You’ve probably always thought that great leaders have some special quality that separates them from the rest of us. Well, you’re right. They do. That ”special quality” are well-developed emotional intelligence competencies.
I think we all intuitively know that we each have our own unique mix of strengths and areas of opportunities when it comes to leadership and interpersonal skills, but figuring out which areas we might need to work on is a challenging task.
Understand Your Strengths
The first step towards understanding our strengths and areas of development from a leadership and soft skill perspective is discovering your level of emotional intelligence or Emotional Quotient (EQ).
Your EQ will be in the form of a numerical value that measures your emotional intelligence, in a similar way that IQ measures traditional intelligence. In fact, emotional intelligence skills are more often a greater determinant of success than cognitive intelligence. Emotional intelligence is increasingly relevant to developing people, and organizations as a whole, because it can provide a new way to understand and assess people’s behaviours, leadership styles, attitudes, social skills, and their potential.
Whatever your EQ number is, don’t worry. Instead, look at this number as more of a starting point, as your greater self-awareness will help guide you towards continual improvement in your personal and work relationships.
Measure Your Emotional Intelligence
For measuring and assessing Emotional Intelligence, we use two assessment tools, the EQ-i 2.0® and the EQ-360®, both developed by Multi-Health Systems (MHS). MHS measures emotional intelligence into 15 EQ competencies or subscales, and those subscales are broken into the 5 composite scales or areas: self-perception (how you perceive yourself), self-expression (how you communicate and express yourself), interpersonal (how you connect with others), decision-making (how well you make decisions on a daily basis), and stress management (how well you cope with challenging times).
Although it is important to have a high level of emotional intelligence, like many things in life, it is also equally important to have balanced scores. The critical goal is making sure all of your 15 EQ results are relatively close in score to each other. The higher the difference in scores, the more visible the imbalance may show up in your behaviours. The more well-balanced your EQ scores are the better your emotional and social functioning in the world. Ultimately, you will be more productive, a better performer, and a happier person at work and in life.
Upon completion of either of the assessments, you will receive a one-hour long debrief on your results from one of our EQ coaches, scheduled at your convenience. We help you interpret your scores and the interrelationships between them.
The purpose of both of these assessments is to collect information on workplace or leadership effectiveness. It is imperative that you understand that these EQ reports are completely confidential, and will only be seen by you and your EQ coach, and is to be used only for your own personal growth and professional development.
The EQ-i 2.0® Report
The EQ-i 2.0® is a self-report assessment tool that is based on the 15 competencies of the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i). Not only does the EQ-i 2.0® score your total EQ, but it also gives you a score for each of the 15 competencies, highlighting your strengths and potential areas for improvement.
The EQ-360® Report
The EQ-360® delves further because it not only contains the self-report assessment of the EQ-i 2.0®, it integrates what other people think of you. You will select raters from the following categories: manager, peers, direct reports, friends/family, and/or others, and they will also rate you on the same rating scale, which is why this tool is also referred to as the Multi-Rater Assessment. It is important to know not only how you see yourself, but also to be aware of how others see you.
Balancing Your Emotional Intelligence
In either of these EQ reports, each of these 15 EQ competencies or subscales are measured and then compared to three other subscales that are most critical to balance. In order for the main subscale and balancing subscales to be considered “out of balance,” they need to differ by more than 10 points.
Improving your EQ is not a “one size fits all” process. We are all different and research shows that successfully being able to understand, express, and manage your own emotions involves figuring out which particular strategies and emotional regulation approaches work best for you for any given situation.
At the bottom of each of the fifteen competencies pages, in either of the EQ-i 2.0 and EQ-360® Reports, is a Balancing Your EI section. As mentioned, each competency has three balancing subscales that are most critical to balance based not only on the relationship with that competency of interest but also because it makes practical sense from a coaching perspective.
Each of your EQ competency scores are compared to the other three balancing subscales, and the difference between the two competencies that differ most is highlighted. Your EQ Report helps you by providing insight into what subscales may need some balancing support. It provides some How-To Guidance and along with the Strategies for Action so you can create a development plan.
Developing your emotional intelligence will allow you to adapt your leadership style as required so that you can become a more effective and inspirational leader in all situations and with all kinds of people.
Which of your EQ competencies are out of balance now? What behaviours can you adjust in order to regain or maintain balance?
We can help. Book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.
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