Emotional Intelligence in the workplace has historically been cast as a warm and fuzzy, nice-to-have — but definitely not needed — soft skill.
Say you’re hiring a programmer. They’re just going to be shut in their office crunching code all day, so their personality and EQ doesn’t matter, right?
But every programmer today who is creating something that is going to be used by other people needs to interact with other people to understand how their code will be used.
So emotional intelligence development isn’t just critical for highly emotional positions, such as psychologists, teachers, nurses, etc. We can’t think of a single profession that doesn’t need emotionally intelligent employees.
However, not everyone is a good fit for targeted instruction in emotional intelligence development. For some people, the timing isn’t right. Others need to overcome personal obstacles before they’re ready to take on the work required of EQ development.
As behavior experts, we teach emotional development to small- to mid-sized businesses like yours. Through our experience, we’ve identified five types of people who are a bad fit for emotional intelligence development.
In this article, we’ll explore those five types of people to help you decide if emotional intelligence development is right for you.
Emotional Intelligence development isn’t for someone going through major life changes
When you go through a major life change — such as divorce/breakup, marriage, death of a loved one, or birth of a new child — emotions can be very raw. Note that this is true both in emotional negatives AND in positives.
There are a couple of reasons why this would make you a bad candidate for EQ development. For one, you’ll want to take time for yourself to grieve, celebrate, or process your emotions.
But another, more pertinent reason is that these raw emotions will skew your self-discovery. Our EQ development programs always start with this phase, which involves assessing your current grasp of the 15 emotional intelligence traits.
When emotions are high, you won’t get a clear assessment. For example, if you recently lost a job, your self-regard could be abnormally low. If you just got married, your optimism could be skewed exceptionally high.
For these types of people, it’s best to wait until the major life event passes. Then, they could be a good candidate for EQ development.
Emotional Intelligence development won’t work for someone who believes they are perfect
Most people believe they are unfinished and have room to grow. This sounds bad, but it’s totally normal: it just means that we’re typically more critical of ourselves than we are of other people.
But some people feel they are complete.. These are people who typically think they’re always right.
When people with this overconfidence receive their self-discovery assessment results, they might not agree with the data. Even if it includes feedback from their peers, their distorted view can cause them to think, “Well yeah, but those guys are just idiots.”
For people who already believe they’re doing everything right, emotional intelligence development may feel unnecessary, leaving them closed off to the valuable insights it can offer.
Someone who just started a new role isn’t ready for emotional intelligence development
If you’re brand new to a role — whether at a new company or recently promoted to a new team — it’s better to wait and settle in before developing your EQ.
This again goes back to self-discovery. Using the EQ 360, you’ll need to ask your supervisor, direct reports, and coworkers to assess your habits (not just your most recent performance).
If you’ve just started a new role, then your peers might score you low on emotional intelligence since they haven’t yet observed your behaviors and habits. And without an accurate foundation of self-discovery, you won’t be able to get the most out of your EQ development.
The good news is that you could be ready for EQ development after 6-8 months in your new role.
EQ development won’t work for people who don’t have enough time
Are you the kind of person who just changed a job, moved houses, and found out you’re having a baby all at once?
If so, then EQ development might not be a good fit for you. At least not right now.
When you’re going through so much change at once, the last thing you want to do is add more to your plate. And for emotional intelligence to work, you need to spend time learning, applying those learnings, and asking for feedback.
As with learning any skill, your EQ development isn’t going to work if you don’t have time to make it a priority.
Those resistant to self-development will struggle with EQ development
Self-development takes courage and vulnerability. You have to explore the imperfections that make up who you are.
For most people, it’s more difficult to improve their soft skills. Let’s say you want to become better at defensive driving. You sign up for a class and learn the safe following distance, you learn to leave 15 minutes early, etc.
Then you get feedback that you need to work on your road rage. Ouch. Things just got harder.
If you’re not able to look in the mirror, assess your imperfections, and commit to changing them — EQ development may not ever be right for you.
Next steps for EQ development
Developing emotional intelligence is a powerful way to increase job performance and create a better work environment.
But it’s not a universal fit for everyone at all times. As we explored in this article, certain life circumstances or personal attributes might make the journey to emotional intelligence development less effective for some individuals.
If you read this and felt that one or more felt too close to home, that’s OK. Start by taking a peek at a sample EQ 360 report, which we use in the self-discovery phase of our program, The Emotional Intelligence Journey™. This will help you gain a greater understanding of what the process looks like and help you decide if you’d be a good fit.
However, if you read this and feel ready to take your leadership development to the next level with emotional intelligence, schedule a call with a behavior expert from The Metiss Group.