Develop your Teams Emotional Intelligence at Work

Develop your Teams Emotional Intelligence at WorkDevelop your Teams Emotional Intelligence at WorkDevelop your Teams Emotional Intelligence at Work Fernndez-Aroz, author of Its Not the How or the What but the Who Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014)When training the people around you to do bigger and better things, which competencies matter most? Depending on your circumstances, youll want to place more weight on some of the eight specific hallmarks of great leaders.But, in my experience, it also pays to concentrate more generally on emotional intelligence (EI) either self-management (such as flexibility and adaptability, or emotional self-control) or relationship management (such as influencing others, dealing with conflict, or promoting change).You might think that these soft skills would be harder to teach than hard ones such as calculus or coding. But research from another of my big heroes, Richard Boyatzis, at the Weatherhead Schoo l of Management (WSOM), Case cowboyfilm Reserve University, shows otherwise.Dismayed by studies of MBA programs indicating that students had increased their EI competencies by only 2 percent in the one to two years they were enrolled (compared with an average increase of 4050 percent for all the competencies assessed), Boyatzis set out to change the status quo.In the fall of 1990, Weatherhead implemented a revised MBA course that included1)A course on leadership assessment and development2)A focus on specific EI competencies in selected subjects, such as presentation skills in a marketing course or collaboration in an operations management course3)A dramatic increase in the number of courses requiring field work in companies and group projects and (4) more opportunities to participate in volunteer activities and clubs.The results have been extraordinary full-time MBAs saw their self-management skills improve by 47 percent, and their relationship-management ones by as much as 75 perc ent. Part-time MBAs, who take three to five years to complete their programs, meanwhile saw increases of 67 percent and 40 percent.This last group was assessed two years after graduating, and their level of emotional competence had remained at the new high level, confirming that the positive change was not only impressive but also lasting.How to Cultivate Emotional IntelligenceTo develop the people around you without a formal MBA course, I suggest the following steps1)Make sure they really want to improve and have a strong vision of their desired future. When there is a will, there is a way, but without it, nothing will be achieved.Research on the neuroscience of behavioral change shows that positive emotional attractors focused on ones individual strengths and hopes arouse the parasympathetic nervous system, making us more calm, compassionate, and open to learning.2)Help your people objectively assess their strengths and weaknesses and find the gaps between their real selves and th eir ideal selves. Some form of 360-degree feedback becomes invaluable here.3)Develop a learning agenda or action plan to close those gaps. This must be highly focused and practical. Dont try to change too much at once. Encourage people to work on specific behaviors and set incremental goals.4)Encourage your learners to relentlessly practice their new behaviors so their brains develop a new neural circuitry that makes these better habits feel natural and automatic. This may take three to six months they shouldnt get frustrated.As a leader who wants to be surrounded by the best, you need to get your people inspired about improving themselves, especially when it comes to emotional competencies to understand where they stand and where they fall short of ideal to develop a clever change plan and to persevere in practice.Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted and Adapted from Its Not the How or the What but the Who Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Bes t. Copyright 2014 Claudio Fernndez-Aroz. All rights reserved.Author BioClaudio Fernndez-Aroz is a senior adviser at leading exe3cutive search firm Egon Zehnder and a former member of its global executive committee. He holds an MBA from Stanford and has previously worked for McKinsey Company. He is a global expert on hiring and promotion decisions and leadership development, and a frequent speaker at major business gatherings. His advice has been sought by the CEOs of several if the worlds largest companies and many governments. Fernndez-Aroz is a regular lecturer at Harvard Business School, a frequent contributor to HBR.org, and the author of Great People Decision Why They Matter So Much, Why They are So Hard, and How You can Master Them (2007).