News and Publications
Seminars and Services
Government Affairs
About NAMIC
|
|
Read
Emotional Intelligence
Bad Hires Shouldn't Happen
By Ingrid Cummings
We've all worked with this guy. We may even have hired this guy. He's the one whose resume reads like a dream. He has the degree, the experience, the technical skillset. We can't get him on board fast enough.
But, in the real-world give-and-take of working on a team, of reading people's emotions, of mastering self-awareness, this guy just can't cut the mustard. He steals others' ideas; he's sullen and unresponsive; he cuts corners; and seemingly has no awareness that he's a liability to his team.
In a corporate climate that often embraces the hot new business theory du jour, emotional intelligence has stood the test of time. Based on a now-classic 1995 book by Daniel Goleman called "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ," emotional intelligence has found wide and lasting applicability in nearly all settings, particularly business.
And it's this so-called "EQ" - to be distinguished from IQ - that explains why our hypothetical new hire bombed.
When you stop and think about it, we all know smart people who flounder in both their personal and professional lives. And conversely, we all know people of modest IQ who thrive. Clearly, braininess isn't the complete formula for success, no matter how insistent we are about enrolling our children in the finest schools and closely monitoring their grades.
It's fascinating that the real secret to success is seldom, if ever, taught in schools. That secret is mastery of emotional intelligence, defined as a constellation of character traits that includes self-awareness, impulse control, persistence, zeal, self-motivation, empathy, and social deftness.
Bad hires shouldn't happen to good people.
Sue McNab is the chief human resources officer at PEMCO, a financial services firm in Seattle, Washington. She has recently spearheaded a company-wide "competency model" using emotional intelligence as its foundation. "It took about two months to drill down to nine core competencies. I listened to my CEO and invited all the executives to come in and adjust our list and change it as they saw appropriate." The resulting list includes tenets such as "gets results," "is customer focused," and "is personally responsible."
In a company of roughly 1,000 employees, "it's important that these items are much more than just words on paper," she says. "We actually use this language during interviews with candidates.
We ask questions that get to their level of EQ." For instance, McNab cites "collaboration" as a key component of PEMCO's operating environment. So, one interview question will inevitably focus on how collaborative potential employees perceive themselves to be. "If you're a rocket scientist who wants to sit in a corner and not talk to anybody," McNab says, "this place isn't going to be a very good fit for you."
She also mentions PEMCO's "model of citizenship," in which employees are encouraged to give back to the community. "We strongly encourage employees to use volunteer opportunities as a way to grow. This means that the activity must represent a stretch. If you've never before helped build a house with Habitat for Humanity, that counts. If you've never tutored an inner-city kid before, that counts.
"We give every employee one day off every year to participate in just this type of civic engagement," she explains. "It costs us $400,000 annually. But it's the right thing to do, and it helps develop one of the important components of emotional intelligence - empathy - in our workforce."
How have employees reacted to PEMCO's emphasis on emotional intelligence? "At first, they said, 'what are you talking about?' But then you ask them, 'have you ever worked with someone who's technically proficient, but is a pain in the neck, socially inept?' Everyone can relate to that. So, yes, they've responded very well to EQ in our workplace."
The trick, McNab says, is to create an environment where these traits are valued. "This isn't about hard-wiring in the DNA. There are always going to be people who don't get it, but interviewing and attrition screen those people out."
EQ transcends business fads, McNab adds. "Don't set it up as 'the mantra of the week.' If you spend energy incorporating a paradigm into your workplace, it has to be a sustainable thing. We can be technically proficient, but without EQ, it all falls flat," she says. Simply put, "EQ is how we will succeed in the future."
Another perspective on EQ
From clear across the country, in Maine, comes another take on the importance of EQ. Lynn Lombard works as vice president of human resources for MMG Insurance Company in Presque Isle, Maine.
"We empower our managers to do their own hiring here," she says. "We in HR are charged with streamlining that process; providing them with packets of pertinent information; ensuring consistency in the process; complying with the law; managing the job postings."
