What Research Tells Us about EI

People with high levels of self-awareness recognize their “gut feelings” and realize that these feelings can provide useful information about difficult decisions. Self-awareness allows us to assess our own strengths and limitations with a healthy sense of self-confidence.

SELF-MANAGEMENT Self-management is the ability to understand your feelings and to use this understanding to effectively deal with emotional situations. This does not mean suppressing or denying emotions, but using them to deal with situations productively, for example, controlling your moods so that worry, anxiety, fear, or anger do not get in the way of thinking clearly about what needs to be done.7 To do this, you need to recognize a mood or feeling, think about what it means and how it affects you, and then decide the most effective way to act.

SOCIAL AWARENESS Social awareness is the ability to understand and empathize with others. Socially aware people are empathic: they have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, sense their emotions, and understand their perspective. People with high social awareness are capable of understanding divergent points of view and interacting effectively with many different types of people and emotions. This characteristic makes it easier for them to get along in organizational life, build networks, and use political behavior to accomplish positive results.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Relationship management is the ability to connect with others in ways that build positive relationships. Good relationship managers treat others with compassion, sensitivity, and kindness. They use their understanding of emotions to inspire change and lead people toward something better, to build teamwork and collaboration, and to resolve conflicts as they arise.

What Research Tells Us about EI

Research on EI is ongoing and has had an unusually important impact on managerial practice.8 Some studies have found that in today’s business world, EI may override sheer intellectual ability as the primary component of success for many leaders.9 Leaders who are attuned to their own feelings and the feelings of others use this understanding to enhance personal, team, and organizational performance.10 Based on these findings, several organizations have incorporated EI into their employee development programs,11 and some business schools have added the training of emotional competencies to their curriculums.12 Research on EI and job performance—defined as the degree to which an individual helps the organization reach its goals13—is mixed. Some studies suggest that EI and job performance are positively related. EI makes a positive difference in sales performance and supervisory ratings of job performance, for example.14 Other studies have found inconsistent relationships between EI and performance on particular tasks, such as academic performance and supervisory ratings of job performance and team performance.15 These variations across studies have led some researchers to suggest that moderating variables exist between EI and workplace performance.16 For example, an individual who is low on an ability that is related to performance can compensate for that weakness by being high on a different ability that is also related to performance17 and some individual difference characteristics may compensate for low cognitive intelligence.18 A United States Department of Labor study of the characteristics corporations are seeking in MBA candidates revealed that the three most desirable traits are components of EI: communication skills, interpersonal skills, and initiative.19 Research has found that although standard measures of cognitive IQ and technical competence are important entry-level requirements for