CIO soft skills: Techniques to stoke your emotional IQ

From entry-level coders to C-suite executives, few have the luxury of a lone wolf mentality. Emotional intelligence and "soft" skills are must-haves for today's CIO and other IT professionals.

Research shows it's your soft skills and emotional intelligence (EI) that determines everything, from whether you get promoted to how happy you are at work. Luckily, with knowledge, awareness and practice, you can boost your EI.

What are emotional intelligence and soft skills?

Like Web 2.0 or service-oriented architecture (SOA), soft skills and emotional intelligence may be defined differently depending on who you're talking to. Soft skills are one's interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, including friendliness, effective communication, persuasiveness, etiquette and everything in between.

Emotional intelligence is essentially soft skills' more scientific and researched counterpart. Like the soft-hard skills concept, "emotional" is both complementary and in contrast to the "intellectual" or cognitive aspects of intelligence.
Both emotional and intellectual aspects of the brain matter, but scientists are finding that emotion influences everything from intelligence to life experience much more than previously thought.

Emotions at work

Although we may think we don't or shouldn't bring our emotional selves to work, the truth is a bit different. For one thing, people want to hire, promote and simply be around people they like, those who are confident, even-keeled, optimistic, committed and trustworthy.

Think of a boss you loved and another you hated, and think why. Chances are that in neither case was technical ability the determining factor of how you felt, says Daniel Goleman, co-chairman of The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. "One had EI and the other didn't."

Scientists continue looking into the nuances of emotional intelligence in the workplace, but by the late 1990s research had established its baseline importance.

For example, one-third of the difference between average and top performers was due to technical skill and cognitive ability, while two-thirds was due to emotional competence, according to a study by Goleman of 200 companies worldwide. In top leadership positions, that difference was four-fifths.

In another study of a global food and beverage company, divisions led by emotionally intelligent senior managers (as measured by Goleman's research tools) outperformed yearly earnings goals by 20 per cent.

"If you look at specific abilities, competencies that set star performers apart from average ones, technical skill is not even in the top three," says Goleman.

Think about what you have seen at work. "A lot of people write code," says Richard Boyatzis, chairman of the department of organizational behaviour at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio.

"But who gets listened to? Who is asked to work on the product development team? It's not the brainiest, but the person who works well with others." Start talking C-suite and the soft side matters even more.

"A lot of promotion is based on technical ability," says Jim Clemmer, leadership consultant and speaker, but "the higher up the ladder you go, the more important soft skills and emotional intelligence become."

None of this implies that everybody should be exactly the same or that you must be "touchy-feely" or even that you need to be an extrovert (although some outgoingness helps to connect with others).

Not everybody will have the same strengths in the same way. As Boyatzis notes, "There is an intervening issue called style."

What is emotional intelligence?

• Self-awareness: Being mindful of one's moods, emotions and drives.
• Self-regulation: The ability to think before acting and to control negative impulses and moods.
• Empathy: Being able to put oneself in another's shoes.
• Social skill: The ability to build and manage relationships and influence others.
• Motivation: Drive that is internally generated rather than resting on external rewards or financial compensation.

"At its most basic, emotional intelligence is, literally, the intelligent use of emotions," says Boyatzis.

That may sound easy, but when harried by deadlines and traffic or faced with your own or someone else's unpleasant emotions, being emotionally intelligent can be easier said than done.

Structured programs exist to boost emotional intelligence. They typically include a special 360-degree review or observations of you by specialists, as well as targeted workshops.

Next page: How to use your emotions intelligently

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