OsCar Systems Coaching

What on earth is Emotional Intelligence? - Why is it important to you?
1. About
If your business, or a business you know, would benefit from an improvement in performance, I suggest you grab a coffee and read on.

Did you know that workers with higher levels of Emotional Intelligence (EI) have shown to be better workers than workers that have higher IQ's but with lower levels of emotional intelligence?

Understanding, building and improving the Emotional Intelligence of everyone in your organisation will not only provide a working environment that will attract and retain the best people, but will deliver hard, bottom line improvements to your business.

2. Intelligence - there are two types, not just one!
For decades now researchers have known that there are two types of intelligence - intellectual and emotional.

To most of us the most familiar is intellectual - academic intelligence measured by IQ representing cognitive capabilities.

Emotional Intelligence refers to the capacity to recognise our feelings and those of others. We need this so that we can motivate and manage emotions in ourselves and importantly, our relationships with others.

Our Emotional Intelligence has the following fundamental components:

We have the perception of emotions in ourselves and others identifying emotional experience and emotional information through facial expressions, voice, music, design and other stimuli.
We have an ability to manage our emotions and regulate our own emotional experience and interpersonal relations to achieve our goals and adapt to outcomes.
We have an understanding of emotions including the appreciation of emotional dynamics and the blend of emotions affecting thinking and behaviour.

Scientific studies have shown that Cognitive Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence use two different parts of the brain. Cognitive intelligence uses the more recently evolved top of the brain.

Emotional intelligence uses the lower part of the brain. Not surprisingly, people will have varying degrees of cognitive and emotional intelligence.

This is important to business because findings from studies over the past few decades suggest that emotionally intelligent people are better performers than their counterparts!

3. So why is it important to your business?
Academic or IQ is extremely important, if you employ scientists, they probably needed an IQ of 120 or so simply to get the job. But to progress, it is more important to be able to persist in the face of difficulty and to get along well with colleagues and subordinates than it is to have extra points of IQ. The same is true in most other occupations.

We all take for granted that there is a base set of intellectual abilities and technical know-how to do our jobs. The more important capabilities - those that allow some people to outperform others - are those that allow us to show initiative, adaptability, empathy and persuasiveness.

Many business people are traditionally sceptical of investing in developing these types of 'soft skills' and quite often, even their value in business. Typical misconceptions people have had about Emotional Intelligence include:

These skills are about being soft or ineffectual - not true.

At times confrontation with something uncomfortable is required but with a developed EI, it can be achieved in a way that is productive through building trust, showing empathy and establishing the root causes of the issue.

EI means allowing free rein to our feelings and allowing these feeling to dictate our business actions and responses - not true.

EI is about making sure the expression of emotions is appropriate so that people can work together in an effective manner to achieve common goals. Following development of EI in the workplace, these behaviours deliver needed results and create the environment to get the best out of each person.

You should be aware; Emotional Intelligence isn't a passing fad or the management idea of today. The data for taking this seriously is based on dozens of studies, of tens of thousands of workers, in countries across the world, in jobs of all kinds.

General findings from studies include:

Those jobs of medium complexity (sales admin, mechanics), a top performer is 12 times more productive than those at the bottom and 85 percent more productive than an average performer.
More complex jobs (insurance sales, account managers), a top performer is 127 percent more productive than an average performer.

Research suggests that about one-third of this difference is due to technical skill and cognitive ability while two-thirds is due to emotional competence. (However, in top leadership positions, over 80% of the difference is due to EI.)

Those competencies that distinguished most powerfully were Achievement Drive, Developing Others, Adaptability, Influence, Self-Confidence, and Leadership. Whilst the only cognitive competence that distinguished as strongly was Analytical Thinking.
Evidence suggests that an emotionally intelligent leader is the key to creating a working climate that nurtures employees and encourages them to give their best. That enthusiasm, in turn, pays off in improved business performance.
From the opposite perspective, research has found that the primary causes of poor performance in executives involve deficits in emotional competence. The three primary competencies are; difficulties in handling change, not being able to work well as part of a team, and poor interpersonal relations.

4. For the non believers
While general findings are all well and good, the sceptics need hard, measurable data. Over the last decade or so, studies conducted independently and by companies themselves have come up with 'hard' measurements of the effect of emotional intelligence on companies. These findings include:

With Supervisors in a manufacturing plant who had received coaching in emotional competencies, lost-time accidents were reduced by 50 percent, formal grievances were reduced from an average of 15 per year to 3 per year, and the plant exceeded productivity goals by £150,000.
Partners in a consulting firm were assessed on EI competencies. Those who scored well delivered £750,000 more profit from their accounts than did other partners - a 139% gain.
For every 1 percent improvement in the workplace environment of an organisation, there is a 2% increase in revenue.
Executives coached on emotional competence were far more likely to perform in the top third based on performance of their team: 87% were in the top third and outperformed their targets by 15% to 20%.
Sales agents who were weak in emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, and empathy sold insurance policies with an average premium of £34,000. Those who were very strong sold policies worth £71,000 - more than double.
In another manufacturing plant where supervisors received similar coaching, production increased 17 percent. There was no such increase in production for a group of matched supervisors who were not trained.

As EI is so important to superior performance in the workplace, is it something that people are born with or can competencies be developed through coaching?

5. Developing Emotional Intelligence in your people.
Our Emotional intelligence is not set genetically, nor does it develop only in early childhood. Unlike IQ, which changes little after our youth, emotional intelligence is mainly learned.

While research has shown that it is possible to improve the emotional competencies of your people, the typical approach used in corporate training programmes is flawed. Emotional learning is different than cognitive learning and therefore requires a different approach.

Problems in Emotional intelligence usually result from habits deeply learned at an early stage. As people acquire their life habits of thought, feeling, and action, the brain activity that act on these are strengthened, becoming dominant routes for nerve impulses, whilst those routes in the brain that are less used become weaker. This basic circuitry becomes the brain's default option at any moment - resulting in actions performed automatically and spontaneously. Thus, to remedy the situation old habits must be overcome and replaced with a new habit through coaching.

This is why traditional approaches to training cannot be utilised to any great effect, although a great deal of money is spent on training much of it does not produce the benefits and return on investment planned. In fact, many trainers now recognise that through coaching as a pre-cursor to training, far higher rewards are achieved.

As with all coaching, Emotional learning is a process not an event - the failure to recognise this greatly lessens the chance that the time, money and efforts put into building staff development will be successful.

6. And so, finally
What organisations that have 'seen the light' need to understand is that emotional learning is not cognitive learning - it is changing habits, not fitting new data into old frameworks.

Organisations need to partner with a provider like OsCar, that specialises in emotional learning and incorporates the required differences into the ways in which they provide their services.

Emotional Learning takes longer than cognitive learning, but if planned for, executed and supported - emotional learning will produce solid, tangible results for the individual and for the organisation. It is now a proven recipe to success and you can benefit, just pick up the phone or drop us a line.

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Your people need emotional intelligence! Why?

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