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Why Are Relationships the

Heart of Emotional Intelligence
February 2004 Bradford University School of
Management Alumni Lecture

Professor Arthur Emotional intelligence...

Francis What is it? Why are relationships so important in emotional intelligence?
Chairman, Bradford
University School of How do you develop it? What difference does it make?
Management
Emotional intelligence is seen by some people as a faddish bandwagon.
To others it is as old as the hills. When Aristotle said: “Anyone can become
David Barnard angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right
Speaker, Bradford degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is
University School of
Management not easy,” he was talking about what we now call emotional intelligence.

My theme this evening is not just a description of what EI is—though I shall

cover this briefly. I want to deal with four main questions:

• What is EI?

• Why are relationships at the heart of EI?

• Can you develop it, and if so, how?

• And finally, what difference does it make to the delivery of results

or services?

I want to treat these questions also in a way that shows how important
emotional intelligence is for leaders at all levels.

Emotional intelligence in action

So, what is EI? I often think of something I was told some years ago by a young
police constable in Lincolnshire. He and his colleague had been called to a domestic
incident by a neighbour who was worried about the screams coming from next door.
This is the sort of situation the police hate. As often as not, they arrive to be abused
by everyone in the house, and they feel that they are on a hiding to nothing. On this
occasion, as they arrived, a frightened six-year-old boy ran out into the front garden.
Rushing into the living room, they found a sobbing woman being threatened by a
man with a kitchen knife.

h aygro u p. co m
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2 Why Are Relationships the Heart of Emotional Intelligence?

The policeman told me: “I was really scared. I’d never faced
an armed man before, and I turned to my colleague to see
what he thought we should do. He looked as if he’d frozen, so
I looked at the man. I looked into his eyes, and I suddenly
realised that what I was seeing there was fear. So I said quite
quietly, without thinking about it: ‘Are you OK, sir?’ It’s
almost funny, really—a silly question. But you could see the
anger drain out of him, and he started crying.”
No truncheons. No shouts of “put the knife down, now.” Just:
“Are you OK, sir?” It’s good policing, but why is it an example
of EI? Firstly, because what that policeman did was to
acknowledge his own feelings and inexperience, but not be
overwhelmed by them. Indeed, he took the lead when he
realised that his colleague had “frozen.” He was demonstrating
the three elements of self-awareness that are so important in
emotional intelligence: emotional self-awareness, that is, the
ability to recognise our emotions and their effects; accurate
self-perception, knowing one’s strengths and limits; and self
confidence, a strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities.
The history of emotional intelligence
It is often at this point, when we begin to connect evidently
effective social behaviour to the notion of emotional intelli-
gence, that people begin to have concerns about fads and
bandwagons. Well, leaving aside Aristotle, the thinking that
underpins our current understanding of EI has a surprisingly
long history. The framework of emotional competencies that
Hay Group has developed with Daniel Goleman and Richard
Boyatzis builds on the work of a number of other researchers,
principally:
I E. L. Thorndike – who identified social intelligence (1920)
I Peter Salovey and John Mayer – who first proposed a
theory of emotional intelligence (1990)
What is distinctive about Hay Group’s work with Goleman,
Boyatzis and others? Our approach focuses on the measure-
ment and development of the behavioural competencies
associated with emotional intelligence, not just for their own
sake, but as they relate to personal effectiveness in work and
as a leader. Ours is a theory of performance that is designed
to predict effectiveness, and as such has practical utility for
organisations and managers. And the theory of performance is
associated with a powerful theory of development and change
that has been tested both academically and in Hay Group’s
clients around the world.
The emotional competency
framework
The framework looks like Figure 1. The four quadrants
form a matrix of competencies describing aspects of how
we deal with ourselves and others in terms of awareness
(cognition) and actions (behaviour). Our research shows that
competencies in the self awareness quadrant are the drivers
of capability in the rest of the framework. It is extraordinarily
difficult to regulate our behaviour, to motivate ourselves or
to tune in to the emotional and transactional needs of others
without the self awareness competencies. And these self
awareness competencies were the ones clearly evident from
the way the Lincolnshire police constable described his
thoughts, feelings and actions: emotional self-awareness,
accurate self-perception and self confidence.
Figure 1: The Emotional Competency Framework

