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Emotional intelligence concerns social intelligence and our ability to manage our emotions in relation to other people. Not surprisingly, an improved general understanding of emotional intelligence and its application will lead to improved performance. This practical guide will help you to introduce emotional intelligence to your department or organization and ensure that training is in place to improve core EQ competencies.
You may already be aware of ways of fostering better emotional intelligence within your team/organization, but you may feel that your colleagues are unaware of its importance and benefits.
When to Use This Guide
Signs that your organization or team would benefit from an EQ strategy may include some or all of the following:
- There has been no previous EQ education program and you feel that employees or team members are unaware of its importance and benefits.
- You have received feedback, perhaps from an employee opinion survey, that organizational values are not being practiced consistently across your organization or within your team.
- Confrontational situations have been occurring more often in the workplace, which you feel could have been avoided with better awareness of self and others.
- New sales or repeat business statistics are not matching your expectations. They may even be in decline.
- Certain employees or team members seem to lack self-confidence and are unaware of their strengths and weaknesses.
- You have received complaints or negative feedback from customers, clients or other stakeholders regarding your employees' performance.
- Staff turnover is increasing, with many existing employees showing signs of job dissatisfaction.
- Your performance management system focuses heavily on what is to be achieved with little direction on how it is to be achieved.
- Work relationships between employees are at an all-time low, which is subsequently affecting morale.
Suggestions
The following guide sets out a number of suggestions that, when combined, will result in a highly effective approach to introducing emotional intelligence and encouraging behavioral change throughout your organization or within your team. You may already have some ideas of your own, in which case the following suggestions can be used to supplement your existing plans.
1. Identify the Problem
The first step in approaching your EQ strategy is to identify specific problem areas and to be clear about what you want to achieve. This may include:
- increased sales
- more effective teamwork and collaboration – for example, an increase in positive feedback in employee surveys
- development of more effective leaders
- better client management
- increased loyalty, commitment and satisfaction - from customers and from employees
- reduced staff turnover
Suggested Action: identify specific competencies that need improvement, using a tool such as the BarOn EQ-i® and ensure that identified competencies are ones that it is possible to improve on. [1]
2. Assess Readiness
The second step is to find out whether your organization is ready for EQ.
Suggested Actions:
- Carry out an audit exercise, either with individuals, your team or perhaps with focus groups or representatives from the wider organization, to assess the level of awareness of EQ throughout the organization.
- Approach top management to assess what plans are already in place in your organization with regards to EQ, before implementing any initiative.
3. Ensure Organizational Buy-In
The next step is to ensure that you have buy-in from the highest level for your plans.
Suggested Actions:
- Highlight the business case for EQ to senior management to ensure top-level buy-in by stressing the advantages and benefits an EQ strategy can bring, such as reduced levels of conflict, improved customer service etc. You could also highlight what other organizations are doing and the benefits they have seen.
- Foster a supporting culture throughout the organization by educating employees as to the benefits of emotional intelligence.
- Encourage employees and managers to take responsibility for their own personal development.
4. Create a Plan of Action
Now you are ready to develop an action plan in order to implement your EQ strategy
Suggested Actions:
- Launch an EQ education program across the board by giving a presentation to employees explaining and highlighting the importance of EQ.
- Train employees on EQ - this could be undertaken through a variety of approaches. Mentoring could be a particularly effective approach for improving individual competencies and encouraging behavioral change. EQ workshops would also be an effective approach to introducing the theory and practicalities of EQ.
- Use a tool to score emotional intelligence (e.g. BarOn EQ-i®) to ensure that you are recruiting emotionally intelligent employees. This tool could also be used with existing ‘role model’ employees to identify a suitable EQ profile for existing posts which can then be used to ensure that new recruits fit this profile.
5. Evaluate
The final stage is to evaluate and monitor the success of your strategy. How will you know that it has worked or whether there is room for improvement?
Suggested Actions:
- Incorporate core EQ competencies into performance review meetings and personal development plans.
- Ensure that sufficient feedback is gathered either post-training or by means of an organizational survey, to see if any impact has been made by your program.
- You could re-distribute the individual and team audits to see if scores have improved.
- Monitor and evaluate the business objectives identified in step one. Remember to do this on a regular basis to ensure consistent success of your EQ strategy over time.
