Karen Schwind
XYZ, a large manufacturing company, contacted High Performing Systems, Inc., and asked for recommendations for reducing Human Resources Manager turnover. The company had hired or promoted three people into a Manager Role Level in the Human Resources (HR) Department in two years, none of whom had been successful. The Director of HR identified the ability to deal with the following issues as most important to an HR Manager’s success and the greatest cause for derailment:
- Working cross functionally, horizontally and vertically, providing services from the Director Role Level to the Individual Contributor Role Level.
- Dealing with complex emotional issues
and knowing when to be discreet and when to maintain neutrality.
- Keeping a cool head during union
negotiations.
- Responding quickly to employee crises
while continuing to work towards long-term goals and systemic change.
The HR Director provided a brief history of each of the three unsuccessful Managers. One Manager worked well with her team and peers but struggled to communicate with individual contributors in the manufacturing plant, often becoming impatient, and even hostile, with what she saw as excuses for bad behavior. Another Manager who had been a member of the team he was chosen to lead, worked well with those outside his own team but often let his former peers determine team goals and priorities. While he had strong interpersonal skills, he lacked the confidence to command the respect of his team. The last Manager had five years’ experience and seemed to be the ideal person for the job. Not long after they hired him, however, the Director witnessed a conversation between the Manager and an employee in which the Manager focused on his own emotional response to an issue rather than the employee’s problem. Over the next three months, others noticed a tendency for the Manager to process his emotions verbally, often in situations in which he should have remained neutral or silent.
After discussing these issues with the HR Director, we recommended creating an Emotional Intelligence (EI) Success Profile. This would provide the client crucial data to add to their selection process: it would distinguish candidates with the highest probability of being a high performing Manager from those who would most likely fall into the low performing group. We began by administering the EQ-i to all HR Managers in XYZ. We also got a copy of each HR Manager’s last performance appraisal. Statistical analysis techniques were used to determine which Subscales from the EQ-i would predict job performance as determined by performance appraisal ratings. We found that a combination of these Subscales predicted HR Manager Success: Impulse Control, Self-Regard, Happiness and Emotional Self-Awareness. Interpersonal Relationships and Optimism were also statistically relevant but less so than the first four. The profile had a 92% rate of accuracy in predicting success. Rather than relying on guesswork, conducting a scientific analysis allowed us to accurately determine which Subscales were important for success – and to what degree in terms of weighting.
Adding the EI Success Profile as part of the selection process helped XYZ ensure a good match between candidates and the job, and the HR Manager turnover has been significantly reduced. At the same time, new HR Managers who are hired using the EI Success Profile are in the high performing groups in performance appraisals.
The following list provides a summary of best practices for using EQ-i 2.0 as part of a selection process:
- Statistical analysis of data is critical– making an “intuitive” guess of Subscales needed for a job won’t work.
- Each organization and each Role is
unique. Creating a Success Profile for each job will ensure your model is accurate.
- There are never any “perfect” candidates. Using the model helps you get the best-fit candidate and gives you a plan for development to maximize his/her potential.
Emotional Intelligence is a person’s innate ability to perceive and manage his/her own emotions in a manner that results in successful interactions with the environment and, if others are present, to also perceive and manage their emotions in a manner that results in successful interpersonal interactions. In other words, Emotional Intelligence is about recognizing and managing one’s own emotions and the emotions of others.
The EQ-i 2.0 is one of the most scientifically validated Emotional Intelligence instruments on the market today. This instrument measures the interaction between a person and his or her environment, then presents results in both numerical and graphical form. The power of this instrument is in how the five Composite Scales and fifteen Subscales (see below) allow an EI feedback specialist to predict with amazing accuracy what behaviors a person is most likely to exhibit and to pinpoint the motivations behind the behavior.
The EQ-i 2.0 model below shows how five Composite Scales and fifteen Subscales interact to predict behaviors. The circular nature of the model is a visual representation of how each area of Emotional Intelligence influences the next.
As a result of completing the EQ-i 2.0, a person receives specific, measurable results that allow him or her to identify and leverage strengths and to put containment on any out-of-balance areas that could interfere with his/her ability to fully access strengths.
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