PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, in these days of fluid organizations, intense competition, and rapidly changing technology, has taken on a life-or-death importance. If you aren't learning you are receding into the sunset. But what should you be learning? A dazzling array of courses, seminars, and certifications dances before your eyes: Should you be taking a class in Linux? Polishing up your project management software skills? Getting your M.B.A.? Or is there some even more critical career-maker you ought to focus on, like practicing empathy with your significant other?
Huh?
Emotional Intelligence. What are those two words doing in the same phrase? In our old left-brain/right-brain model, aren't emotions those soppy things better left at home, and intelligence that incisive, all-important “right stuff”? “No” says Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., CEO of Emotional Intelligence Services, and co-chairman of the Rutgers University-based Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in the Organization. And it's a resounding No! that's shaking up our thinking about professional development.
A psychologist who has reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times, Goleman ([email protected]) has been a visiting faculty member at Harvard, and is the author of two extraordinary books, Emotional Intelligence [Bantam, 1995] and Working With Emotional Intelligence [Bantam, 1998], both New York Times bestsellers. In his books, which are based on extensive research, Goleman argues that “human competencies” like self-awareness, self-discipline, persistence and empathy are of greater consequence than IQ or technical skills in career success—and that because this is true, most conventional training dollars are wasted. While the press has coined the term “EQ” to describe these human competencies, Goleman prefers to call them “Emotional Intelligence” (EI).
Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin ([email protected]) writes for the business press on behalf of the Center for Business Practices, a division of PM Solutions Inc. She is the former acting editor-in-chief of the Project Management Institute's Publishing Division. Address comments on this article to [email protected].
In his quest to bring EI to the attention of business leaders, Goleman is supported by Murray Dalziel, global managing director of Organizational and Management Development Services of the Hay Group, a management consulting firm that provided much of the research, data, and analysis that Goleman incorporated into his books. The Hay/McBer division of the firm was founded by psychologist David C. McClelland, one of the first to identify the concept that the deeper emotional and motivational competencies rather than IQ are major indicators of success.
On behalf of PM Network, we interviewed Goleman and Dalziel by phone to find out what project managers need to know about emotional intelligence and how they can improve it.
Q: Why should project managers care about EI?
Goleman: It's the hidden ingredient in success or failure. Everything seems to be about technical knowledge and IQ, but those are actually very poor predictors of success, whereas the so-called soft skills—how aware you are of yourself, how well you sense how others are feeling, the whole repertoire of interpersonal skills—those are the skills that will make or break a leader. This is especially true in a technical field, where everybody has got to be smart just to hold the job. Everyone is at the high end of the IQ curve. But there's almost no selection pressure for the soft skills. These only become visible when teams succeed or fail due to their composition or leadership.
We had access to data from close to 500 organizations. We saw that, in star performers, what set them apart from the average was their ratio of EI competencies to technical skills. In top performers it was 2-to-1. That means EI matters twice as much for success … not to get into the field: for that IQ is still the biggest predictor. But once you are in, it's the ability to handle self and others that makes the difference.
When it comes to project leadership, the ratio increases: EI is 85 percent of what sets leaders apart. The trouble in the tech sector is that people miss this point. They don't think in the right terms when choosing who should lead. This is why the Peter Principle prevails—choices of leaders have been made on the wrong basis.
Dalziel: Project management is an area where it's important to manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. These are the capabilities that distinguish the very best people. Your ability to enable other people, to persuade them, to help them be clear, to work together in order to do that … people have to be aware of themselves, not get cut off in their own emotions. If they do, it will derail the project.
Project managers have to have quite a high level of sensitivity to other people and to the organizational environment.
Q: PM Network's readers like hard data. Can you prove that EI makes a difference to the bottom line on projects?
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Exhibit 1. The competencies that emotionally intelligent people display fall into four groups. Effective project leaders need to be strong in at least six of these 20 competencies in order to succeed—no matter what their level of technical expertise. (Graphic used by permission of The Hay Group.)
Goleman: Yes. We developed a training program for team leaders which, when it was implemented by Richard Boyatzis (associate dean at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University) at a large pharmaceutical company, shortened their new product development cycle by half.
Dalziel: There's overwhelming evidence that these capabilities make a difference to the bottom line. Programmers at the top end of the skill curve outperform those in the middle of the curve from anywhere from three to 1,000 times, depending on the study you look at. It's not their technical knowledge, but how they use it.
One study we did with David McClelland looked at divisional presidents and did statistical analysis of the outcomes they produced … those with higher emotional competency had divisions that outperformed the others by 20 percent. (See “What Makes Leaders” Harvard Business Review, Nov. 1998.)
[I]n another study; in a financial services organization, we found that the [EI] training gets paid back in 12-126 weeks. Even those who initially tested high for EI … increased their output by over 15 percent.
