Leading a business has never been easy, but today a unique convergence of challenges are making Emotional Intelligence (EI) imperative for HR teams. These include:
• Ongoing exposure to disruption, with the anxiety and uncertainty associated with trying to adapt to a new world of work
• A growing rise in social consciousness, with people more aware than ever of the need for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the subsequent challenge of managing multi-generational talent
• Ongoing pressure to innovate at faster rates, act with agility and constantly reinvent product bases
In such a changing environment, it’s not hard to see why the World Economic Forum lists EI as one of the most sought-after skills of this decade.
As a result, HR leaders are having to move beyond focusing solely on leadership development. They need robust technologies to help them develop existing staff and select emotionally intelligent new hires. And this is only possible by focusing on EI.
What Are the Critical Use Cases for EI in an Organisation?
Emotional Intelligence assessments are much more versatile than traditional personality tests. In part, that’s because there isn’t much scope to change the traits that contribute to personality. And study after study demonstrates that personality accounts for less than 16% of the variance in performance of people. So just knowing a person’s personality style doesn’t add a great deal of value.
In contrast, EI is a set of competencies that evidence shows can be learned, developed and improved over time. Detailed research has made the business case for the value of these competencies rock solid.
The traditional lens applied to EI has always been leadership, but the rise in social and emotional consciousness has made us aware that it is emotions that create engagement or disengagement, psychological safety or insecure environments. These are the real drivers of human behaviour. In EI, neuroscience has revealed the building blocks of our emotions, how to cultivate them and how to deploy them to change the performance and behaviour of people to meet the objectives of the business.
Here are five critical use cases of EI in an organisation:
Leadership development
In the last 15 years, RocheMartin’s research - involving the profiles of 150,000 leaders - has identified 10 skills that define the most resilient and productive leaders. In a more recent cross-sectional analysis involving 8,000 professionals from 11 different geographical locations, those leaders that had the ability to adapt constructively to disruption, and maintain positive focus and manage their mood, were simultaneously the most influential and developed greater levels of engagement across the organisation.
Mental health and wellbeing
COVID-19 has created huge pressures. The risk to business is enormous. Pre-pandemic, one in four people experienced mental health issues. This puts pressure on HR leaders to ensure they have the right frameworks in place to support their workers. EI is critical for that, because at its heart it’s about emotional regulation and mental health issues are about people being unable to manage disruptive emotions.
EI certifications from RocheMartin provide a robust framework that offers insights into how people might manage disruptive emotions more creatively, calm their minds, and deploy positive emotions to solve problems and create products.
Managing multi-generational talent
Today’s emerging talents have different expectations of their workplace environment. They want flexibility, work-life balance, empowerment and a team focus. They also want emotionally intelligent leaders who are self-aware and inspirational. Managing this without disrupting older generations is crucial.
Diversity and inclusion
While the importance of a diverse workforce is now almost universally acknowledged, opportunities can still be missed to bring different perspectives together to solve problems. Having a diverse workplace isn’t the solution in itself. You need an inclusive workplace, and critical to that are EI skills. Emotional Intelligence enables diversity and inclusion, creating environments of psychological safety where workers thrive and perform at their best.
Living your values
Emotions are grounded in values. A values-based organisation now has a mechanism for operationalizing behaviours aligned to those values. This is increasingly inspiring for a new generation that wants to work for more than just a pay check. They want scope to develop, and to feel that their contribution matters and is valued.
What Are the Benefits for HR Leaders Who Are Certified in EI?
Historically, HR’s responsibility was managing human capital. But today, HR finds itself as the custodian of emotional capital in the business.
The feelings that lie in the minds of employers, and the expectations that customers have, are deeply felt experiences. Having an Emotional Intelligence certification makes a HR leader the go-to expert for identifying, developing and employing talent in the business. It gives the HR leader the training and technology they need to be trusted, because their work is grounded in good science.
Understandably, HR leaders also want to use tools developed specifically for a business environment (such as the RocheMartin certification). While other psychometrics have been developed on student populations or different communities, RocheMartin developed its norm using the experience of large numbers of successful business leaders from around the world.
Finally, HR leaders need the tools to measure EI reliably at different points in the organisation. The different editions of the Emotional Capital Report, which interprets professional people’s leadership potential based on their Emotional Intelligence, can be applied to those particular challenges.
As RocheMartin-certified Emotional Intelligence practitioners, HR leaders gain access to the latest scientific and technological advances in measure and building EI, as well as ongoing access to professional development resources.
For HR leaders looking to build success across their organization, the ultimate aim is to have the resources to transform human behaviour. EI certification does that.
How Does EI Certification Change the Outlook of HR Leaders?
To transform human behaviour, you need two things:
1. Psychological insight to help people identify their strengths and skills, as well as the areas they have neglected or not fully understood. EI certification enables a HR leader to go beyond telling people what to do. It helps them to shed light and understanding on how people can improve.
2. The tactics, strategies and building blocks of how to modify behaviours and therefore change outcomes. The ECR provides the framework to understand human behaviour and the guidance you need to modify behaviour to see different results and different responses from others around you.
EI certification enables HR professionals to really help people reach their potential and become their best selves. It rightly gives HR leaders extraordinary confidence in the robustness and effectiveness of their work.
Why Should HR Leaders Choose RocheMartin for Their Emotional Intelligence Certification?
When we were first developing our ECR, we were able to access a wealth of research and data from pioneers in the field like Dan Goleman. We managed to take all of that data, synthesize it, learn from it and refine it.
We were working academics operating at the coalface of major global businesses like GSK, Exxon Mobil and Boeing. And we were able to combine a decade of coaching experience to develop the strategies that change performance inside the commercial realities of a business.
As authors of the tool, we had extensive training, counselling and clinical psychology experience. In the late 1990s, we pioneered the process of how to provide feedback in a way that had a profound impact on clients and helped them make substantial gains in behaviour very, very quickly.
Finally, the range of supporting materials we provide is unmatched. From the learning management system SmartCoach through to workshops, collateral and guidance on building the business case, you get all the resources you need to enhance your success at deploying Emotional Intelligence inside your organisation.
RocheMartin understands that ongoing success in EI requires constant identification, assessment and development. That’s because EI is deeper and far more substantial than other notions that are fleeting in popularity.
Back in 2013, Sky was struggling to attract and retain talent in an increasingly competitive landscape. It needed an innovative culture built with a growth mindset. That’s when CEO Jeremy Darroch recognized the importance of Emotional Intelligence in Sky’s plans.
A far-reaching programme met with extraordinary success and demonstrated to employees that you could systematically learn to improve your EI skills. As a result of six years of commitment to the process, Sky experienced 20 consecutive quarters of growth - leading to a major buyout in excess of £40bn. Jeremy Darroch said one of the great things about the ECR was that it put EI into the language of business.
That’s what HR leaders need to do to help their organisations make better decisions, manage tensions and draw more from the breadth and depth of the company. With an EI certification, the potential to make significant and measurable change is enormous.
