Did you know that Emotional intelligence is responsible for 58 percent of your performance?
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Researchers Mayer and Salovey tell us that, emotional intelligence is “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”
So what does that really mean?
It means that you need to ask a different set of questions. Questions that will help determine one’s level of emotional intelligence. Here are the top 7 questions to ask according to Entrepreneur
- Who inspires you and why?
- If you were starting a company tomorrow, what would be its top three values?
- Did you build lasting friendships while working at another job?
- If business priorities change, describe how you would help your team understand and carry out the shifted goals?
- What skill or expertise do you feel like you’re still missing?
- Can you teach me something, as if I’ve never heard of it before? (It can be anything: A skill, a lesson or a puzzle.)
- What are the top three factors you would attribute to your success?
See how these questions can not be answered by simply reading your job description? These answers are not cookie cutter, they will really make the candidate think and tell you about themselves.
Why should your candidates have Emotional Intelligence?
By ensuring that your candidates have that emotional intelligence you will be adding value to your company. Take a look at a few of these statistics about hiring candidates that have strong emotional intelligence:
- In a study carried out in a large national insurance company in 1997, they found that sales agents weak in emotional areas such as self-confidence, initiative, and empathy sold policies with an average premium of $54,000, while those strong in 5 of 8 emotional competencies sold policies on the average worth $114,000.
- 71% of hiring managers said emotional intelligence (EQ) is more important than IQ
- emotional intelligence—the ability to, for instance, understand your effect on others and manage yourself accordingly—accounts for nearly 90 percent of what moves people up the ladder
- Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, focused on the emotional intelligence skills of its sales force, which boosted annual performance by 12 percent
- After Motorola provided EI training for their staff in a manufacturing plant, the productivity of more than 90 percent of those trained went up
- Research by OfficeTeam, a staffing agency, and division of Robert Half, shows almost (95%) of HR managers and (99%) of workers agree that strong emotional intelligence is important.