I Robert Thorndike and Saul Stern – who amplified the idea

of social intelligence into three fields of social attitude,
social knowledge and social adjustment (1937)

I David Wechsler – who, despite work to develop his IQ

test, acknowledged that “affective capacities” were an
important part of the human repertoire of capabilities
(1952)

I Howard Gardner – who within his theory of multiple intel-

ligences identified two varieties of personal intelligence,
the interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences (1983)

I Reuven Bar-On – who was one of the first to develop an

approach to measuring what he called emotional quotient
or EQ (1988)
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Heart and mind
What the policeman’s story also illuminates is the difference
in power between heart and mind, or more technically,
emotion and cognition. It is the difference between saying:
“What is the logical thing to do?;” or: “What does the training
manual say we should do?;” and feeling intuitively that it is
right to do something, and then having the self-confidence to
act on that intuition. So much of our culture and education is
devoted to enhancing reason. But instinct and intuition can be
developed, strengthened and incorporated into the way we
take stock before acting.
Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as: “The
capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others,
for motivating ourselves, for managing emotions well in
ourselves and in our relationships.” And you can see that by
managing his own fear, the policeman was able to make a
rapid—and probably non-conscious—assessment of the
feelings of the knifeman. In the heat of the moment, he may
have misread despair or desperation for fear, but at least he was
able to tune in to the fact that this man was only dangerous
insofar as he had no release for an underlying emotion that
was, in this case, neither anger nor uncontrolled frenzy. In
short, he struck the right emotional note for the situation, and
the upshot was a highly effective policing intervention. Who
knows? It may also have been an effective social intervention
so far as that family was concerned.
Relevance of emotional intelligence
at work
Now, I’m willing to bet that the police constable I met had
never been on an EI training course. By the same token, I’m
pretty sure that the majority of people in the organisations you
have worked for do not have to deal with knifemen on a regular
basis. What is the relevance of this story, either to our typical
life and work, or to the need to deliver results in business or
the public service? And how is it that some people are so
skilful in personal relationships where others are less able to
act with emotional wisdom.
Firstly, there are few aspects of work nowadays that do not
involve more or less intensive teamworking or collaboration.
And there is no evidence that the demands of our jobs are
putting us under any less stress. Indeed, in a seminar Hay
Group hosted a few months ago, Guy Claxton, Visiting
Professor at Bristol University’s school of education, averred
that many organisations behave as if they are in a constant
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state of war—perhaps that is also a comment on what it feels
like to work in an academic environment.
This wearying and relentless low-level pressure can often
cause people to be on the emotional brink, either oversensitive
to criticism or ready to fly out at others. The reaction to unjust
criticism or some other emotionally charged trigger, especially
if it comes from a boss or some other important figure in one’s
life (a spouse or other intimate friend), can be instant and
“flooding”—to use the word often employed to describe the
intensity of the emotional and physical reaction. This flooding
has a number of consequences:
I heart rate can leap by 20 to 30 beats per minute from one
heartbeat to the next
I overwhelming feelings of distress well up
I the person cannot hear clearly what is being said
I they cannot respond with clarity and only seek to end the
encounter quickly
I thinking becomes muddled
I often the individual becomes defensive, resorts to
stonewalling, or withdraws mentally or physically
I symptoms of distress can recur for hours afterwards as the
person recalls what has happened.
People do not—indeed, cannot—work effectively in such
a state.
Focusing on people in a crisis
So what is the alternative? Let me tell you about another
situation where the ability to use self-awareness, trust and
empathy was important. A managing director was involved in
the complex negotiations involved in the sale of a subsidiary
by an organisation that was undergoing privatisation. The
value in the subsidiary itself lay in the people—their knowl-
edge, skills, capability and track record. The value to potential
purchasers was in the net present value of a flow of revenue
from contracts the subsidiary was servicing. But without the
people, there was nothing to sell. A major problem in this
situation was the different emphases the various parties put
on the range of possible outcomes:
I the owner wanted to maximise the selling price
I the government department involved wanted to maximise
value and minimise risk
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4 Why Are Relationships the Heart of Emotional Intelligence?

