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Advance praise for The EQ Interview “Adele Lynn’s newest book, destined to be a bestseller, captures the vital importance and necessity of behavioral interviewing for emotional intelligence. I find myself not being able to put this book down!” —John Dickson, President and CEO, Redstone SeniorCare “Selecting the right candidate is critical. Without question, The EQ Interview will enable me to make far more intelligent and informed hiring decisions.” —Bill Abbate, Director, Excell Technologies “The great challenge of recruiters is how to identify emotional intelligence in potential candidates. The EQ Interview gives us a practical guide and excellent tool to identify professionals with these skills.” —Lúcia Helena M. Meili, Human Resources Director, MPD Engenharia, São Paulo, Brazil “Using the tools in The EQ Interview, recruiters and hiring managers will get a more complete view of a candidate’s qualifications, which is sure to result in better hiring decisions.” —Jane Patterson, President, Begin Again Group, Inc. “When the concepts outlined in this book are done correctly, the hiring manager and/or recruiter can directly influence the overall morale, teaming, interpersonal as well as organizational effectiveness and productivity of the organization.” —Franky Johnson, Johnson & Lee Consulting, LLC “The EQ Interview is an essential resource for managers in all sectors of the economy.” —Darlene Bigler, Executive Director, Community Action Southwest “The EQ Interview captures the backbone of competencies that organizations must have in order to provide high quality services in today’s society.” —S. Doug Kovach, Director, Head Start, Southwestern PA “The EQ Interview by Adele Lynn is of great importance to guide the hiring professional. It drives the interview to be more objective about emotional intelligence.” —Glauce Gravena, Director, Multi-National Fortune 500 Company, São Paulo, Brazil The EQ Interview Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence Adele B. Lynn American Management Association New York • Atlanta • Brussels • Chicago • Mexico City • San Francisco Shanghai • Tokyo • Toronto • Washington, D.C. Special discounts on bulk quantities of AMACOM books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact Special Sales Department, AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Tel: 212-903-8316. Fax: 212-903-8083. E-mail: specialsls@amanet.org Website: www.amacombooks.org/go/specialsales To view all AMACOM titles go to: www.amacombooks.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lynn, Adele B. The EQ interview : finding employees with high emotional intelligence / Adele B. Lynn. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8144-0941-1 1. Employee selection. 2. Emotional intelligence—Examinations, questions, etc. 3. Core competencies. 4. Employment interviewing. 5. Work—Psychological aspects. I. Title. II. Title: Employees with high emotional intelligence. HF5549.5.S38L96 2008 658.3′1125—dc22 2008001437 © 2008 Adele B. Lynn All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest professional association devoted to human resource management. Our mission is to serve the needs of HR professionals by providing the most current and comprehensive resources, and to advance the profession by promoting HR’s essential, strategic role. Founded in 1948, SHRM represents more than 230,000 individual members in over 125 countries, and has a network of more than 575 affiliated chapters in the United States, as well as offices in China and India. Visit SHRM at www.shrm.org. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. PRINTING NUMBER 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 The Five Areas of Emotional Intelligence and the EQ Job Competencies 7 3 4 5 6 Self-Awareness 15 Competency 1: Impact on Others 16 Competency 2: Emotional and Inner Awareness 20 Competency 3: Accurate Assessment of Skills and Abilities 26 Self-Control or Self-Management 33 Competency 1: Emotional Expression 35 Competency 2: Courage or Assertiveness 39 Competency 3: Resilience 42 Competency 4: Planning the Tone of Conversations 47 Empathy 53 Competency 1: Respectful Listening 54 Competency 2: Feeling the Impact on Others 56 Competency 3: Service Orientation 58 Social Expertness 65 Competency 1: Building Relationships 68 Competency 2: Collaboration 71 Competency 3: Conflict Resolution 74 Competency 4: Organizational Savvy 78 v 7 8 9 10 11 Personal Influence: Influencing Self 85 Competency 1: Self-Confidence 86 Competency 2: Initiative and Accountability 91 Competency 3: Goal Orientation 94 Competency 4: Optimism 98 Competency 5: Flexibility and Adaptability 101 Personal Influence: Influencing Others 111 Competency 1: Leading Others 112 Competency 2: Creating a Positive Work Climate 116 Competency 3: Getting Results Through Others 121 Mastery of Purpose and Vision 129 Competency 1: Understanding One’s Purpose and Values 130 Competency 2: Taking Actions Toward One’s Purpose 133 Competency 3: Authenticity 135 The EQ Fraud and Other Warning Signs 141 All One-Sided: Too Good to Be True 142 Other Behavior Trends 146 A Word About Instinct 151 A Final Word 153 Appendix 1. Emotional Intelligence Table of Competencies 157 Appendix 2. Questions by Area and Competencies 161 Index 181 About the Author 185 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 Introduction F undamental emotional intelligence (EQ) competencies lie beneath great performance for nearly every job tackled by today’s workforce. For a hiring manager or interviewer, including these competencies as part of the interview process begs consideration. We’re not suggesting that technical skills and abilities be taken for granted. Skills and technical competence must always serve a prominent role in the assessment process. However, a growing body of evidence points to the fact that when technical competencies are equal, EQ competencies account for job success in many different positions. In fact, for some positions, EQ competencies account for a