Q: How to assess competencies for project managers is a subject of heated discussion (and research) right now. One of your guidelines for best practices is to determine what competencies are most critical for effective job performance. How does one do this?
Goleman: The biggest differences in the needed competencies aren't between companies, they are between job classes. Every different job family has a hierarchy of competencies. In health care, people providing patient services obviously need empathy as a key competency. In technical fields, the drive to achieve is No. 1, but empathy is low on the list. Second most important is the ability to influence others, which is simply the ability to communicate your ideas effectively. Third is technical skills.
But when you talk about leadership—and leadership includes project managing to-day—across the job families the same competencies matter over and over. Leadership is a role that cuts across sectors: the leader of a health care project and [the leader] in a high-tech industry have much more in common than they have differences.
You see, technical skill is a threshold ability—you have to have it to get in the door in these industries. But to really succeed, you have to be effective personally and interpersonally and be able to help everyone else. That's the human task of a project leader, and it's completely dependent on emotional intelligence.
Highly effective leaders have strengths in six or more of a range of 20 competencies (see Exhibit 1). The leader who scores high in initiative, adaptability, empathy, collaboration, high-impact communication, and conflict management [for example] … creates a high-performance climate for the team. In any human group, people pay most attention to the person with the most power; the leader sets the example … if you are like that, the group becomes more like that. Poor leaders model miscues, miscommunications … and that's reflected in the team as well.
Q: In the project management field, there's almost a mythology about the moody, difficult genius who can pull a project off by sheer willpower, but who is devilish to work for. People brag about surviving such projects. Can you comment on this type of leader?
Goleman: There are four clusters of emotional competencies; of these, the most important to leadership is self-management. The reason is that if the leader blows up, it sabotages the group, it demoralizes and alienates … that mystique is partly correct and partly incorrect. A coercive style works only in an emergency and only during the period of crisis in the emergency. It's ruinous over the long term. A good leader knows when to take charge and when to become more democratic and inspiring. That coercive style makes people stop caring what happens; it creates disloyalty in the long run. And the most talented people will leave first.
Q: What is the impact of remote locations and virtual teams on EI and on the need for it?
Goleman: EI paradoxically matters more in a virtual environment. If you communicate by e-mail with colleagues there's a danger. You are more susceptible to sending a message that is perhaps unintentionally abrasive. That's because you have no feedback. When you speak face to face, you pick up cues of tone and expression that our emotional brain centers automatically fine tune. In e-mail you're talking blind and can go off on the wrong tangent.
Q: How can the individual get started on developing his or her EI?
Goleman: These are competencies that can be learned. So if you didn't pick it up along the way, and you know you don't have the listening skills you need to be a successful project leader now that you have to motivate and articulate mission, you can learn it now.
Dalziel: It's better to go through some kind of program, but the individual can start by simply having a positive view of where you want to be in your career. Develop a very clear appreciation of your strengths and weaknesses by asking your significant other and peers, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Start a little self-reflection by taking an EI test on our website (http://207.239.11.233). Self-discovery isn't easy. When I coach people, I tell them to take three steps:
A momentum action. This is something you will do by 5 p.m. today, because if you don't start you'll never do it. For example, work out how your significant other feels and ask them if you got it right. Or call a team member and ask what they liked about the last meeting and what they didn't.
A focal action. This is something you do on a regular basis. So, if you are going to be a better team leader, what kinds of things would you do regularly? Like talk to the team about process three times a week.
A momentous event. When's the next time you need to perform better? At the next team meeting, how can you demonstrate your improvement, however small?
You can't really develop these skills in a classroom setting, and you can't expect to develop them in two or three days. But with the right methods you can get results in a couple of months. The first step is to simply decide to do it.
Q: Your latest work centers around organizational EI. How is that developed?
Goleman: Well, this is work that is still ongoing. But teams as a whole exhibit the same competencies as the individuals that make them up; like initiative, innovativeness, the drive to achieve. … What makes a team work is harmony; the ability to communicate and cooperate. In 1986 a study asked people how much of the knowledge they needed to do their work was in their own heads; the answer was 75 percent. Today it is 15 percent or less. We need each other just to do our jobs. That's why people who are good at the networking competency have a real advantage. They can get information faster because they know a lot of people who will talk to them.
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THE BRILLIANT, HIGHLY EDUCATED, highly skilled iconoclast that nobody can stand to work with is in a perilous situation these days. There are few places anymore where people work in isolation. The team is the norm, and where teamwork means effectiveness, the “soft skills” can translate into hard numbers. If those soft skills are hard for you, the message of Goleman's work is a hopeful one: You can train your brain and improve your EI. Along the way, you might even improve your personal relationships. Not many professional development programs can offer a fringe benefit like that!