I the third-party non-executives responsible for letting he was more likely to keep the show on the road if he
the contracts in question wanted to protect the quality acknowledged and shared them with his colleagues. He
of delivery happily shared good news, and calmly moderated the reaction
to bad news by denying the rumour mill its power to amplify
I the management and staff wanted to be sold to a reputable
firm where their clients would be respected, their careers and distort.
would prosper, and where they could continue to deliver
Goleman, along with his colleagues, Richard Boyatzis and
quality work.
Annie McKee, call this “resonant” leadership. It is the ability
This privatisation took nearly three years to complete; years of a person to find the right emotional wavelength in order to
in which none of the professionals in the subsidiary knew communicate effectively with others. Both the Lincolnshire
from one week to the next whether or not they would have a policeman and the MD demonstrated resonant leadership.
job in the future. In such situations leaders all too frequently
develop a bunker mentality. They disappear into meetings;
they prepare business plans for a variety of possible scenarios;
Infectious emotion
they hurry down corridors, grim-faced and tense, preoccupied Emotion is catching. We know this from our own experience.
with the nature of the burden they carry and oblivious to the The congenial companion who lifts our spirits; the moody
impact their behaviour is having on their staff. boss who affects how everyone in the office feels; the theatre
audience in which everyone seems to get more and more
This MD did some of the above, but also recognised that he
ebullient—these are examples of an effect that has been tested
and his deputies were not the only ones going through phases
in the laboratory. The finding is the common sense one that
of alternating anxiety and optimism. He decided to break
the person in a higher emotional state (whatever that is) draws
the rules of confidentiality surrounding the negotiations. He
others in lower emotional states (either less happy or less
determined that the whole team of some 40 professionals
angry) towards them in emotional terms. What is less expected
should know a large part of what he knew. He needed their
is that this happens irrespective of whether the individuals
trust if they were to choose to stay, and he knew he had to
communicate actively or not. (The exception is depression,
earn and prove that trust ahead of when it might really be
which is slower to infect others, even when it is very bad,
needed. So through nearly three roller-coaster years he briefed
because it is less overt.)
the team on a regular basis, making a personal promise that he
would never tell them a lie or prevaricate when the news was
Figure 2: Resonant Leadership
bad. And he would tell them what was happening even when
nothing was happening.

