School board, employment centres test' emotional intelligence'

Intelligence is not just fixing bugs and writing code social skills are vital

Researchers say the study of emotional intelligence began with one simple question: "Why do so many smart people do so many stupid things?"

In today's results-driven society, perfecting core job skills may be key, but how employees react to day-to-day situations can have a significant impact on success, according to those who measure emotional aptitude.

A healthy-minded workforce can also reduce the rate of employee turnover and boost company prowess, says Michael Hopkins, president of addEQ.com Inc., a Toronto firm specializing in boosting human performance.

Hopkins says a growing number of organizations believe the ability to stick-handle stressful, highly-charged situations is paramount.

"If you examine all the different factors that play into employee productivity and commitment and loyalty to an organization, it's not pay, it's not perks or organizational circumstance," he says. "It's the emotional relationship and connection they have to their peers and supervisors that makes the difference."

While a person's mental intelligence stabilizes at the age of 18 to 21 years, humans can "grow" their emotional intelligence, according to Dr. Michael Rock, director of education with addEQ.

Together with Training Alternatives Inc., also of Toronto, addEQ has 'developed a method called EQ Shift - a way to boost the performance of entire organizations using emotional intelligence assessment and follow-up coaching technique provided online.

So far, the Toronto Catholic School Board has signed on to the program to assist teachers and principals, and Human Resources Development Canada will be deploying the program in employment centres in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Centre for Education and Training in Mississauga, Ont. is using the program to help unemployed adults pinpoint areas they can work on to improve their chances of finding a job. "We've had a few clients go through it already," says Ann Palantzas, a learner/coach with the centre, which is associated with the Peel Board of Education.

"The students have taken the assessment and a few have already gone online and found it quite helpful and interesting. The reason why a lot of them started the program is they wanted to improve their soft skills," says Palantzas, who had used the program before with other clients who were over 45 years of age and unemployed. "What I found is it really helped identify their strengths and areas they needed to develop."

Also adopting the EQ philosophy is Endpoint Research Ltd., a Mississauga, Ont.-based firm specializing in clinical trial management serving the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The company recently introduced the addEQ program to all of its 65 employees.

"Absolutely every person at every level of the company will go through the program," says Kim McDonald-Taylor, vicepresident of operations for Endpoint Research Ltd.

"Everyone knows what area they need to work on - for me it was stress tolerance."

Hopkins says promoting emotional intelligence can be a key element in helping IT staff develop interpersonal skills.

"If you look at the EQ profiles of different people in different occupations, one of the things the data has shown is a strong IQ score will often get you in the door along with strong knowledge of the industry," he says. "But those who are successful tend to have high emotional intelligence scores."

addEQ also believes the program can help companies with their key employees.

In every company, Rock says, top performers are the 20 per cent who deliver 80 per cent of the results, followed by the pulltheir-weight people who constitute up to 70 per cent, while the remainder are underperformers.

An EQ audit begins by assessing each worker using an Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQi), which measures 15 factors, including happiness, impulse control, empathy, assertiveness, independence, optimism, stress tolerance and flexibility. Rock points to research that shows those strong in emotional intelligence are more likely to succeed than those with relevant previous experience or high IQ.

For many, the results of the EQ test don't come as a surprise, but some argue the tests could be harmful to someone with a poor result, causing a sense of paranoia in employees fearful of being pigeonholed by HR into a category from which they will never escape.

Hopkins agrees this is a concern but adds firms should only use the tests for the overall benefit of an organization.

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Apr 2001
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