Visit Our Store March 1, 2010
In This Issue:
The Biggest Blind Spot in Almost Every Organization
Who Needs Emotional Intelligence, Anyway?
Emotional Intelligence Skills on the Job
Situation Room
Author Interview: Dr. Jon Warner
Words of Wisdom
“We rely on emotional input in order to make decisions and prioritize information. Emotion is what non-verbal communication is made of and therefore, if we ignore the emotion, we also ignore more than 90% of human communication.” ~Daniel Bjerknes
The Biggest Blind Spot in Almost Every Organization
We have spent over 30 years working with organizations to help them develop the core skills that elicit the best performance and increased personal effectiveness from their employees. We have helped thousands of people become more accountable, productive and engaged in their workplace.
Here is an easy-to-understand infographic to help you utilize your human capital.
Get inspired by the latest EDSI videocasts!
Stop by our webstore for a complete library of employee development and leadership resources.
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Regards,
The EDSI Team
Who Needs Emotional Intelligence, Anyway?
“Emotional Intelligence or EQ is not a simple repackaging of the “soft skills” we so often hear about in business. It is based on research. Good managers have known for years that communicating effectively, treating people well, and modeling appropriate behavior themselves makes good business sense.” ~Emily Sterrett, Ph D
Research shows that 85% of successful managers also have well-developed emotional intelligence skills, so it follows that we could ALL benefit from becoming more aware of our own emotional intelligence skills and the emotional intelligence characteristics of those around us! The term “Emotional Intelligence” refers to the personal-management and social skills that allow us to succeed in our interactions with other people, and include the ability to understand and control emotions, and recognize and respond to those of others.
Honing these critical skills could increase your ability to:
- manage stress and emotions
- communicate nonverbally
- and resolve conflicts!
Using your emotional intelligence skills on a daily basis will help you accomplish your goals and find greater personal satisfaction in your work. Whether you are managing yourself or thousands of others, consulting your emotional experiences while making decisions will benefit you and those working with and for you.
Moreover, the ability to quickly defuse stress, remain emotionally aware, read nonverbal communication, and hold a steady course in the face of challenges will make your work successful and engaging.
The best part is that emotional intelligence can be developed. Yes, it can grow! So give yourself the gift of developing your own emotional intelligence skills, by downloading the Action Steps here.
Emotional Intelligence Skills on the Job
Research has shown that people with well-developed emotional intelligence have advantages that far outweigh people with high IQ intelligence but are emotionally less astute.
Of course, emotional intelligence is not just being “nice” or giving free reign to feelings. Instead, successful people use their EI to manage feelings both appropriately and effectively so that the common good and goals of the work group can be readily achieved.
There are a number of factors that impact the emotional intelligence of people at work, such as: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills, optimism and conflict management skills.
Consider some things that you need to do as a leader in your organization to get all participants to share information and contribute to good decision-making. Remember that the key can be to understand others, gain political awareness of the emotional currents and power relationships, leverage diversity, and develop others –all emotional intelligence skills.
Now more than ever, employers depend on the emotional intelligence of their staff members. The necessity of team building, collaborative work environments and quick-to-market project development efforts require keen emotional intelligence skills to be successful.
Learn more about what you can do to improve the emotional intelligence of yourself and your team, for increased success throughout your organization!
Situation Room
Employee Roadblocks to New Technology Implementation
Jeff is the Director of Operations for a printing press that was established 30 years ago by his father. Many employees have been with the organization since the beginning. Jeff recently implemented a number of equipment upgrades and process efficiencies on the floor.
Even though all of the changes are the result of careful planning and preparation, they are not being adopted by the employees–especially the long-term ones. Moreover, the error rate has increased and production has actually slowed down. Jeff must inspire employees to embrace the new processes and equipment.
Author Interview: Dr. Jon Warner
Our interview this time is with Dr. Jon Warner, author of the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile.
Jon, you are a very prolific author, and have created a variety of assessments throughout the years, that cover such topics as coaching, leadership, problem solving and decision making, amongst many others. What made you decide to develop the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile?
At the time we developed the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile, other emotional intelligence assessments focused only on EQ competencies (often based on the work of the journalist Daniel Goleman).
We decided to produce our own assessment based on the original research done in the 1960’s and early 2000’s around social intelligence and the later work done mainly in the 1990’s and early 2000’s by psychologists and neuro-scientists. We took a year to gather the research and produce a style-based assessment initially in 2002 which we honed further in live client settings.
What kinds of settings give users the most benefit out of the product?
The Emotional Intelligence Style Profile is appropriate to use in multiple settings, as emotional intelligence is important in so many situations. This includes pre-development, pre-training, appraisal training, appraisal sessions, coaching people, and other settings.
It also is critical ahead of any kind of communication skill or knowledge building as people need to well understand their own style biases before trying to flex to understand the style of other people and to more effectively try to influence them.
Have the ways in which emotional intelligence is viewed (or valued) changed over the years?
EQ is viewed as even more important in leadership development as it was a decade ago. This is because many research studies have shown that EQ is often a major differentiator in an individual’s ability to be successful in thinking about workplace issues and challenges and then managing themselves or others to tackle those challenges. The Emotional Intelligence Style Profile is therefore still very much a great way to open people’s eyes and show them the possibility of “flexing” personal style in order to get better results.
Thank you so much for your time, Jon.
