HR TECH OUTLOOK8 OCTOBER 2019In MyOpinionLET'S GET EMOTIONALSandra Arnold, Head of Learning and Development, GroupMByIf you regularly read leadership articles, you will have seen that there has been, and still is, a great deal of focus on emotional intelligence.Emotional intelligence (or EQ) is the ability to identify, understand, and manage your own emotions and those of the people around you. The concept was first introduced by Daniel Goleman, who published a book on emotional intelligence in 1995, and his work has gone on to influence the way people think about emotions and human behavior.If you are emotionally intelligent, you will have the ability to identify what you are feeling, know how to interpret your emotions, understand how your emotions impact others, regulate your own emotions, and manage other people's emotions. While it is not the sole predictor of leadership success, it is proven that EQ does play a very big part. In fact, research that compared outstanding leaders with average leaders found 90 percent of the difference was accounted for by emotional intelligence.In our leadership workshops, I ask participants to spend five minutes describing the best leader they have ever worked for. The characteristics are captured and posted under either `technical skills' or `soft skills.' Without fail, the `soft skills' section far outweighs the `tech skills' as the best thing about that leader. Of course, we want a leader that is technically competent. However, this shows that we are more likely to respond to, or remember positively a leader that can connect with us emotionally.In LinkedIn's 2018 workplace learning report they note that even though we are in an age of automation and use of technology is accelerating, the number one priority for talent development is soft skills--an area that AI cannot replace.Despite its advantages, there is still evidence that many business leaders see EQ as `airy fairy' and `too emotional' and they stick to the old school `control and command' leadership style--indeed, even many of our current world leaders are very obviously lacking in emotional intelligence. A Gallup study found that employees who had leaders with a high EQ were four times less likely to leave than
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