Emotional Intelligence

What determines high performance?

The ‘twisted pear phenomenon’ sets off performance against IQ as a predictor. IQ combined with professional (technical) skills give essentially the same distribution.


Low IQ (and professional skills) predict low performance.
High IQ and professional skills produce the full range of performance from very low to very high.
That means that a person with high IQ (and skills) can be a very high performer, but may as well be a very low one.


In other words, IQ and professional skills in themselves do not predict high performance. They are necessary, but not sufficient.


Knowing what doesn’t determine high performance, the question remains: what does?


A landmark in thinking was “testing for competencies rather than intelligence”. In the ‘competencies’ approach specific capabilities were identified and validated against effectiveness measures.
Research compared groups of high and average performers, to find the competencies that made the difference. The method – after defining the two groups – was to look for the behavioural
differentiators through investigating what high performers do, say, think & feel that contributes to their success.


The 18 EI competencies

The result:
A model of 18 Emotional Intelligence competencies that are directly related (tested and validated) to success at work.


Emotional competency is defined as a learned capability that results in outstanding performance.


These specific competencies, divided into the four clusters, form the Goleman model of Emotional Intelligence, which is but one of many models describing emotional “capacities”, “skills”, “traits” etc.

Distinctive of the Goleman model is its strong focus on the corporate world.


The ingredients of high performance

These 18 competencies - as seen in the left graph - are responsible for about 2/3 of high-performance over the whole field of different professions (initially 181 different jobs were included in the research; the field was later broadened to include more than 200).


The higher the position and/or the more (technically) complex it is, these competencies became a higher and higher ingredient of high-performance. As can be seen in the right graph with top leadership positions these competencies count for 85% of high-performance.


In these positions cognitive intelligence (IQ) and professional skills are entry level requirements.


The emotional competencies are those that enable us to put the IQ that we have and the professional (technical) skills that we have effectively and successfully into use in a business context and in life in general.


“In the corporate world, according to personnel executives, IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted. Goleman likes to tell of a manager at AT&T's Bell Labs, a think tank for brilliant engineers in New Jersey, who was asked to rank his top performers. They weren't the ones with the highest IQs; they were the ones whose E-mail got answered. Those workers who were good collaborators and networkers and popular with colleagues were more likely to get the cooperation they needed to reach their goals than the socially awkward, lone-wolf geniuses.


When David Campbell and others at the Center for Creative Leadership studied "derailed executives," the rising stars who flamed out, the researchers found that these executives failed most often because of "an interpersonal flaw" rather than a technical inability. Interviews with top executives in the U.S. and Europe turned up nine so-called fatal flaws, many of them classic emotional failings, such as "poor working relations," being "authoritarian" or "too ambitious" and having "conflict with upper management." From: “The EQ Factor”, a Time report from Oct. 1995.



Back to Top

Competencies

An Emotional competency is “a learned capability
that results in outstanding performance” (Goleman).


Each competency comprises four distinct, very
specific behaviours (or levels of behaviour
within the general definition) that are scaled in
order of their intensity, complexity and size of impact.


Reaching a certain level in each of the competencies
means consistently demonstrating the behaviour
belonging to that level.

Note: for clarity sake, we use a developmental competency here rather
than an emotional one as an example.



Projecting performers distributions onto these four levels of behaviour (see graph) led to an interesting discovery: past the blue line (behaviour level 3) we find hardly any typical (average) performers, and the majority of outstanding (high) performers.


Reaching or exceeding that level of behaviour (called the Target Level) has a significant positive impact on performance.

Each competency has its own target level of behaviour (the graph shows the distributions over an average of all 18 competencies).


The Tipping Point

It is not necessary to be strong in all competencies.


What establishes the conditions for top-performance is reaching or exceeding target level in a combination of competencies across the whole board (from the four different clusters).

In other words: when we reach target level in a combination of competencies, we reach a crucial tipping point that has a dramatic impact on performance.


One size does not fit all: various different combinations of competencies developed to target level can lead to reaching the tipping point.


Beyond the tipping point people in corporate high positions and in (technically) complex professions have an 85%+ probability to be outstanding performers.


Research has identified some competencies profiles that are specific to certain roles and positions
( e.g. “sales manager”).
Enterprise Architects have their own high-performance competencies profile but this has not (yet) been formally established.


Improving EI

When Emotional Intelligence is weak, our IQ, knowledge and skills cannot express themselves in the world.


Not only is Emotional Intelligence the factor that determines how successfully we use our cognitive and professional knowledge and capabilities, it also plays an important role in our ability to use our creative, inspirational, visionary and innovative talents.

EI can be developed and improved. The process involves learning new behaviours and habits, which takes time and practice.


Once established, the change is a self-sustaining one. Beyond the tipping point a gradual and consistent further improvement will take place without any further directed investments.