Delivering performance in
challenging times
All of the professional staff in the subsidiary were in a position
to find highly paid jobs elsewhere at any time, yet 35 of them
finally transferred to the new owners when the deal was done.
And, tellingly, the performance against the contracts through
this period continued to be very high quality—indeed in
comparison with competitors in the market, the team delivered One test of this effect is done in this way. Three people who
stellar performance in spite of the uncertainties they faced. are strangers to each other complete a questionnaire about
The emotionally intelligent leader, or colleague is able to create how they are feeling at the moment. They then enter a room
around them a climate where, despite the turbulence of the and spend five minutes together without speaking. They
external environment, others feel good and are able to focus complete another checklist on leaving the room. The person
effectively on their work. This MD tuned in to his own feelings in the highest emotional state at the start of the five-minute
about the situation he and his people faced, and decided that period draws the others towards them—“infects” them. In
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other tests, people who start a conversation with different
heart rates and rates of breathing, will tend to move towards
each other—to achieve synchrony.
This is quite unlike many of our lower order functions, like
our circulatory system, which are closed-loop systems
designed to maintain homeostasis. Our limbic system, the
part of the brain that contains most of our emotional centres,
is an open-loop system—it depends mostly on external
sources to manage itself (Figure 2 above). But we are not
automata. We can manage and moderate the impact of external
stimuli on our emotional states.
For example, our policeman was able to resist the high
emotional state he found in the living room, and convey a
state of calm. This did not in itself make the knifeman calm,
but did help him to take an emotional step down and move
towards a more normal social reaction to the situation he was
in. Just so, the MD had a huge impact on way others in his
organisations felt as well as their performance in their roles,
simply by his presence and his integrity about his state of
mind: optimistic or pessimistic; excited or depressed; angry
or calm. He drew others towards him, and made them
equal partners in the human process that underpinned the
commercial process.
Emotional intelligence and
relationships
So here we have it. Emotional intelligence is, in essence, a
way in which we can manage our relationships. The MD was
trusted as a person, not as a consequence of his role, or
authority, or even because of certain specific actions (though
these are clues to his underlying trustworthiness); he was
trusted because he was managing an array of relationships in
which the needs of other people may have been very different.
When we consider our behaviour, we cannot consider it in a
vacuum. We are part of a network of relationships—at home,
at work, in our social life. Each of the people we encounter
brings their own set of needs, expectations, values, prejudices,
traits and motives.
Whenever we meet others, there is an interaction between
our set of needs, expectations, values, etc., and theirs. But our
needs, expectations, and so on do not stay the same from day
to day or from hour to hour; and others are similarly volatile.
This is why emotional intelligence is such an active capability.
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Every interaction is different. Every encounter demands a
fresh interpretation; whether consciously or not.
If we think about what this means for our development of
emotional intelligence, it neither focuses us exclusively on
our own thoughts, feelings and actions, nor on the thoughts,
feelings and actions of the other person, but on the relation-
ship represented by the interaction of our thoughts, feelings
and actions.
Figure 3: EI Lies in the Relationship
So we should consider neither just the “I”, nor just the “Thou”
(note the singular), but the “Us”—the relationship between us.
This is principally because our behaviour is a function of who
we are as a person and the situation we are in. Part of the situ-
ation is the other person, and the consequence is that we need
to manage a relationship if we want to manage our behaviour.
Between two people this can get very complex. In groups, it
can be overwhelming. It is not my purpose to discuss group
dynamics, so let’s focus on a simple model to help us think
about one-to-one relationships.
Traits—the damage our parents did...
Can you remember the words your parents most often used
when they were tired or under stress or seeking to encourage
you? “Hurry up!,” “Don’t do that!,” “Try your hardest!,” and
so on. If you are now a parent, do you hear yourself saying
the same sorts of things to your children?
Traits are very powerful. We learn them when very young
to receive rewards or mitigate anxieties. By the time we are
grown-ups, the rationale for our traits may be historical,
but they have become a powerful and enduring set of charac-
teristics of which we may not be conscious, and which may
have little current utility.
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6 Why Are Relationships the Heart of Emotional Intelligence?
However, all traits have positive and negative aspect, and
may be triggered more or less easily under different conditions
of stress. Self-awareness is the ability to understand when
and how we get triggered into a pattern of behaviour that is
unhelpful to us or to others. Let me give you an example
from my own experience.
I have a son who is now four years old, but who was three at
the time of this event. George presented himself proudly, fully
dressed, ready for school, but with his shoes on the wrong
feet. Because he had dressed himself, he was late for school
and I was late for the office.
Figure 4: The Deadly Embrace
Me: George, you’ve got your shoes on the wrong feet.
[Thinking: We’ll be late if we don’t go now.]
George: I like them like this.
[Thinking: I’ve just got dressed all by myself!]
