Contributed by Debbie Muno, The EI Academy

Welcome to our sixth and final installment in our series about Emotional Intelligence. We have covered a lot of ground relative to the topic of Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, and the positive impacts of enhancing Emotional Intelligence both professionally and personally.

Emotional Intelligence is about making intelligent responses to negative feelings and using specific skills to generate positive emotions in yourself, and others, through being present, empathetic, genuine, resilient and empowering in our behavior as often as possible. In other words, being intelligent when it comes to recognizing, managing and utilizing our own emotions and the emotions of those around us.

In this article, we’ll begin with the end in mind and bring these discussions together to see how focusing on Emotional Intelligence from a hiring perspective and an internal development perspective can create an “Employer of Choice” culture in your organization.

Published studies have shown that scores on the Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report meaningfully correlate with several important workplace variables. The higher people score on the Genos assessment, the higher they tend to also score on measures of:

• Workplace performance
• Leadership effectiveness
• Sales and customer service
• Resilience
• Team work effectiveness
• Employee Engagement

During our 20+ years of working with assessments for hiring and clients all over North America, we have learned that the reason that organizations choose to implement an assessment into their hiring processes is because they are trying to gather as much information as possible to make the best possible hiring decisions. Given the opportunity to collect information that gives a company better odds at hiring candidates who will have better performance in the workplace, will be more effective leaders, have better sales performance, better customer service, be more resilient, better teammates and be more engaged, many organizations opt to collect that information.

According to the World Economic Forum, by 2020 Emotional Intelligence will be in the Top Ten required job skills for all jobs – and in a recent Career Builder survey of over 2600 Hiring Professionals, 71% of them said that they value Emotional Intelligence in an employee more than IQ.

As the world of work continues to change due to multiple generations in the workplace and the continual advances in artificial intelligence, the demand for “people skills” or emotional intelligence increases daily, at all levels inside of organizations.

With 2020 right around the corner, we are thrilled to be able to offer the Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report, an assessment designed specifically for the hiring process that is easy to implement and only 15 minutes for a candidate to complete. This hiring assessment is the best measure of how often a candidate demonstrates emotionally intelligent behavior in the workplace. Learning this information ‘on the front end’ is incredibly powerful and useful and can help you to create an Emotionally Intelligent Workplace.

You can also measure and develop the emotional intelligence of your existing employees. With a set of assessments designed specifically for developing existing employees and corresponding Emotional Intelligence Training Programs focused on helping employees grow their skills, this is another way to impact workplace performance, leadership effectiveness, sales and customer service, resilience, teamwork and engagement. The more Emotional Intelligence increases in an organization, the stronger the demonstration of these critical aspects of performance become.

Adding even one of these efforts (hiring for emotional intelligence or developing the emotional intelligence of existing employees), you can see results and the return on investment.
While it is indeed critical to have state of the art equipment, all appropriate licensures and technical skills – it is also critical to have the right people, delivering your services at the highest levels possible. Acquiring customers, servicing customers, retaining customers and receiving referrals are all functions of Emotional Intelligence.

An easy start with high impact is to implement the selection assessment into your hiring process.

We appreciate the opportunity to have shared information about Emotional Intelligence in the workplace over this six-part series with you. Thank you for reading! We are always happy to answer any questions – feel free to contact us (813-792-5000 or via email: debbie@theeiacademy.com) or visit our website for more information: www.theeiacademy.com. Thank you!

Debbie Muno and Jeff Summers lead The EI Academy, an organization dedicated to helping people understand how to work with others productively – how to make others feel valued and appreciated – how to create positive, collaborative environments and how to connect with others. The EI Academy is affiliated with Genos International, a leading emotional intelligence assessment and solutions provider. Visit theieacademy.com, email info@theieacademy.com or call 813-792-5000 for more information.