larger portion of job success than technical competencies. Leadership IQ, a training and research center that teaches executive and management best practices, conducted a study of more than twenty thousand employees that tracked the success and failure of new hires. After interviewing 5,247 managers, the study’s researchers concluded that only 11 percent of employees failed because they lacked the technical competence to do the job. The remaining reasons new hires failed were issues such as alienating coworkers, being unable to accept feedback, lack of ability to manage emotions, lack of motivation or drive, and poor interpersonal skills.1 These results provide a good indication that including comprehensive EQ competencies as part of the interview process gives hiring managers and interviewers access to new and critical information to predict a candidate’s effectiveness. As baby boomers become eligible for retirement and begin to exit the workforce, employers grapple with how to hire and train enough 1 workers to fill the void. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of the workforce will be over age fifty-five by 2010. In 2004, the number of people age forty and older in the workforce is over 56 percent.2 Companies face large numbers of new hires who will view the organization much differently than do the employees who are leaving. Commitment and retention will be a challenge because these new hires will have little invested in a company. As a result, they will have little incentive to stay for the long term if they receive a more lucrative offer from another firm. If the hiring company doesn’t meet the new hire’s expectations, that new hire will leave—causing an endless hiring-resignation cycle and a resultant gap in the skills and abilities needed for the company to compete. And this cycle will prove costly. Turnover costs range from 120 to 200 percent of annual salary, and new employee performance takes thirteen months to reach maximum efficiency. These statistics offer another compelling reason to screen for emotional intelligence competencies. Organizational commitment and retention are closely linked to emotional intelligence.3 Few would argue that commitment and retention are not useful traits. Retention links directly to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is related to self-esteem, emotional stability, and conscientiousness.4 The emotional intelligence model in this book takes all of these elements into consideration. To address and plan for future manpower needs, organizations perform skills audits that take into account the technical skills that will be needed once the baby boomers exit. Granted, hiring and training people for technical skills begins to fill the technical void or brain drain, but since various studies estimate that emotional intelligence competencies account for anywhere from 24 to 69 percent of performance success, companies waste their recruitment efforts if they don’t consider screening methods aimed at a candidate’s emotional intelligence.5 In addition to auditing the technical gap, companies must begin to audit and map the skills and competencies beyond technical excellence that drive the organization’s success. What defines a company’s outstanding service orientation? What makes a company nimble enough to act on market-driven changes? What inspires the innovation and creativity that keep a company competitive? What forces drive the integrity of and trust in a brand? These are not technical competencies by nature. Although technical excellence is a com- 2 THE EQ INTERVIEW petitive factor that can’t be ignored, the competencies that drive these intangible market advantages are propelled by the very core, or fundamental, competencies that define how a company does things. The organization’s objective becomes hiring people who can deliver the how consistent with the company’s success. The interview process gives the hiring manager and interviewer a unique opportunity to determine how people accomplish results, not just what they accomplish. This insight into how people accomplish results allows the hiring manager and interviewer to assess whether or not the person will fit within the organization. They can assess whether the potential new hire will contribute in a way that aligns with the organization’s values and behave in a way that is consistent with the company’s competitive advantage—or whether the candidate’s behavior will collide with the organization’s goals. Poor fit is one of the three most likely causes of employee turnover.6 Research suggests that fit, not skill or education, is the most common reason people fail. Fit also plays a significant role in turnover due to job dissatisfaction. This book assists hiring managers and interviewers to assess EQ competencies. It gives hiring managers and interviewers a description of each of the EQ competencies, examples of the EQ competencies in the workplace in various types of jobs, interview questions for each of the EQ competencies, and analyses of responses to the suggested questions. With these tools, hiring managers and interviewers can evaluate and construct an interview plan that gives them a more complete picture of the candidates’ abilities to succeed. Not all jobs require all the EQ competencies covered in this book. However, because emotional intelligence is so fundamental to our ability to interact with people, many jobs require at least some of these competencies. The hiring manager and interviewer must decide which competencies contribute to success in the position they are hiring for. Then the hiring manager or interviewer should select interview questions that represent these competencies. Some of the questions in this book are aimed at managers or leaders; however, most are acceptable for all job levels. We encourage the interviewer and hiring manager to record the questions asked as well as the responses. If multiple candidates are to be interviewed, a consistent approach and consistent questions produce the most unbiased results. INTRODUCTION 3