The competitive advantage of Emotional Intelligence

Why is Emotional Intelligence important to your business, isn’t it just ‘being nice’, or ‘a nice to have’? We would argue that it is a business imperative!

In 2019 Harvard Business Review published a paper ‘The EI Advantage’ which demonstrated that Emotional intelligence (abbreviated as EI or EQ) is increasingly and urgently recognized as a competitive advantage for leaders and companies that want to cultivate a purpose-driven, empowered, and innovative workforce for the future.

• Emotionally intelligent employees are a critical force driving innovation, collaboration and enhanced customer experiences that come from a strong culture of empowerment;
• Employees are becoming more discerning about who they choose to work for and what the work environment is like. The combination of self-awareness, self-control, empathy and social skills, the bedrock of EQ, allows us to create cultures and environments where people feel comfortable to innovate and solve problems together;
• There is an Innovation Premium associated with developing EQ – Harvard researchers found that Organisations where leaders and their teams have developed their EQ, are more likely than others to have cultural ingredients that spur innovation—high degrees of empowerment, clear decision rights, the right incentives, and tolerance for risk;
• Finally, working in a high EQ environment helps create a culture of psychological safety which drives experimentation without blame or fear of mistakes.

EQ is not just something you have or don’t have. It is also not just one thing but is made up of a multitude of facets, some of which you may be more adept at than others.  EQ is also measurable, using 360 feedback or high quality EQ assessment tools, and is developable particularly when supported through effective EQ coaching.

40 years of Neuroscience research on brain plasticity confirms our lifelong capacity to develop new ways of thinking and behaving. Our minds are not fixed. The traits that constitute EQ are developable with deliberate practice and coaching.

With many leaders that we coach we use an EQi assessment to help them identify areas of their Emotional Intelligence that they would like to develop and then build a coaching plan which supports this development.

Talk to us to discuss how we can help you and your employees to assess and develop EQ and to gain huge personal and business benefits.

I can be contacted at pamela@orgshakers.com

Copyright OrgShakers: The global HR consultancy for workplace transformation founded by David Fairhurst in 2020