“No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can’t ignore it.”
~Jack Welch
A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation to a group from the Toledo Chamber of Commerce on the link between emotional intelligence (EQ) and our ability to influence others. The audience was lively and engaged and at the end of my presentation, a guy raised his hand with a question. “Why EQ?” he asked. He went on, “I’ve known several business coaches in the past and they’ve never introduced the concept of emotional intelligence or linked it to my business results.”
I can’t explain why his other coaches never mentioned it. Because as a CPA and a 30-year member of a professional service profession, I know that I experienced my greatest ability to influence my clients and achieve results when I successfully navigated their emotions and mine. David Maister, the professional service guru and one of the authors of The Trusted Adviser, said, “if you cannot learn to recognize, process and respond to a client’s emotions, you cannot be an effective advisor.” That made sense to me. But it wasn’t until I decided to shift careers and return for my masters in Organization Development that I really learned the underlying theory of EQ and why it worked. My interest was piqued. And when I fully understood the connection between an individual’s level of EQ and his/her leadership effectiveness and firm business results, I was hooked. Now, helping my clients build their EQ and become more effective advisors and leaders is one of the guiding passions for my coaching practice.
One of my favorite resources on EQ and leadership is Daniel Goleman’s book, Primal Leadership. For me, it combines the results of academic research on emotional intelligence with the science of EQ, including how the brain works to help us learn new skills in the emotional realm. There’s not a drop of “woo woo” in this book and for an executive coach with a background as a CPA, I knew that would be important to build the business case to my coaching client base of executives, CPAs, lawyers and engineers. The book even describes a study that took place in a large ACCOUNTING FIRM. Goleman describes the results:
“Consider an analysis of the partners’ contributions to the profits of a large accounting firm. If the partner had significant strengths in the self-management competencies, he or she added 78% more incremental profit than did partners without those strengths.
Likewise, the added profits for partners with strengths in social skills were 110% greater, and those with strengths in the self-management competencies added a whopping 390% incremental profit– in this case $1,465,000 more per year.”
That really caught my attention.
I know that many people run in the opposite direction when the word EMOTION enters a conversation. But the best leaders – Maister, Goleman and even that tough guy, Welch – don’t. That’s “Why EQ.”
To your success,
Mary
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