Emotional Intelligence is How You Respond to Things That Happen to You
Ted Ma was running late for a conference when his connecting flight boarded, backed away from the gate, and stopped. First they were told it was a mechanical issue and it had been fixed. After 15 minutes they were told the plane had run out of gas. Refueling took another half hour. As they finally taxied toward the runway, the plane stopped again: the mechanical issue hadn't been fixed after all. No one was allowed to use the restroom. Nearly two hours after boarding, passengers were told to get off the plane and walk to a different terminal for a different plane.
"The anger was boiling inside of me," Ma says. "But the truth is, even when we're not in control of a situation, we are in control of our reactions to it."
Emotional intelligence is how you respond to what happens to you. According to Ma it's the single biggest thing that separates leaders who succeed from leaders who don't. A CareerBuilder survey backs him up: 71% of employers say they value emotional intelligence over IQ. TalentSmart puts EI's influence on job success at 58% no matter what your role.
We recognize when emotional intelligence is missing: a manager who says "just get the job done," a coworker who keeps talking while you check your watch. Emotional intelligence isn't necessarily a strong suit for managers any more than anyone else. People get promoted on technical skills all the time, but the skills that got them promoted aren't always the skills that make them a great leader. Fortunately, emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed.
Emotional intelligence has four components, but two of them are most relevant for leaders: self-actualization and interpersonal relationships.
Self-Actualization: The Drive to Get Better
Self-actualization is your commitment to grow: the ability to see your own potential and actually work toward it. Ma points to Gurpreet Singh, a member of the Southern California Sikh community, as an example of what this looks like when it's aimed at something bigger than yourself. Early in the pandemic, Singh and a group of local leaders watched their community lose jobs and struggle to put food on the table. They set a goal: feed the people who needed it, and the healthcare workers on the front lines. They asked cooks and restaurant owners to volunteer, asked for donations, and started serving meals from a drive-through outside their local temple. They started by serving 175 meals a day starting at 6 a.m. A month later they were serving 1,300 meals a day, plus giving away free groceries on weekends, and the line to the drive-through stretched over a mile. "We serve seven days a week because there are no days off for hunger," Singh told a reporter.
This example shows self-actualization at its best. But like any strength, demonstrating too much self-actualization can turn into a liability. Ma compares it to driving with your high beams on all the time: useful when driving on dark stretches, blinding to everyone else on the road if you don't adjust them as needed. Leaders with too much self-actualization can come across as dominating, oblivious to what others need and unwilling to get involved in anything that doesn't personally interest them. Their work-life balance suffers because their entire sense of worth gets tied to whatever they produce.
How to course-correct: if you feel you may be too driven by self-actualization, ask someone you trust how you could make more room for other people's goals. Then find one shared goal you can work toward with somebody else and channel your energy into making sure your partner's needs and goals are met as well as your own.
Too little self-actualization, on the other hand, shows up as low confidence, no real ambition, and a habit of waiting on someone else to hand them a sense of direction.
How to course-correct: write down some actual goals, short-term and long-term, with real timelines attached. Then take on one stretch project, something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, and see it through to completion.
Interpersonal Relationships: Building Trust
The EI element interpersonal relationships relates to the ability to build trust and display vulnerability.
Ma talks about working for a sales director who created a toxic culture: he played favorites, badmouthed people behind their backs, took credit for other people's work, and pitted managers against each other. Ma knew that if that toxicity reached his own team it would wreck both morale and performance. So he made it his job to insulate them from it. He made a habit of recognizing people publicly for their wins and investing in their growth, and he kept communication open. As a result, his team was consistently ranked in the top 1% of the entire company. "It was the interpersonal relationships that made the difference," he says, "and this required intentional effort."
Too much focus on interpersonal relationships shows up as blurred boundaries. People overshare, they expect too much of coworkers' time and attention, and the actual work slows down.
How to course-correct: if you tend to invest too much in interpersonal relationships, set an actual end time to your workday and hold to it. Hand off a task you'd normally keep for yourself and practice saying no without over-explaining it.
Too little attention to interpersonal relationships shows up as isolation. People come across as unfriendly and hard to know and that erodes trust over time.
How to course-correct: start with one person who could use help or a favor done and give them support. When they have from you what they need, move to somebody else. Also remembering a birthday or an anniversary counts for more than people expect, and so does giving a specific and timely compliment.
Scales not Test Scores
Both the Self-Actualization and Interpersonal Relationships elements of emotional intelligence exist on a scale and you can have too much or too little of either. For each, look at where you sit right now on the scale and one thing you can adjust to move closer to the optimal center. Pick a person who challenges your emotional reactions: a difficult relative, a driver who cut you off, the hold music at customer service. Then pay attention to how you respond the next time it happens. By paying attention to your own reaction, and adjusting it, you develop and strengthen your emotional intelligence quotient.