Me: Why don’t I take your shoes off and put them on
the right feet?
[Thinking: I really must get to the office soon, or
I’ll miss the meeting.]
George lies down and kicks his feet in the air.
George: No!
[Thinking: He doesn’t think I can do this myself—
I’ll show him!]
I pick George up and put him on the stairs so I can
sort his shoes out.
Me: Please stop kicking me, we really have to go...
[Thinking: I have totally lost control...aarrgghh!]
I don’t think I need to go on! All parents will recognise this.
My “be perfect” met George’s “try hard,” and we ended up
cross, unhappy and even later than we would have been if I
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had strapped him down in the car before starting to criticise
his ability to dress himself.
As adults, we carry around with us all the injunctions, fears,
exuberance, and social training that we had as youngsters.
And that means all of us. All of the people you meet around
boardroom tables, in doctor’s surgeries, at football matches, in
the bedroom...wherever.
Learning to recognise our traits, to bring them to awareness,
to exercise choice about when to employ them. This is the
beginning of emotional intelligence. Learning to recognise
others’ traits, and to understand how they might affect us; this
is far more important; this is an understanding of the dynamics
of relationships.
If you do not understand the relationships you have with
others at home, at work and in the rest of your social life, you
cannot make choices about your emotions and the effect they
have on others’ concerns, feelings, or motivation.
Developing emotional intelligence
competencies
Think about that for a moment. What do you do to moderate
or modify your emotional state before you reach your offices?
To what extent do you, consciously or unconsciously, bring
your personal emotional baggage to work, and what effect
does this have on your colleagues? This might give you a
shock of recognition that you need to become more aware of
the unintended effects you have on others.
You can help people at all levels in an organisation to change
and develop their ability to perform effectively, both as an
individual contributor, and as a leader or colleague of others
only if they want to change themselves.
But the problem with so much effort in training and develop-
ment activity is that it suffers from what I call the “New
Year’s Resolution Syndrome.” Without dealing with a series
of obstacles to change, our personal development plan remains
just that: a plan. There is a deep-seated need for stability and
continuity; for maintaining habits that have become comfort-
able however disabling or damaging they may be. No external
training, no exhortations, no threats can make an individual
change in the long term. Goleman reports research in the
USA showing that billions of dollars are wasted every year
on training that delivers no discernible long-term benefit to
the companies that pay for it.
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The problem of inertia
Even in matters of life and death we are prone to inertia.
Smokers, for example, delude themselves daily. I, for my
part, look in the mirror and see a trim 25-year-old with a
slightly receding hairline. I screen out the reality of the fat,
bald 47-year-old father of four who—if he doesn’t do
something about his life habits—will never see his children
grow to adulthood.
Figure 5
We are like a donkey stubbornly lying in the middle of the
road. Its owner is shouting at it and trying to heave it to its
feet. A consultant comes along and suggests talking nicely to
the beast. The owner say that he can have a go if he likes.
Whereupon the consultant picks up a plank, whacks the
donkey on the back of the head and then whispers in its ear.
The donkey gets up and trots forward. “But you said I should
speak nicely to it,” says the owner. “I did,” replies the
consultant, “But I had to get its attention first.”
Self-directed change—getting
attention
Professor Richard Boyatzis at the Weatherhead School of
Management has spent the last fifteen or so years working
with David Kolb on how adults acquire and develop new
behavioural competencies for the long term. His conclusions,
contrary to the practices of some business leaders, do not
involve the use of planks or other heavy objects. Boyatzis
has shown that emotional intelligence competencies can be
learned and developed. Fifteen longitudinal studies of MBA
and executive students at Weatherhead confirm that people
can make genuine and lasting behaviour change to achieve
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valued objectives if they embark on a process that fulfils
certain conditions:
I The goals must be decided upon by the person who wants
to change
I They must lead to the ideal self
I They must build on the real self—i.e. the focus is on
exploiting strengths
I The plan must be feasible in your life—i.e. grounded in
reality, not fantasy
I The plan must start from your preferred learning style
I Actions must fit into the structure of your life and work.
Figure 6: The Four Steps to Embed Change
Step I – Finding the motivation to
change
There are four main steps in this process of self-directed
change, and the starting point is the psychological equivalent
of a plank. The plank is the shock of recognition that there is
a gap between how I am living and working now and how I
would like to live and work. Now the nature of this gap is not
obvious to many people. Some believe that they are already
capable enough individuals, living a fulfilling life. Such people
often need to hear, understand and accept the perspectives of
colleagues, subordinates and bosses before they can move
forward. Others recoil from the psychological danger of
exploring the validity of what they do and how they live their
life now. They may need sensitive support and counselling to
unlock their potential for further development.
As for the future, many people find it hard to be imaginative
and creative about the future they want for themselves. There
is a tendency to reach for fantasies involving wealth, leisure
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8 Why Are Relationships the Heart of Emotional Intelligence?

