Developing High Achievers Through Emotional Intelligence

Coaching high achievers – people who are most relied upon to deliver results in an organizational context – involves a unique set of challenges. Development programs that are aimed at high achievers often share a root problem – a failure to address the fundamental characteristics that define high achievers as a group.

Compared to the general population, high achievers:

• are often stretched by the need to attain lofty goals with limited resources
• can be more inclined to focus on developing their intellectual and technical abilities, rather than their people skills
• may hold very negative attitudes towards failure

These personal factors can interfere with positive change, and if an intervention program is to be successful, it must take them into account. Geetu Bharwaney’s Developing High Achievers Through Emotional Intelligence shows you how.

Developing High Achievers Through Emotional Intelligence, a chapter from The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, provides best practices and tried-and-tested methodologies specifically designed to effect change among high achievers. In this chapter for advanced practitioners, the author presents three case studies drawn from her own experience. By comparing and contrasting the situational circumstance, methodology, and result of each case study, you’ll discover the key variables involved in a successful program.

You’ll learn how to:

• use EI assessments to identify the characteristics of high achievers in a particular professional context
• leverage the internal standards and expectations of a high achiever to drive results
• structure a program that both impacts and appeals to high achievers
• design an intervention that will produce visible and quantifiable business outcomes

This data-rich chapter includes extensive in-text references to relevant research and clear-cut descriptions of the “conditions for success.” Illustrative charts, tables, and graphs are employed to make for easy digestion and comparison of vital information. If you’re an experienced coach or consultant and you’re keen to work with high achievers, start here – this chapter is for you.

For further information, please feel free to contact Geetu Bharwaney via email (gbharwaney@eiworld.org), or via telephone (+44-1525-840090).

Building Conflict Resolution Skills with EI

Conflict is neither inherently good nor inherently bad – it can be a force for positive change just as easily as a source of dissent and frustration. It is often the manner in which a conflict is handled that determines its character, and the nature of its impact.

Conflicts inevitably arise – that’s out of our hands. But by taking an informed approach to conflict resolution and management, we can learn to use conflict as a tool for shaping positive outcomes – and that’s under our control. Knowing how to work with conflict is the key to success, and such knowledge can be taught.

In Building Your Team’s Conflict-Resolution Skills with Emotional and Social Intelligence, a chapter from The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, author Marcia Hughes seeks to help you and those you work with achieve winning results by assessing and increasing group and individual conflict resolution skills. With concepts reinforced by research and examples, this chapter will show you

• How to use EI assessments to identify and improve group and individual conflict-resolution skills.
• Which EI competencies are most closely related to the ability to resolve conflict successfully.
• How emotional and social skills can be leveraged to counteract groupthink.
• How to introduce and discuss the importance of emotional and social competencies to conflict resolution in a team setting.
• How to harness positive and negative emotional states to guide the conflict resolution process.
• How to overcome the common emotional obstacles that hinder the positive resolution of a conflict.

Learn how to make conflict work for you in this informative chapter – just one of 17 topics examined in The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, an exceptional resource comprising contributions from some of the leading authors in the field.

To order The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, visit MHS or contact customerservice@mhs.com.

Working Emotional Intelligence into your Human Capital Strategy

As top organizations replace less effective selection and development activities with ones based on Emotional Intelligence, they are beginning to document real bottom-line impact in the form of reduced turnover, increased customer satisfaction, higher productivity, better engagement, and improved leadership. Some of the most dramatic changes are happening in organizations that recognize that certain emotional and social skills are critical in specific roles, and embed these skills into their human capital strategy through selection, goal-setting, and development. These are the organizations that hone in on their star performers and figure out what makes them stand out. They then actively seek and train individuals to match these skill sets.

For some organizations, this process can seem daunting, but there are principles and best practices that apply—no matter the size, budget, sector, or culture—to help ensure that your organization determines the key aspects of emotional functioning to its best advantage.

As part of a new book entitled The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence (Pfeiffer; May 2009), co-authors Diana Durek and Wendy Gordon present the five-step process for building star performer programs used by leading organizations throughout the world. Packed with case study data and written in an actionable how-to approach, this chapter will help you

• Identify the skills that are most predictive of success in a given role in your organizational culture.
• Determine the EQ-i factors that are statistically different between high and low performance groups.
• Decide whether to apply your star performer model in selection or development.
• Create a business case for using emotional intelligence as the foundation of your learning and development strategy.
• Align initiatives such as succession planning, hiring, coaching, and leadership development with business goals.
• Understand the two major decisions organizations need to make to determine the scope of EQ-i integration.
• Master the seven best practices in implementing an EI-based star performer system.

Discover the winning formula for hiring and developing top performers in this remarkable chapter. Editors Marcia Hughes, Henry L. Thompson, and James Bradford Terrell join two dozen additional co-authors from the Emotional Intelligence community in this rich collection of knowledge and solutions that will appeal to anyone involved in developing leaders and teams. We’ll be highlighting other chapters of this valuable resource in future EI Insider Reports.

To order The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, visit MHS or contact customerservice@mhs.com.