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  • Since I started writing about and researching emotional intelligence in business,

  • I found that data in support of it has only gotten stronger.

  • I saw recently a study, this surprised me, engineers, software coders and so on

  • were evaluated by their peers, people who work with them day-to-day on

  • how successful they were at what they do.

  • This turns out to be one of the strongest predictors of success in any field.

  • And that was correlated with their IQ in one hand and their emotional intelligence on the other.

  • And when I say emotional intelligence they were evaluated on a 360 that looks at all

  • 12 of the key emotional intelligence competencies that distinguish star performers from average.

  • The surprise was this: IQ correlated zero, zero with their success as rated by peers.

  • Emotional intelligence correlated very, very highly.

  • Well, why would that be?

  • Well, consider this: in order to be an engineer you have to have an IQ about a standard deviation

  • or more above average, that's an IQ of about 115 or so.

  • And another recent paper shows that there's no relationship between career success and an IQ above 120.

  • The reason is this: there is a strong floor effect for IQ in any role.

  • All engineers have an IQ of 115 or more, so the range of variance is very reduced for IQ and success.

  • Emotional intelligence however varies radically.

  • So emotional intelligence means: How well you manage yourself.

  • Can you work toward your goals despite obstacles?

  • Do you give up too soon?

  • Do you have a negative outlook or a positive outlook?

  • These are all emotional intelligence competencies that matter for success.

  • Then there's the relationship competencies: Can you tune in to other people?

  • Do you notice other people?

  • I remember hearing about two MIT grads who went into a giant tech company, one of them

  • went around to other members of her team and asked, “What are you doing?

  • How can I help?"

  • The other stayed in his office and wrote code all day.

  • It's very clear who was going to get ahead; it was the one who wanted to be a team player.

  • You don't write code in isolation anymore; everyone works on projects together.

  • You may write the code but you have to coordinate, you have to influence, you have to persuade,

  • you have to be a good team member.

  • All of those are emotional intelligence competencies that distinguish outstanding from average performers.

  • So when you think about it that way, it makes sense that even among engineers

  • emotional intelligence will predict who is a star and who's just mediocre.

  • And when you think about this at the organizational level it means you want to be sure to include

  • emotional intelligence when you consider hiring people.

  • I have a friend at an executive recruiting company that specializes in C-level hires,

  • CEOs, CFOs and so on.

  • And they once did a study internally of people they had recommended who turn out to be bad

  • and were so bad they were fired.

  • So these were failures, they were surprised to have failures, but they realized when they

  • looked more carefully that these were people who were hired because of business expertise and IQ

  • and fired because of a deficiency in emotional intelligence.

  • So it's more important than ever these days.

  • And so in hiring it needs to be considered, and in promoting people, of course, it needs to be considered.

  • And it should be part of HR.

  • It should be what you help people develop for their strengths.

  • Because the good news about emotional intelligence is: It's learned and learnable, and you

  • can upgrade it at any point in life if you're motivated.

Since I started writing about and researching emotional intelligence in business,

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