and limitless supplies of champagne and foie gras. It takes

time and effort firstly to recognise how dull such an existence
would be, and then to construct a personal vision of the future
that is truly energising for you. Boyatzis finds that up to 30%
of his contact time with students may need to be spent in
working on the reason to change using a wide range of
playful, imaginative or creative approaches. This is a step that
is rarely given such weight in the training and development
departments of commercial or public service organisations.
But without it, we cannot sustain effort over time.
Step IV – Changing the real or the
ideal self
Finally, we need a range of practical, social and psychological
support mechanisms to ensure that we keep on track with our
intentions. Goleman talks about “learning in the laboratory
of the job,” by which he means that there are learning oppor-
tunities all around us all the time. Boyatzis has found that
learning is strengthened by stretching this idea further and
relating our learning to as many fields of our life as possible:
work, home, church, clubs, or whatever.

Step II – The readiness to change To make this happen, organisations that learn make individual
learning a laudable and supported activity. Opportunities are
Sometimes Step I creates a sense of despondency. We feel
found for practice and experimentation. Failure is treated as
that opportunities have been missed; we have not made the
an indication of courage, with positive learning spinoffs. And
best of our life so far; we will never catch up. This is why it
learning infuses the way people and groups relate to each other.
is important not to rush into goal-setting. Focusing on our
In this process of learning and change, we may find that our
strengths, and considering what impact it would have on our
view of how we want to be in the future begins to change. This
life and work if we did more of what we are good at is the
is the start of the next cycle of learning and development.
springboard for goal-setting and action. No good sports coach
harps on the weakness of an athlete. Feeling strong and
capable is essential to improvement. Just so in the challenges Comparing traditional training with
that we face at work; while we need to have a clear-eyed view self-directed change
of our situation, concentrating on our weaknesses does not
put us in the frame of mind most conducive to learning and If you present this process to the average, hard-pressed CEO
development. We need to balance strengths and weaknesses or Permanent Secretary, among the range of possible responses,
so that we can plan our change with optimism. two stand out:

I “What’s wrong with our current training programmes?”

Step III – Deciding to act
Even then, it is important to articulate the goal in a way that is
simple to remember and clearly relevant in our day-to-day
challenges. This “mindfulness,” as Boyatzis calls it, is the
plank we use to claim a part of our attention for our learning
and change goals, even when we are busy. For example, if
you are a leader who finds it difficult to stop yourself getting
deeply engaged in the detailed work of your department, you
might boil your change goal down to a poster on your wall
with “Should someone else be doing this?” written on it.
I “We haven’t got time for all that stuff, just give them the
relevant skills.”
These are the thoughts that Boyatzis had when he and his
colleagues compared the learning improvements for students
on traditional courses with those on courses structured around
self-directed change.
Figure 7: MBA Learning Outcomes

