Emotional Intelligence: A Key To High Performance

I’m delighted to share with you matters close to my heart, ideas that I find stimulating, and some practical tips and leads that you might find useful. At the heart, of course, you’ll find emotional intelligence. But my interests also go far beyond; you’ll get a taste of that range here. PLUS news you can put to use in your life or work – or in both.?Please join me each month.

Let's dive in...

First, an announcement...

What does emotional intelligence look like in the post-pandemic era? I recently partnered with?WOBI ?to offer a digital masterclass on?#emotionalintelligence . The session will run in April but you can register now ???https://bit.ly/3pdRzCM

Onward...

What “behavioral muscles” would strengthen your performance?

• Controlling emotions better under stress
• Resisting distractions
• Being a better listener
• Not micromanaging

If you agree with any of these – or all of them – you’re not alone.?

In survey after survey done over the last ten years, these problems are at top of the list.

So says Lee Newman, Dean of the IE Business School in Spain, a highly respected training ground for entrepreneurs.

Recently I did a Q&A session with Lee for a Spanish-speaking audience and he asked them about what they felt needed to be strengthened in their performance. These problems were the most frequent complaints out of about 40 common problems.

When I saw Lee’s list it was clear to me that the solutions to these common troubles all could be found in boosting one or another aspect of emotional intelligence.

Take managing your emotions under stress and resisting distractions. It turns out that pretty much the same brain circuitry handles both these jobs – and the EI competence of emotional balance tells you how.

Being a better listener, of course, is the basis of empathy, another EI competence.? And resisting the urge to micromanage counts as one step to helping those you manage do their very best.

The three steps:

1. Give a clear goal
2. Don’t micromanage: leave the person free to accomplish that goal in their own way
3. Give immediate feedback on how they are doing toward that goal, so they can make any needed midcourse corrections.

For more detail on the EI competencies, I recommend the Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence, ? a set of primers on each of them.

And now...

Two new episodes of First Person Plural on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

S2E11 Beauty In Diversity Pt 1 w/ Modupe Akinola

In our first episode on DEI, I speak with Modupe Akinola , Associate Professor of Management and Director of the Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. Professor Akinola shares some of the research on workforce diversity and the biases that affect the recruitment and retention of women and people of color in organizations.

S2E12 Workplace 4ALL | The Great Place To Work Institute

To continue the conversation, co-host Elizabeth Solomon with two folks from the Great Place to Work Institute —the consultancy and research institute behind Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work. Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Tony Bond , and their Head of Data Science and Innovation, Marcus Erb , shed light on the connection between what they call 4ALL culture and companies that are more innovative, creative, and are more likely to thrive during economic recessions.

Next up...

Corrections

Emotional intelligence means you take advantage of people by manipulating their emotions.? Wrong!

This misunderstanding crops up from time to time, sometimes as an accusation in a critique. The most damaging version of this says emotional intelligence leads to the “Dark Triad” – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.

That idea was laid to rest in a massive research effort by a team of psychologists who did a meta-analysis that includes every relevant finding on the question.? The team identified 52 separate studies, and here’s what they found:

• There’s a negative relationship between emotional intelligence and Machiavellianism. People high in emotional intelligence do not manipulate others for their own ends.
• There’s also a negative relationship between emotional intelligence and psychopathy. Being emotionally intelligence means you will not induce people to do things that harm them, having no remorse.
• There is no relationship at all between emotional intelligence and narcissism. If you’re emotionally intelligent you will not aggrandize yourself at someone else’s expense.

Among the ingredients of emotional intelligence that deter folks from these toxic behaviors the researchers cite findings that this “people skill” set makes a person more likely to be prosocial – for instance, helping others out as needed –managing their emotions so they stay positive and allay disputes, as well having more effective relationships, influencing people in positive ways.

The deterrent I see as most powerful here: empathic concern, caring about the welfare of other people.

And this, just in...

Richard Hua Named AWS’s?Worldwide?Head of EPIC?Leadership

Rich Hua has been featured in this newsletter’s videos several times as Amazon Web Services’ dedicated “emotional intelligence evangelist”.?Now Rich is taking on a new role as?AWS’s?Worldwide?Head of EPIC?Leadership—where EPIC stands for?Empathy, Purpose, Inspiration and Connection. This initiative will help train Amazon’s leaders in emotional intelligence and interpersonal dynamics.

I see this recognition of Rich and the import of his contribution as a sign of a larger movement in companies – in fact, organizations of all kinds – that recognizes the skill set of emotional intelligence (EI) as vital to leadership.

And because EI has been around for a while, the names used to indicate these essential abilities have morphed. But the underlying abilities remain the same.

At Amazon, for instance, this leadership development?is?framed in terms of the company’s leadership principles, particularly “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer,” via a commitment to enhancing emotional intelligence across the company.?Leaders are being taught to build teams with high trust and big vision, grounded in a foundation of psychological safety?and empathy.?This will enable more Amazon employees to feel included, have fun at work, and experience both professional and personal success.

While so many leadership programs are mandated from above, this one grew from the ground up.

The EPIC program has grown out of the initial, large-scale success of the Emotional Intelligence Initiative founded by Rich, which has formed an internal community of 30,000 Amazonians and trained over 100,000 people in emotional intelligence. Along with Rich, the EI initiative is driven by a passionate team of hundreds of volunteer EI Champions who have spearheaded projects across Amazon and benefited countless colleagues globally.

I look forward to seeing the positive impact a global employer can make—on their employees and their customers—by integrating EI into the fabric of their organizational culture.

As you may have been reading, there’s much work to do. To find out more about Rich’s work with EI, visit his website . You can also watch our regularly updated interviews with Rich here .

To close...

Integrating EI into company culture can produce measurable results, including increased growth and lower employee attrition. Adapting successfully to unexpected challenges - such as those created by Covid19 - is one example of this type of positive, EI-based outcome. Watch as Dr. Matthew Lippincott and I discuss more tangible results with OneLogin CEO Brad Brooks , and CHRO Courtney Harrision : OneLogin - EI as a Catalyst For Measurable Results .