<div><em>In a business space what is actually being sought is vitality. And this vitality is what will help in the achievement of organisational goals, says Joshua Freedman. <strong>Simar Singh </strong>reports</em><br><br>The fact that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is essential for effective leadership is as far as the general understanding of the concept goes. Valued more than IQ, conceptually taught to MBA enrolees and scouted for by HR professionals, EI is a known but not well understood concept. What is Emotional Intelligence? And more importantly, can one learn to be more emotionally intelligent?</div><div> </div><div>I caught up with Joshua Freedman, an expert in the field and CEO of Six Seconds, an organization committed to creating awareness about EI to find out the same. My emotions were all over the place because of my initial inability to locate or get in touch with Josh, something that, in retrospect, was the perfect backgrounder for our chat about EI and the importance of effective communication.</div><div> </div><div>“It is actually a very simple idea”, Josh assured me, “We all have emotions- we can pay attention to them or not, we can use them carefully or not, we can just react or we can respond. So all emotional intelligence means is being smarter with our feelings. We have them, let’s pay attention to them and let’s use them in a way that is smart. How to do that is where it’s a little complicated”</div><div> </div><div>Josh’s soiree with the concept started when as a teacher in a school which emphasised on the importance of EI, he helped develop a curriculum that promoted the pursuit of oneself called ‘Self Science’. This model went on to be featured in Emotional Intelligence, the 1995 best-selling book by Daniel Goleman, as a highly teachable form of intelligence, and in 1997 Six Seconds was set up. </div><div> </div><div>Explaining the need for leaders to become more emotionally intelligent in the face of increasing complexity, market pressures and workplace diversities, Josh said that companies with sophisticated internal system, companies that have been around a long time were finding themselves rusty. What, according to him, leaders needed were a new set of skills.</div><div> </div><div>“We hire leaders based on technical skills, especially in sectors like IT, but these people are eventually thrust into managerial positions which don’t have much to do with the skills they already know. They suddenly have to interact with all these people, oil the organization’s machine. So what they need to develop is a new skill set related to EI,” said Freedman.</div><div> </div><div>One of the organisations in India that Josh has personally mentored is Hindustan Coca-Cola, which was feeling increasingly weighed down by the nexus of change and pressure that are characteristic of today’s market.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Putting Emotional Intelligence Into Practice</strong></div><div>The Six Second’s model of EI involves three steps- being more aware, being more intentional and being purposeful. “We call it know yourself which is being more aware, chose yourself which is being more intentional and give yourself which is being more purposeful. We put this in a circle and then go over and over”, Josh explained.</div><div> </div><div>Being more aware means noticing and paying more attention to things that are happening. The second step involves thinking your reactions through, weighing the different possible responses and analysing the different feelings you can have about a particular situation.</div><div> </div><div>The last step, ‘be purposeful’, involves asking the questions- Where do you want to go? What do you want to have happen? What is the relationship that you are trying to create? What is the organization you are trying to create? What is the community you're trying to create, etc? And then ensuring that the choices being made move towards that.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Emotional Intelligence And Productivity</strong></div><div>The question that remains is whether building EI related skills in organisations translates into tangible results. According to Josh, the answer is an affirmative yes, “Recently we did a project with Komatsu where within 6 months, the level of vitality in the management team doubled and we went from 8 per cent of managers who were engaged, who were fully participating and fully there, to 50 per cent. This lead to a 10 per cent increase in plant productivity”.</div><div> </div><div>The result is reliant on the fact that a manager’s EI improves employee engagement and employee engagement improves productivity and according to Freedman these results are not limited to industries like hospitality where quite evidently the employee experience drives the customer experience, but even in more traditional businesses this can work.</div><div> </div><div>“We have a case study with a poultry processing factory, we have a case study with Komatsu building digging machines. We have a wonderful case study with FedEx. So these are logistic companies, manufacturing companies, tech companies and then also all kinds of other companies-hospitality, finance where these are skills where anywhere that any humans are interacting, it can get better,” said Freedman adding that it was like the “secret sauce”.</div><div> </div><div>“Now we take it to India where we are talking about the economy- in India there are actually many economies. We are seeing dramatic amounts of change, huge amounts of complexity with people who need do things that they have never done before. How does one cope with those kinds of changes?” said Freedman, “Again, there are those on the rational side who say- yes we can have these systems, we’ve got our MBA and there are more MBAs in India that the English speaking world all combined. However, in reality they only have knowledge about knowledge and systems and they are not emotionally ready to take up the challenge or even interact with each other.”</div><div> </div><div>In his view, in a business in a business space what is actually being sought is vitality. And this vitality is what will help in the achievement of organisational goals. On a parting note he said to me, “So you think about a vital organisation, an organisation where people really feel energy and they are really committed, are doing their best, sparks are flying and they like coming to work each day. Where would that come from? It comes from emotions.” </div><div> </div><div><em>(Six Seconds has been in India for the past 5 years. They recently conducted a workshop for women leaders, INSPIRA, to explore and solve problems that they faced, using emotional intelligence as a tool.)</em></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div>
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