Emotional Intelligence: Does Your CEO Have It? If not, what can you do about it?

Posted on November 19, 2018 by Jack Roddy, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Two CEO’s with similar education and experience differ in the ability to lead their management teams. Most often this difference lies in their abilities in another set of hard skills – those of emotional intelligence, (EI Skills). Successful CEOs require intellectual ability, motivation and industry knowledge but depending on their role they usually also need these EI Skills to manage key relationships and teams.
EI is an intelligence and is related to general intellectual ability or IQ. It is certainly not its opposite although many a pop-psych treatment of the topic makes that claim. EI is different. In this approach called “the ability model of EI”, emotions are a form of data and emotions can be used to help you think. You need to know which emotions work for what situation. It’s the emotionally intelligent leader who can constructively apply the power of all emotions in the right situation, including sadness, anxiety and anger. Emotionally intelligent leaders hit their targets, that’s the “what” of performance albeit the relationship is slight. These leaders hit their targets by communicating, mentoring and behaving with integrity, the “how” of performance. So EI is an intelligence – you can have a CEO who is super smart in the traditional sense as well as high EI: you need not trade off IQ points for EI points.
At the same time, not all CEO roles demand high levels of emotional intelligence. Turnarounds, for example, are often transactional in nature rather than relationship-based and EI may not be a major factor for this type of CEO. Start-ups, especially early phase, may not need a high-EI CEO although such a person could be a plus. Certainly, in a later stage of development you’ll need a CEO with a different skill set who creates and maintains critical relationships.
Consider the skills of EI:
1.Accurately reading emotions of self and others
2. Knowing which emotions are ideal (use) to get the job done.
3. Understanding why people feel the way they do and predicting how they will react.
4. Finally, effectively managing your own and others’ emotions .
None, some or all these related skills may be critical to your CEO’s success.
Once you’ve determined EI skills are important for your CEO, how do you know whether your CEO has the right stuff? While it’s not all that easy, there are two ways to make this determination:
1. Assessment (testing) for EI Skills.
There are lots of EI or EQ assessments but many of them are self-assessments, the sort with questions like “I manage my emotions effectively”. The problem is that most people overestimate their skills and while it’s interesting to know what your CEO thinks of his/her skills it often has little to do with their actual skills. There are several objective EI measures, a sort of IQ test for emotions. One such assessment has 141 items, such as showing a photo of a face and asking the test taker what emotions are expressed or providing a vignette and asking the test taker to rate the effectiveness of various strategies to effectively manage emotions . The test takes time, the CEO needs to be mentally prepped for the test taking experience and feedback requires a highly-skilled facilitator.

2. Close behavioral observation.
You can’t eyeball someone and size them up. You need to closely observe behaviors and consider bringing in a trained Assessor to gather his/her impressions after careful study. What does a low CEO “look like”? Some of the behaviors are obvious such as being abusive, overt displays of anger and so forth. This doesn’t mean anger is always inappropriate to display, it all depends on how you display it. If your CMO fails to deliver the promised plan it’s a sure bet that most CEOs would be disappointed and perhaps angry. Yelling won’t make it any better and in fact such an overt display usually backfires. But if the CEO can use the energy of that anger to motivate a heart-to-heart sit-down conversation then positive change can result. Astute board members should be good observers of behavior, especially when the CEO is under pressure. Look for how the CEO handles the daily hassles as well as the major setbacks and how she/he treats others during these times. Observer rated EI has been found to predict how good a teammate someone is, but it has limited power, so do be careful. And, ideally, emotionally intelligent board members can contribute to these observations and have significant time to observe their CEO in action.
What to do if you suspect your CEO has deficient EI Skills:
1. Self-Development: Your CEO is likely to be extremely intelligent and can acquire new skills. Self-development is possible and there are a few strategies that any CEO can learn and apply. For example, if a CEO does not always read people accurately rather than ask open-ended questions such as “what did you think of the presentation?” becomes “what 2 things should I change about the presentation?” A CEO who cannot read between the lines needs to structure questions to get good answers. If the CEO “loses” it at times emotion management strategies can be learned, whether the “count to 10” strategy (we encourage people to start with counting to 2) or preventing a blow up by simply changing the day or time of a meeting when the CEO is more focused or in the right mood. Speaking of mood, it’s easy enough for any CEO to learn how to match the mood to the task, that is, to determine the goal of a meeting and set the tone to get the most out of that meeting.
2. Coaching can play a valuable role especially if self-development falls short or if CEO does not respond effectively. This strategy can have a larger impact from an outside professional. You need to carefully vet the coach and ensure she/he has the necessary knowledge, training and experience in this EI area. You can find a lot of “EQ” coaches but fewer who can navigate the hard skills of EI. Skill development and coaching can often benefit from well-conducted, objective assessment. The biggest obstacle to a successful coaching engagement other than finding a skilled coach? Your CEO. Leaders often overestimate their EI skills and the more they overestimate the less interested they are in developing these skills and the more likely they are to question their relevancy .
3. Develop compensatory strategies internally from staff and/or Board. In this option a skilled board member or direct report may provide on-the-ground compensatory strategies. For example, we worked with a president of a company with lower EI scores whose long-serving general manager had higher scores and served as the president’s emotional eyes and ears. Choose that partner wisely – make sure the person has the necessary skills and let the CEO know exactly what that person’s role is. Set up some sort of signaling system for live, real-time feedback and support. We had a client whose support person used color coded index cards to encourage the CEO to either tone it down or to raise the energy of the room during key meetings.

Lastly, be an intelligent and educated consumer of EI: read, study and analyze the specific needs of your organization. Then you can determine whether your CEO could benefit from a slight emotional intelligence tune-up using internal resources or a major skill building initiative which is part of the CEO development plan and requires setting concrete goals and an investment of time.