Note that this step of establishing a meaningful goal and then

creating your own practical plan for achieving it is not the
first, not the second, but the third step in Boyatzis’s self-
directed change model. How often have you been too busy to
attend to your personal development plan until the day before
you have to pass it to your boss? And how likely are you to
deliver a plan that you did in a rush, especially if it relates to
behaviour change?
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Even for cognitive skills (use of concepts, systems thinking,
pattern recognition, quantitative analysis, use of technology
and written communications) the percentage of competencies
that improved among those students who felt in control of
their own change was significantly higher than those on
traditional courses. In the case of emotional competencies
the difference is staggering (see Figure 7 on previous page).
Furthermore, these data show that emotional competencies
can be learned. Some people may have innate gifts in this area,
just as some people are born great athletes or great musicians.
But the instincts of emotional intelligence can be developed
and improved so long as a distinctive process that fully engages
the student or the member of staff involved is employed.
The next question is whether the benefits of training and
development last longer if the self-directed change approach
is adopted. Once again, research shows that the payoff in the
short and medium term is high (see Figure 8 below).
Figure 8: How Learning Is Sustained
Moreover, Professor Janet Wheeler, who conducted this
research, has found that five to seven years after the original
course, people were showing improvements in additional
competencies, not just those on which they had already
improved after three to five years. In short, they had learned
how to learn.
What is the payoff for organisations?
Even if people learn and sustain their learning gains, the average
CEO is still unimpressed. The only question that matters to
him is: “Does emotional intelligence improve performance?”
In healthcare
There has been mounting evidence from healthcare environ-
ments that paying attention to stress and anxiety in patients
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has a hard bottom line impact. The link between depression
and illness, or optimism and recovery is now clear. But it
needs all of the hard-pressed nursing and medical staff to be
involved in creating the healthful relationships that lead to
healthy people. For example, in a study at Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York City and Northwestern
University, elderly orthopaedic patients who were given therapy
for depression in addition to normal care left the hospital an
average of two days earlier, saving just under $1,000 per
patient overall.
Other studies into the doctor/patient relationship have shown
that empathy in the doctor reduces the chances of a hospital
being sued for negligence in the event of problems later on.
And Hay Group’s own study of nurses and nurse managers
found that there were significantly better outcomes—staff
turnover; professional practice behaviours; staff, patient and
doctor satisfaction; as well as clinical indicators—where the
nurse managers created a good group work climate using
emotional competencies.
In education
Similarly, Hay Group’s research in schools demonstrates that
emotionally intelligent heads produce a “climate” in the school
that leads to higher performance. Here we can see that the
school climate totals correlate exactly with the outcomes of
inspections (see Figure 9 below).
Time and again, we find that paying attention to the
hard stuff—by which I mean feeling, behaviour and
relationships—is the essential precursor to dealing with
the straightforward stuff—by which I mean strategy,
administration, and task delivery.
Figure 9: Creating a High Performance Climate
Emo Intelligence paper 11 22 06 v2.qxp 11/22/2006 1:29 PM Page 10

10 Why Are Relationships the Heart of Emotional Intelligence?

In commerce A final thought

A final demonstration of the value of emotional competency
Leaders are now aware of much of what we have been looking
training comes from the financial sector, where it is, of course
at today: the relevance of EI, the importance of personal
easier to measure results in the short term. Hay Group provided
relationships, the research into best practice development, and
emotional competency development support for 45 sales
measurement of outcomes. But awareness and understanding
people in the insurance industry. Our client gave high quality
are not enough. Organisations tend to be highly attuned to
product- and sales-training to a matched sample of 45 other
what senior managers, and especially the person at the top,
sales people. Their intention was to run a comparison of the
actually do. Promulgating emotional competency development
two groups for a full year. They called a halt to the action
is a waste of time and money unless the leaders at all levels
research after seven months because the difference in sales
are actively engaged in living out emotional intelligence in
results was so large that they could not afford to wait another
the way they behave, the concerns they have, and the processes
five months before training the control group.
they endorse. When that happens, organisations can make
You will notice from Figure 10 below that the two groups extraordinary advances, and the people in them achieve much
were split into three cohorts: those who had performed at the greater personal fulfilment.

50th, 70th and 90th percentiles in the previous sales period.
The return on investment in the best group was over two-and-
a-half times that of the average group. In short, it always pays
to invest in your best people.

Think about that when you consider where so much public

and private money is spent. Money is often made available,
especially in the public services, to invest in schools, hospitals
and other service deliverers that are branded as failures. Is this
the right thing to do?

Figure 10: Emotional Competence Delivers Results

Emo Intelligence paper 11 22 06 v2.qxp 11/22/2006 1:29 PM
© 2006, Hay Group. All rights reserved in all formats.
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