Emotional Intelligence – Nice, But Not a Management Tool

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Emotional intelligence measures the ability to recognize, understand, and use emotions – our own and others’ – as a guide to our thinking and behavior in family, social, and work situations. So it’s a good thing to have – it has been shown to correlate with better mental health as well as social influence, popularly called “leadership”.

Emotional intelligence (often called EQ to relate it to IQ) is a personal ability or capacity that can be developed to improve our score and, presumably, our mental health and our ability to influence people. But that’s not much help for management, which is what you need when you want to get timely results from others. Why not? Because leadership is not management. Management depends on the use of specific practices and tools, and not so much on our personal style or psychology, or even our ability to influence others.

In a nutshell, there are 4 distinct practices of management:

  1. Use productive conversations – Initiative, Understanding, Performance, and Closure – to identify, activate, update, and report on the four components of good management: (a) The goal; (b) The type of performance, e.g., efficiency, quantity, quality, effectiveness, etc.; (c) The “performance circle” of senders and receivers with whom the development of agreements for delivery of products, services, and communications will be necessary; and (d) The scoreboard tool to record the measurable status of progress with each of those components;
  2. Identify and activate each of the four components of good management – goal, performance type(s), performance circle, and scoreboard – on a regular schedule;
  3. Update and report the status of the four components of good management – goal, performance type(s), performance circle, and scoreboard – on a regular schedule; and
  4. Repeat these 4 management practices until the goal is reached or abandoned.

So, will “emotional intelligence” help with any of this? It likely will make for a more pleasant workplace, so it is a definite plus. But it does not substitute for any of the necessary practices or components of good management. And it isn’t a tool, either.

So go ahead and boost your “EQ” for mental health and influence – it’s good for you and those around you. Just don’t expect it to replace management for getting results to accomplish your goals.