EQ Scores Over IQ in Organizational Assessment

We have heard stories or perhaps even witnessed people who just can’t keep their cool. They may storm through the office, slam a phone down, berate a manager or simply turn things upside down on otherwise a peaceful day. We have seen and particularly our politicos bashing people in public view. This type of behavior is extremely uncomfortable for us to witness, eats away the culture, breaks down trust and is completely unproductive.

What would cause a person to behave that way? It could be anything. The truth is it doesn’t matter why a person behaves in such an explosive way. If the person had a high Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), this behavior wouldn’t be happening regardless of the reason.

Sachin Iyer

Emotional Intelligence – EQ – is a relatively recent behavioural model, rising to prominence with Daniel Goleman’s 1995 Book called ‘Emotional Intelligence’. The early Emotional Intelligence theory was originally developed during the 1970s and 80s by the work and writings of psychologists Howard Gardner (Harvard), Peter Salovey (Yale) and John ‘Jack’ Mayer (New Hampshire). Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to organizational development and developing people, because the EQ principles provide a new way to understand and assess people’s behaviours, management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills, and potential. Emotional Intelligence is an important consideration in human resources planning, job profiling, recruitment interviewing and selection, management development, customer relations and customer service, and more.

Emotional Intelligence links strongly with concepts of love and spirituality: bringing compassion and humanity to work, and also to ‘Multiple Intelligence’ theory which illustrates and measures the range of capabilities people possess, and the fact that everybody has a value.

The EQ concept argues that IQ, or conventional intelligence, is too narrow; that there are wider areas of Emotional Intelligence that dictate and enable how successful we are. Success requires more than IQ (Intelligence Quotient), which has tended to be the traditional measure of intelligence, ignoring essential behavioural and character elements. We’ve all met people who are academically brilliant and yet are socially and inter-personally inept. And we know that despite possessing a high IQ rating, success does not automatically follow.

emotional intelligence – two aspects

This is the essential premise of EQ: to be successful requires the effective awareness, control and management of one’s own emotions, and those of other people. EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:

• Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behaviour and all.
• Understanding others, and their feelings.

emotional intelligence – the five domains

Goleman identified the five ‘domains’ of EQ as:

• Knowing your emotions.
• Managing your own emotions.
• Motivating yourself.
• Recognising and understanding other people’s emotions.
• Managing relationships.

Emotional Intelligence embraces and draws from numerous other branches of behavioural, emotional and communications theories, such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Transactional Analysis, and empathy. By developing our Emotional Intelligence in these areas and the five EQ domains we can become more productive and successful at what we do, and help others to be more productive and successful too. The process and outcomes of Emotional Intelligence development also contain many elements known to reduce stress for individuals and organizations, by decreasing conflict, improving relationships and understanding, and increasing stability, continuity and harmony.

EQ4C is constantly engaged by Companies & Educational Institutes to assess, counsel and train people for professional and personal empowerment.