Regardless of the hire, though, Lombard counsels hiring managers to seek out evidence of emotional intelligence in the candidate. "We're looking for an awareness of their own emotions as well as a sensitivity to others' emotional responses."
Lombard mentions an article she's recently read about the hiring at Internet monolith Google, a company that can presumably take its pick of the best and brightest. "They are now factoring in EQ in their hiring decisions," she recalls. This seems to be a tacit admission that product development virtually always happens in groups, whether you're developing web-based search engines or cutting-edge insurance products.
In particular, Lombard says, "We want employees who are curious; who can communicate; who can be committed to our mission; who can be decisive; who can problem-solve." These commendable traits may or may not be linked to a dazzlingly high IQ. But, since IQ is much more easily quantifiable than the more nebulous EQ, businesses have defaulted to IQ (in the form of degrees, certifications, etc.) as the touchstone of employee desirability. This maddening inability to make EQ empirical is, in fact, its chief liability.
"You can bring a person on board with all kinds of wonderful technical expertise," says Lombard. "But it doesn't mean it will translate to managing people. So we've been looking at creating a dual career track." Lombard is referring to a new and quite evolved twist in human resources: one career track for those possessing great technical expertise; another one for those with outstanding people skills. This differentiation implies that maybe, in fact, there's room for all of us in the corporate world, not just those with superior social prowess. "We decided to develop our dual career track because you want to fairly compensate and acknowledge people who have this awesome technical ability," Lombard says. "But you need to also have managers and supervisors with strong EQ to motivate and problem solve."
Their method is clearly working. MMG in 10 years has gone from a $50 million company to a $110 million enterprise. EQ, for MMG, goes well beyond hiring.
"It extends to our independent agents all the way to policyholders and claimants and into customer service," she says. "There's no place EQ doesn't have its tentacles."
Unfortunately, "what we cannot quantify, we have devalued in the past," observes Lombard. "We can train technical skills fairly easily but," she concedes, "it's much harder to train work ethic."
Yet, not impossible. It's been said that companies hire on hard skills and fire on soft skills - a statement that can ring true in so many cases. But, given that EQ remains at least somewhat malleable over a lifetime, corporate trainers and coaches can be optimistic about the ability to affect change. And that's why we see ongoing efforts to instill in employees soft skills, including the art of giving useful feedback; providing motivating leadership; dealing with diversity; and conducting crisp meetings.
Goleman, the author of the seminal book on EQ, writes that "As knowledge-based services and intellectual capital become more central to corporations, improving the way people work together will be a major way to leverage intellectual capital, making a critical competitive difference. To thrive, if not survive, corporations would do well to boost their collective emotional intelligence."
It's interesting, in fact, how much EQ resembles that old-fashioned word that has fallen out of fashion these days: character. Lombard says, "Listening, building rapport, being tactful and diplomatic, seeking feedback, seeking contrary views; when you think about achieving lasting results, EQ is the master skill." N
Ingrid Cummings is an Indiana-based freelance writer, teacher, public relations and communications consultant, radio and TV broadcaster, and founder of Rubicon Communications, LLC.
PEMCO's nine core competencies based on principles of emotional intelligence
- Customer and relationship focused
- Demonstrates ethical conduct and integrity
- Problem-solves, thinks critically, and is nimble
- Self-directed, confident, and personally responsible
- Gets results
- Continually develops
- Collaborative and empowering
- Citizenship
- Knowledge and skills
For free access to this article and other archived articles at NAMIC Online, you must be a registered user.
Not a registered user of NAMIC Online. Register today it's free.Get access to complete news article archives, and have access to other special reports. Learn about the benefits of becoming a registered user. 
|
insurance | a publication of NAMIC
Receive State-specific Updates
Receive e-mail updates from NAMIC Online regarding the states of most interest to you. You will only receive an e-mail when new stories are posted, and only for those states you select. No new news...no e-mail.
= access available only to registered users from NAMIC-member companies