Use Emotional Intelligence to Supercharge Leadership Training Programs
Leadership in business requires a trio of qualities: character, competence, and commitment. This is why excellent employees do not always transition to become good managers; while they may be competent and perform job duties to a high standard, their character qualities prevent them from excelling when managing or working with others. Businesses traditionally focus on promoting those with the highest intelligence quotient (IQ) while providing less of a spotlight on those with a high emotional quotient (EQ).
Developing great leadership within your business requires ongoing assessment and training around emotional intelligence. While this has historically been difficult to accomplish, there are several tools and training programs available to support this type of employee growth. Companies now have the power to systematically identify and improve leadership potential – all it takes is the commitment to nurturing leaders through expanding their emotional intelligence.
Leadership character can be tested and expanded through the deployment of leading assessment tools and ongoing leadership training programs.
The benefits of implementing a leadership development program for emotional intelligence are nearly limitless. Helping more employees to recognize areas of personal growth supports ongoing development – both formally through your organization and informally through self-reflection. It’s a worthwhile investment and can even be supported through government training grants.
Emotional Intelligence Testing Tools: Develop an EQ Baseline
Is your organization serious about improving emotional intelligence and leadership character? Evaluating your team’s EQ can be difficult; with so much riding on the results of your assessments, it becomes critical to choose an evaluation tool that provides accurate results. From our experience, there are two science-backed assessments that provide excellent results and can help develop action plans for how to improve emotional intelligence:
- EQ-I 2.0 Assessment
- Leadership Character Insight Assessment (LCIA)
EQ-I 2.0 Assessment: Multi-Health Systems (MHS)
The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I) 2.0 Assessment builds on over 20 years of research performed on over 1 million people, in 45 languages, across 66 countries. It measures emotional intelligence through self-reporting and 360 insights regarding 15 traits including:
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- Self-Regard;
- Self-Actualization;
- Emotional Self-Awareness;
- Emotional Expression;
- Assertiveness;
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- Independence;
- Interpersonal Relationships;
- Empathy;
- Social Responsibility;
- Problem Solving;
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- Reality Testing;
- Impulse Control;
- Flexibility;
- Stress Tolerance; and
- Optimism.
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Our company, Mentor Works, uses the EQ-I 2.0 Assessment when recruiting and developing employee growth goals. It’s helped us build a team of more emotionally aware employees which improves teamwork, job satisfaction, and reduces turnover. Our President and Founder, Bernadeen McLeod, wrote about EQ-I and our use of MHS’ assessment tool; check it out to learn how it can help your business.
Leadership Character Insight Assessment (LCIA): SIGMA Assessment Systems
The Leadership Character Insight Assessment was developed by Western University’s Ivey Business School and assessment experts at SIGMA. It measures leadership character and provides practical self-reports and 360 insights regarding 11 dimensions including:
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- Judgement
- Transcendence
- Drive
- Collaboration
- Humanity
- Humility
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- Integrity
- Temperance
- Justice
- Accountability
- Courage
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The Leadership Character Insight Assessment (LCIA) has been used to challenge assumptions about team dynamics and transform how leaders are chosen and nurtured. It’s become the basis of significant organizational change, as documented in Taking Leadership from Good to Great, an article on shifting the management mindset from IQ to EQ and supporting EQ growth with training programs.
Leadership Training: Expanding Employee Potential
Once you’ve identified areas where your team can become more emotionally intelligent and develop leader character, it becomes significantly easier to find a long-term solution that addresses these shortcomings. While awareness and reflection can help some employees improve their emotional intelligence independently, other employees may derive more benefit from training sessions.
Like strengthening one’s body, emotional intelligence can be improved over time with proper planning and goal setting.
Building “workouts” that help improve emotional intelligence will pay off considerably with your team becoming more cohesive and aware of how their actions impact the team. Working with a trainer or “coach” to develop a targeted leadership development program can help your business achieve its goals faster and more reliably. Consider evaluating and choosing a trainer that has experience in emotional intelligence/leader character to directly improve employee leadership qualities.
Canadian Government Funding for Leadership Training
Fortunately, employers can access Canadian government grants to offset training costs and help more employees receive emotional intelligence training. If your business is seeking ways to improve employee leadership qualities, programs like the Canada Job Grant (CJG) can reduce third-party trainer costs by up to 50-83%.
Training grants can support employee development strategy and help improve EQ across your team.
To learn more about government funding programs to support workforce development, please register for an upcoming Hiring and Training Grants webinar. During these sessions, a Government Funding Planner will reveal top incentives and provide an insider’s look at how to optimize your training plans with funding.
