It was Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” who sparked the first significant conversations about emotional intelligence in 1995. Perhaps he was on to something.
Recently, Microsoft’s new Work Trend Index report, a global survey of 31,000 people, revealed that approximately 300 million future jobs will be impacted by artificial intelligence in some way. This means a new way of working, where AI and humans work side by side.
Additionally, according to the report, a global survey of leaders highlights three skills as the new core competencies: Analytical reasoning, flexibility and EQ.
The future of work
COVID-19 was a principal catalyst in changing the world of work as we knew it. For example, both the international public health crisis, and its subsequent uncertainty caused many businesses to begin requiring employees to work from home. We’ve learned, as a result, that many employees love working from home. Many employers also love having people work from home too, as this can provide significant cost savings.
Of course, some work is better suited for in-person situations, like conducting research in a lab or building a house. There is a lot of new information to consider as business leaders contemplate what to consider in creating workplace environments to facilitate the best possible results, married with the highest levels of employee satisfaction.
As the public health crisis finally wanes, we are now finding ourselves permanently in the era of the hybrid workplace, where in some instances people work from home and others are back in the office — while others do a combination. Working conditions are both better and different.
Additionally, there are emerging technologies that are driving the next key phases of the work environment. One can’t help but notice the abundance of emerging new technologies, such as next-generation AI. These technologies are facilitating all kinds of changes that will better serve customers and support businesses to save both time to solution and cost.
One key resultant of the changes driven by a health care crisis and emerging revolutionary technologies is the need for increased collaboration. More people must work more often with others who have different skill sets, different orientations and different kinds of domain expertise to get the work done. This is especially critical in the partnership between the tech folks and the business people and their need to work better together to serve their customers.
The significance of EQ
Business process improvement has been key for the last 40 years, leading to significant cost cutting and increasing speed and efficiency (examples include Six Sigma, Lean and Agile).
However, one opportunity for business improvement that has not been explored as deeply is to examine all the costs (of both time and money) accrued to businesses from miscommunication, misunderstandings, unnecessary conflicts and language barriers, in the event your workforce is spread across different regions
Many tools and approaches have been tried over time to help enhance more effective communication. In our experience, the development of EQ is the key to improvements that are instrumental in reducing business conflicts and misunderstandings.
A story
Toward the end of 2020, we were contacted by a former client, Jeff. We had worked together several times before, but he was faced with a new challenge: He’d been asked to make a start-up that his health care company had acquired more profitable. He needed to create clear goals, establish structure and identify and adopt new technologies. He also needed help getting the team to reach peak performance, and asked whether we had any new tools for high-performing teams. We said, “Yes Jeff, we do.”
Jeff needed help building and leading the newly acquired organization into the right culture. We showed him the basics from “The Culture Code” and, more importantly, the operating system from positive intelligence, or PQ. PQ, in our experience, is the best approach in building true, sustainable EQ. Together, these two tools provided the basis for our work together.
We started our work with Jeff and his core team of 15. Over the next year, we took about 60 members of the team through a six-week-long boot camp and follow-up training. The challenge was simple, but not easy: Make this newly acquired corporate asset, the startup organization, profitable and get the team working well together to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.
Below are some highlights from this challenge:
- The right leadership was selected to drive the business by Jeff and his team, and established the first set of essential business-building tasks — creating structure and identifying important measurement and metrics, roles and responsibilities, etc. Individuals who were not performing or did not fit with the rest of the team either left or were asked to leave.
- The second deliverable was articulating the core values of the parent company while also acting from specific values that Jeff knew to be important to his leadership — active participation, engagement of employees down through all layers of the organization to ensure motivation and a culture of psychological safety.
- The next step was launching the PQ training. The PQ training was offered to three layers of management to foster the opportunity for engagement and psychological safety across the organization. This approach was designed so that ideas could be more easily heard and openly considered. The team brought the increased emotional intelligence skills to their daily work endeavors.
- The team exceeded the deliverables they had promised for 2022.
- The team presented their plan for 2023 to the CEO. At the end of the three days of meetings, the CEO agreed to the increased funding they had requested to grow the business based on performance to date and a clear plan for growing the business.
This process worked because the PQ design is built like an operating system, where the core components must all work together to produce sustainable results. It helps the client identify how some of their specific negative or judgmental thought processes limit them, it provides a core set of activities that shift brain activity to a different and more composed, centered part of the brain and finally, provides another set of tools to shift a leader’s attention to what they might do that is constructive and an opportunity for improvement despite the magnitude of the challenge.
Lessons learned
Participants are asked to invest significant time and energy in doing this work, so expect some bumps on the road. Not all participants will love the PQ work at first. Team members need to keep doing the necessary hard work and learning.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the PQ approach only works because it is designed as an operating system with three core components. Clients need to be supported so they can practice the approach regularly and consistently
Dr. Anders Ericsson did the first formative research on deliberate practice and why you need to engage in deliberate practice to improve in a sustainable way. To get the desired results from PQ, you need to engage in deliberate practice and work hard to change core behaviors and habits. When you do, you will build your ability to develop sustainable EQ.
Next steps
We must accept that the future of work is here, and that the hybrid workplace is here to stay. It is, admittedly, more efficient and effective to have some people working from home and some from the office. We know that business effectiveness and efficiency drive results. Leaders need to be able to manage a hybrid workforce, and know how to connect with diverse team members in a variety of circumstances. High-quality leaders know this requires sustainable EQ.
Once you determine the work and tasks needed to be done in your organization, your next step is to assess what capabilities are needed and identify your talents’ gaps. Either develop or hire the people to fill the gaps. Get the team working together.
Next, identify leaders, with the essential qualities listed below, who will support the team and who will effectively display sustainable EQ. These leaders can be either high potentials who display the characteristics below or new hires from the outside.
Finally, initiate the PQ development process to augment more robust EQ in your organization.Explicitly link the PQ work to business deliverables, and assess, test and evaluate.
Appendix
Essential qualities for high-impact senior leaders
Most successful senior leaders have the following skills and qualities.
- They have Executive Presence which is the ability to speak with others using your tone of voice, energy, and words, focusing on your diction, to communicate well to a variety of stakeholders.
- They can look forward, see possibilities, and tell a story about what they see that makes other curious and want to participate.
- They understand and know that they must consistently work at developing themselves and others. The business world is dynamic so you must grow to stay ahead.
- They possess the ability to discern in two distinct areas. They make good business choices- what do we invest in, do we build or buy etc., and they make good choices about talent. They can see who has the potential to develop the needed skills that the organization will need not only today but tomorrow.
- They have the ability and curiosity to learn and grow. The market changes, the customers change, the technology improves, and they adjust their thinking and actions to succeed in the emerging marketplace.
- They facilitate and encourage strategic thinking and innovation to create momentum and growth.
- They think about the impact of their decisions on their customers and teams. Decisions have consequences and people respond emotionally to decisions.
