Emotional Intelligence:

What makes a good boss?

Are these words included on your list?

• Respect
• Questioning
• Open-minded
• Empowering
• Listener
• Optimist
• Learner and coach
• Informative
• Motivating

What makes a bad boss?

Are these words on your list?

• Self centered
• Judgemental
• Pessimist
• Micro-manager
• Blaming
• Secretive
• Controlling
• De-motivating

If you agree with the lists above or have a similar list in mind, note how little job knowledge and academic prowess have to do with the attributes of being a good boss or bad boss. Or for that matter a good team member or a bad team member.

Reading a CV or and academic record tells us little about whether a person will be good at managing people or not. Even a good track record in a junior position will not tell us what we need to know to make a good judgement. For example, a good salesman will not necessarily make a good sales manager.

Research has shown that emotional intelligence plays a much larger role (as much as 80%) than academic prowess in determining the likely success of people over their lifetime.

Well known author on emotional intelligence, Bob Wall writes::

• A long-term study of Ph.D. scientists found that social and emotional abilities were four times more important than IQ and training in determining overall career success and level of personal prestige in the scientists' chosen field of study.
• At Met Life, a group of job candidates were hired who had failed the normal screening process but score high on optimism. The outsold a group of pessimists by 21% the first year and 57% the second year. They even outsold average agents by 27 %.
• Sales reps for a computer company who were hired for emotional competence were 90% more likely to finish their training than reps hired on the basis of other criteria.
• A study of military leaders found that their individual emotional intelligence where highly related to the presence of emotionally intelligent group norms in the teams they led and that those norms were significantly related to the team's performance.
• The most effective leaders in the US Navy are warmer, more outgoing, expressive emotionally, and sociable.
• 65% of American workers have not received recognition from their boss in over a year. The Department of Labour reports that the number-one reason people leave their jobs is the feeling that they are not appreciated by their management.
• IQ is a very poor predictor of job success. Various studies estimate that IQ alone accounts for as little as 4 to 10% of success at work.

Ever since the publication of Daniel Goleman's first book on the topic in 1995, emotional intelligence has become one of the hottest buzzwords in corporate life. However, whether or not emotional intelligence is a viable concept is not longer at question.

Bob Wall comments, "The primary cause of career derailment in executives are attributable to deficits in emotional competencies. The three most important "derailers" are the inability to adapt to change, difficulties working as a member of a team, and poor interpersonal relationships. Research supports this view."

• Only 10% of job terminations result from technical deficiencies, that is, the inability to do the job. 90% of terminations at due to attitudinal or behavioural problems or difficulties with relationships on the job.
• 62% of employees who said they have an effective manager intend to stay on the job. 17% of employees who said they have an ineffective manager said they intend to stay. Based on a survey of 10,000 US workers and 1000 workers each in India, China, Brazil, the UK, and Germany; 25% rated their managers as neither effective nor ineffective.
• Supervisors in a manufacturing environment were trained in emotional competencies. This resulted in a 50% decrease in time lost due to accidents; formal grievances dropped from 15 to 3 per year; and, the plant exceeded its annual financial goals by more than a quarter of a million dollars.
• Accurate self-awareness, a core emotional competency, was associated with superior performance in several hundred managers in a dozen companies.
• An international executive placement firm has learned through experience that candidates may have all the training and previous job experience to be a perfect fit for open positions but if they lack emotional intelligence, they are likely to fail if placed in those positions.

The most powerful change you can make in order to improve business performance is to improve the leadership qualities of your management team.

The leadership qualities of a management team may be changed for the better by improving the emotional competence of individuals by training and self improvement activities or by recruiting more emotionally competent managers.

Either way, a robust awareness of the individual's emotional intelligence is required

Find out how we can help you reliably measure emotional intelligence using the Simmons EQ Profile and build programmes to improve the leadership qualities of your management team. Contact us on +61 408508490 or email to organise a discussion on measuring emotional intelligence

We welcome your comments: you can contact Kevin by email at