March 6, 2016
EQ is an Organisation’s Competitive Advantage
Some Organisations and HR Departments love to take the opportunity, particularly during the recruitment process, to tell others how smart everyone is in their Organisation and how they only hire the best and most intelligent people in the marketplace.
I can recall many interviews where the interviewer has told me about the mental agility of the people they hire and how proud they are to say that at their organisation or in their team, “they work at pace”. But very few Leaders of Organisations that I have met have ever mentioned anything about hiring people that have a positive leadership impact on others. Yet the emotional intelligence of a Leader and how they exercise this, has the most significant impact on how people feel about going to work each day, whether they speak positively about the organisation for which they work and how much discretionary effort they give in their roles.
Interestingly, there is a huge body of research that supports the fact that more than often, people don’t leave Organisations, they leave Leaders. Yet still today, most Organisations in their recruitment process only test for mental agility and personality at best, rather than emotional intelligence and leadership impact.
At a time where there is more change, a greater number of restructures and redundancies and more mental health issues than ever before, having strong, empathetic and capable leadership is vital to the success of an Organisation and its people. Yet, for some reason emotional intelligence is still not in practice valued by many Organisations and only paid lip service to at best.
People are still being hired and promoted into people leadership positions for their technical expertise or mental agility. Whilst a certain level of intelligence is absolutely required for success in most roles, it should not be the only or the key factor in all recruitment and promotional activities.
Organisations who want to attract and keep the ‘best’ people in the marketplace need to consider the emotional intelligence and the leadership impact of particularly those with people leadership responsibilities and acknowledge and reward people who are having a positive and engaging impact on others and the culture of the overall Organisation.
