Are Your Leaders Emotionally Stunted

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Published March 2011
Are Your Leaders Emotionally Stunted?
 
  Mark Vickers
In the 20th century, talent leaders used to contrast hard-headed, no-nonsense quant jockeys with touchy-feely, empathetic, people-oriented types. They often picked leaders from the first group because they viewed them as strong, decisive and unhindered by emotion when they had to make tough choices.
It was never a useful or accurate decision-making tactic, but now it has become a dangerous one. Recent results from Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) surveys indicate that organizations led by emotionally void leaders are likely to be seriously handicapped.
Leadership 2020
When i4cp conducted its "Leadership Competencies Survey" in August 2009 in partnership with the American Management Association, it asked participants to write in responses to the following question: "What two competencies should a leader have in the coming decade that were not as important in the preceding decade?"
Researchers foresaw most of the top five answers to this question, but they were surprised to see emotional intelligence (EI) listed. EI had previously been thought of as a niche player in the leadership field, but it is now sending a strong signal that tomorrow's managers better have their emotional acts together if they want to be effective leaders circa 2020.
The institute subsequently conducted its "Emotional Intelligence in Today's Organizations Survey" in August 2010. In that study, emotional intelligence was defined as the degree to which a person has the ability to recognize and understand emotions and the skills to manage personal, individual and team performance using such awareness. The results indicated that emotional intelligence initiatives remain the exception rather than the rule in today's corporate world. Only 6 percent of respondents said their organization has an emotional intelligence initiative that encompasses their whole organization, and only 4 percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees said they have organizationwide programs geared toward EI.
On the other hand, more than a quarter of respondents from larger companies said there's an initiative in at least some part of their organization, and that doesn't include the 9 percent of respondents who use EI in a pilot program. Results also indicate that a market performance relationship exists. Higher-performing large companies were more likely than those from lower-performing organizations to say they have such initiatives — 32 percent in comparison to 19 percent.
The Performance Connection
Higher-performing, larger organizations are more likely than other companies to focus EI initiatives on leadership and high-potential development than on other management areas, such as communication. Similarly, about two-thirds of high-performing organizations with such initiatives apply the EI concept to their executive-level leaders, yet fewer than half of low-performing organizations do so.
The institute found evidence that emotional intelligence is geared toward leaders and seems especially important for executives. This finding suggests that emotionally unintelligent leaders may indeed result in a depressed bottom line. This connection is illustrated when examining expected outcomes of EI initiatives.
Mark Vickers is vice president of research for the Institute for Corporate Productivity. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.

Are Your Leaders Emotionally Stunted? - Talent Management