stephen R. Covey, Ken Blanchard, Marshall Goldsmith, Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, and Brian Tracy.
Caution: “Management gimmick-of-the-month whiplash can be fatal!” So drink deeply and discerningly from the Book Bucket. Click here.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And watch for John’s review of the new book by Doug Fields and Jason Pearson, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love.
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