EQ: Your Delivery System

Emotional intelligence is your ability to interact effectively with other humans. Humans in the workplace engage in millions of daily interactions. Some are effective, and some, well, aren’t.

When it comes to emotional intelligence, many organizations assume that their leaders, and largely their organization, are competent. Why is that an issue?

EQ is your delivery system

If leadership is influence, then your emotional intelligence is the conduit of your influence. Your emotional intelligence (EQ) determines your ability to interact effectively with other humans. It’s your delivery system, the channel through which you share your knowledge, experience, and skills with others.

If your delivery system is broken or inefficient, your influence won’t translate or make the right impact. To achieve high performance, you don’t just need great technical skills, you need a great delivery system. The simple equation: IQ + EQ = performance.

Some organizations promote leaders and managers based on their technical skill alone. Those leaders end up lacking the interpersonal skills they need to contribute effectively while contributing indirectly.

The nature of a leader’s contribution

At the beginning of your career, you are the contribution. You contribute directly to the outcomes and successes on your team, and you can see your direct impact. Over time, if you find yourself in a management position, the nature of your contribution changes. You must learn to contribute indirectly through other people.

Of course, the nature of contribution will always be a spectrum. A first-time leader who manages a team of three people is one step away from that direct contribution. What if you’re the CEO of a 10,000-person multinational? How much of your contribution is direct? Almost zero.

Regardless, as your contribution becomes less direct, your interpersonal skill requirement increases. You have to be ready to coach your team, guide them, and empower them to perform the work themselves.

For most leaders, performance issues have nothing to do with technical skill. They already have a demonstrated track record of performance as an individual contributor, which was likely the reason they were promoted in the first place. These leaders instead struggle to make the psychological and skill transitions to leading indirectly through other people. It’s a 3

failure rate, interpersonal to technical.

You cannot approach a management role with an individual contributor mindset. A lack of interpersonal skill is the biggest bottleneck we see across the entire leadership population. No amount of technical skill will compensate for a deficit in interpersonal skill. And yet, too many organizations fail to develop the interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence of their leaders, despite an enthusiastic willingness to invest in technical skill development.

Here’s the good news: we as individuals can take responsibility for our own development. And luckily, emotional intelligence is a learnable skill.

EQ is a learnable skill

When we talk about EQ, we’re not talking about your personality. While personality can shift and evolve over time, it is, for the most part, a combination of fixed traits. Call your personality your core. Surrounding your core is your emotional intelligence, your crust. It surrounds, and, when used appropriately, enhances your personality.

The key difference between your core and your crust, your personality and emotional intelligence, is that emotional intelligence is a learnable skill. Your core is solid and somewhat fixed, but your crust definitely isn’t. You can develop, strengthen, and improve it.

The rest of the guide gets tactical from here: Dr. Timothy R. Clark’s 6 Domains of Emotional Intelligence™ model, which breaks EQ into component parts across beliefs, awareness, and behavior; the 30 skills the EQindex® self-assessment measures, so you can spot your own red zones; a four-step loop for turning that information into deliberate practice; and the three career choices every leader faces, only one of which ends in achievement and healthy influence.