A way to understand emotional intelligence (EI) and why many training courses waste money and time
The following comparisons should help to really understand what EI is about:
Competence is about what I can do – my skills and self confidence to apply these skills
IQ is about what I can understand and do from a logical level (my cognitive, logical potential)
Personality is about how I prefer to do things (my preferred style)
EI is about why I do things and how I feel when I do them (my attitudes about myself and others (self esteem and regard for others), values and motivation
The problem is, most managers and training courses they send their staff on only look at things from a cognitive and competence level, with sometimes a look at personality too (typically MBTI)
All of these things will not lead to sustainable change if you do not dig a little deeper, and look at development and change from an emotionally intelligent level. Your core attitudes and values will ALWAYS have a big impact on your emotions, and ultimately your thoughts and behaviour. These foundations of behaviour and performanvce therfore lie in emotional intelligence.
Would you try to build a house without careful consideration of the foundations first? Of course not. So why not make sure your training courses cover the foundations of human behaviour!
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Fresh News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I’ve been conducting a two-day team skills training that includes Jungian personality type in the Trust section. The training has been very successful and the comments from those attending very complimentary about the personality type session of the training.
Possibly it is the way that I teach it and the materials used, because those attending feel the personality type information allows them to dig deeper and look at development and change from an EI level.
Thank you for your comment Pamela. Indeed, I am sure when approached in the right way, Jungian personality types can be extremely useful, it is way in the case of your training. In order for MBTI tools to be really useful, in my opinion, training should go beyond the simple measure and feedback on preferences and types, but also into how well do you manage the type you have got (I would call that the EI level). For example, you may have 2 extroverts who both love social occasions and find it energising – but one can be emotionally unintelligent in their behaviour (for example regualrly interrupting others, making rash judgements of others and not really listening), whilst the other could be emotionally intelligent (active listening, respect others for who they are, showing empathy, etc). So for me, the important question is how well do you manage the personality type you have got in terms of intra and inter personal intelligence.