Cutting Through the Fluff: Hard Facts About EI and Employee Engagement

For coaches who are passionate about the topic of emotional intelligence (EI) and its application, the business case for EI over the last decade has usually coalesced around one of two themes.

First, there’s the body of global research that proves when higher levels of EI are present in leaders, salespeople, customer service reps or just about any role within an organization that involves interaction with other people, it results in greater individual effectiveness. Salespeople with higher levels of EI drive more sales than those with lower levels of EI; leaders with higher levels of EI are better at creating the conditions where motivation, inspiration and innovation can flourish. The research and supportive conclusions are abundant in number (for specific examples of this research, visit the EI Consortium website or the knowledge center of our website at www.genosinternational.com/emotional-intelligence).

Second, and perhaps more important, is the intuitive sense of what is possible when high levels of EI are present in business. Imagine what is possible when individuals—leaders in particular—are self-aware, empathetic, authentic, expansive, resilient, empowering and centered. These seven powerful words (mapped in the above graphic) represent the being states of the emotionally intelligent leader.
However, despite global research, powerful stories and passionate proposals, at times there is still resistance to EI. In business conversations with heads of human resources or learning and development, as well as with business leaders themselves, words used to describe EI still include discretionary, soft, new-age, touchy-feely or, worst of all, fluffy.

Often, these comments come from individuals in organizations that most need EI development and bear the greatest competitive risks from ignoring it. Many of these organizations happen to reside in “left-brained” sectors, such as technology, financial services, health care and pharmaceuticals, where rational, technical and logical thinking skills are developed, rewarded and celebrated, but inter- and intrapersonal effectiveness are often relegated to the “nice-to-have” column.

Relegated, that is, until productivity levels drop, innovation wanes, key talent is hemorrhaging and, most tellingly, employee engagement levels fall. And it is frequently when some or all of these conditions arise that executive management calls on the services of a coach or consultant.

A Tale of Two Leaders

With these client conditions and resistance to EI as a backdrop, our organization launched a global research study in 2010 to examine the correlation between leaders’ EI and employee engagement.
To illustrate the purpose of this study, let’s use an example. Think for a moment about two different leaders: one who frequently demonstrates emotionally intelligent behavior in the workplace, and a second leader who is not aware of, doesn’t value or doesn’t care about EI and therefore infrequently demonstrates emotionally intelligent behavior.

Recall the seven being states of the emotionally intelligent leader. Then, think about a leader who demonstrates low levels of EI and name the leadership qualities or being states you’d associate with that individual instead. (Some words that come to mind might include disconnected, guarded, insensitive, limited, temperamental, indifferent and reactive.)

Now, think about the two leaders’ direct reports. Which leader is better equipped to lead, inspire, motivate and ultimately engage his or her team? It doesn’t take a psychometrician with a doctoral degree to guess which leader will be more effective. Our intuition and experiences in business indicate clearly which leader is better equipped to create the conditions where motivation and engagement flourish.

Of course, intuition is all well and good. But hard numbers and facts are better—particularly when making the business case for EI to left-brained, rational, logical, technical clients.

A Global Study of EI and Employee Engagement

Genos International’s global research study on EI and engagement commenced in November 2010. The ongoing study, which now includes participating organizations across 3 continents and is growing by the month, is aimed at proving this hypothesis: Leaders who demonstrate high levels of EI in the workplace drive higher levels of employee engagement in the organization as evidenced by the individual engagement levels of their direct reports.

The structure of the research is fairly straightforward. Participating client organizations assess the level of emotionally intelligent behavior of their leaders with our EI multi-rater assessment. This behavior-based, multi-rater assessment tool reports self-perception and the perception of individuals who work with leaders, including peers, managers and, most importantly for this research, direct reports.

Direct reports evaluate the level of EI demonstrated by their direct managers and complete a supplemental 12-question engagement survey that measures their own level of engagement in three specific facets of employee engagement and specifically the degree to which they:

• Praise the organization to others.
• Perform above and beyond what is expected of them.
• Persist in the face of adversity.

Together, these three dimensions of our engagement model (and other engagement models used around the globe) correlate directly with a raft of company performance metrics, including productivity, retention, shareholder return, profitability, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Organizations with highly engaged employees out-perform their counterparts with low levels of engagement. Employee engagement, like EI, is a well-researched field with compelling business outcomes. The “hard” nature of these outcomes has captured the attention of business leaders globally, including and especially those in left-brained industry sectors. Correlate EI in leaders with driving employee engagement, and you have a powerful business case for EI.

As data continues to accumulate from around the world, it indicates what most of us already intuitively know. A sample of 99 direct reports assessing the EI of 31 senior leaders in one organization showed a positive correlation between the demonstrated EI of those leaders and the employee engagement of their direct reports as follows:

Praise the organization = +0.55 correlation
Perform above and beyond what is expected = +0.50 correlation
Persist in the face of adversity = +0.53 correlation

A positive correlation of 0.40 or above represents a strong statistical link between two independent variables. Correlations of between 0.5 and 0.6 suggest that when high levels of EI are present higher levels of employee engagement are also present.

The above graphic represents an even more compelling translation of this data. Each point on the diagram represents a single direct report, with his or her level of engagement on the vertical axis and perception of the manager’s EI on the horizontal axis. The green horizontal bar represents “engaged” employees, and the yellow, pink and red bars represent various degrees of disengagement (”nearly engaged,” ”not engaged” and ”actively disengaged”).

This preliminary data suggests direct reports who assess their supervisors at the 75th percentile or higher are almost uniformly “engaged.” More importantly, none of these individuals reported themselves as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged”—engagement levels that are particularly problematic for organizations. It’s difficult to help individuals at these lower levels of engagement shift into a state of “engagement.” What’s worse is that many have effectively retired on the job, with zero chance of reengaging.

As leaders’ perceived EI drops, levels of self-reported employee engagement begin to drift lower. To what degree does developing the EI of leaders, as a single lever that drives engagement, actually create a better result? The difference between top- and bottom-performing leaders in terms of EI appears to be between 18 and 22 percentage points. In other words, by developing the EI of its leaders as a single engagement driver, an organization could see a lift of 18 to 22 engagement points on a 100-point scale.

From Discretionary to Mission Critical

This study’s results are preliminary. More extensive global research will be published in the coming months about the correlations between the EI of leaders and employee engagement. But the data is clear and compelling—and what was once intuitive is now becoming fact. By developing the EI of their leaders, businesses can boost employee engagement.

The next time a potential client says to you that EI is soft, fluffy or discretionary, pull out some hard facts that will help him or her to see EI development in a new and different light.