E 1- Harnessing Emotional Intelligence for Effective Hiring: Unlocking Self-Awareness and Empathy

Organizations and hiring managers can benefit from incorporating emotional intelligence questions in interviews. Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to understand, control, and manage emotions in order to relate well with others and overcome challenges. It comprises four domains: self-awareness, empathy, communication, and self-management. EI helps leaders regulate their emotions, recognize others' emotions, and respond in appropriate ways. It also aids in reducing errors, improving job performance, and creating meaningful relationships. Effective communication and self-regulation are key components of EI. Developing EI skills is important for outstanding leadership and determining future leaders. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for emotional intelligence in navigating remote work, accountability, productivity, and communication challenges. Incorporating emotional intelligence in hiring processes can ensure candidates have the necessary skills for success. I'm your host, Laura Perez Earhart. Welcome to Coachonomics Presents Podcast, a part of the ECS Network. I'm an executive coach and have been coaching leaders for a couple of decades. And I'm also an emotional intelligence professional. Today's theme is how organizations and hiring managers benefit from incorporating emotional intelligence questions in an interview. So today, we're going to explore the power of emotional intelligence. Reality is the pandemic fractured our world. Conversely, before paying close enough attention, it's also shown us how to heal and rebuild how we engage, how we behave, how we support one another, and focus on truly what's important. And organizations today across sectors are intentionally focused on cultivating and sustaining a more resilient and holistic approach to support mental health, work-life balance, and overall well-being of their stakeholders. And one of the firm's ways of doing this today is by integrating emotional intelligence tools into their leadership trainings, for example, the interview process, and the overall performance matrix. According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report, emotional intelligence will be one of the top 10 skills employers will look out for. So what is emotional intelligence? You know, but before I dive into this, let me state that there are many models around emotional intelligence or emotional quotient, each with its own set of abilities. And they're often lumped together as, as I stated, emotional quotient or EQ in the more popular vernacular. However, I prefer emotional intelligence or EI, which I define as comprising four domains around self-awareness, empathy, communication, and self-management. All right, so what is emotional intelligence? EI refers to your ability to understand, control, use and manage your emotions to relate well with others, and overcome challenges. A key sign of emotional intelligence is your ability to let go of mistakes, embrace and accept change, personal awareness of strengths and feelings, and empathy and sensitivity to others' feelings and concerns, and the ability to manage emotions in challenging situations. Emotionally intelligent people understand that emotions can be powerful and temporary. Taking a decision or making a resolve amid anger doesn't depict emotional intelligence. An emotionally intelligent person will take time to calm their emotions before responding or reacting in, and it begins with a good dose of self-awareness. And this means you have the ability to recognize how your behavior and temperament and attitude affect others. We have the power to either influence and inspire others, or be perceived as off-putting, too harsh, uncooperative, maybe a bit reactive. Ouch. Becoming aware of one's own emotions and how they affect behavior is the step in developing emotional intelligence. Those folks who have a good grasp of self-awareness, they're able to regulate their emotions and manage tension and high stress, which is really important in today's landscape. You know, since the pandemic, over the past two and a half, maybe three years, we've seen a massive rise in suicides. Since 2020, according to the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, there were over 46,000 suicides and 1.2 million suicide attempts in the U.S. That's pretty disturbing. This includes an increase in depression, anxiety, PTSD, burnout, and a lack of self-regulation in the workplace. And if this goes undetected, untreated, not even addressed, it creates a really unhealthy workplace. My point here is those who have a good level of ER are also better to regulate and recognize their emotions, especially those of others, both negative and positive. And they're able to respond in more appropriate ways. Let me give you a real-life example. This is my story when I was an executive back in the day. I was in a meeting with a few other senior leaders preparing to discuss a project where we were getting and getting updates to receive and review where we were at as far as delivery timelines and product delivery. So this was in preparation to present our findings to the actual leader of the project. And one of the VPs in this meeting, I'm going to protect her name, I'm going to call her Karen, started to berate me directly, questioning my position and orchestration of the project. She was not very eloquent and came across pretty harsh. She was certain she knew my role in all this, and I let her rant for a bit until I finally spoke up and stopped her. I explained to her that it was obvious that she was misinformed and this was not the best reserved time to have a one-on-one discussion. Instead, we needed to put this aside and have this discussion together without the peers. So I explained to her that I understood her confusion about the direction of the project and her assumption that I was the one leading it. I quickly let her and my colleagues know that I was canceling the rest of the meeting and that she and I would discuss this issue on the side, and we would include her leader who was the actual leader of the project. So I couldn't have fired back at Karen. I could have displayed the same hostility. I could have reacted. Instead, I kept my composure. And believe me, I took a few deep breaths. But I advocated for myself, not allowing Karen's explosive outburst and negative emotional state to affect my experience. Let me be clear here, listeners. We should never suppress our emotions. This goes against basic biology. Effective leaders don't buy into or try to suppress their inner experiences. Instead, they approach them in a more mindful, value-driven, productive way that I term as emotional agility. Actually, there was a study conducted by the University of London, one of their professors and his colleagues, Frank Bond, showing that emotional agility helps people reduce errors, become more innovative, and improve job performance. Having a good level of self-awareness in this scenario with Karen, it helped me to realize someone else's emotional state and respond to it in a more diplomatic, eloquent manner and not engage in the rant. It would have exacerbated the situation and would have made my colleagues even more uneasy. Empathy is another key factor. And I'm saying empathy, not sympathy. And this is being able to understand and relate or sense how other folks might be feeling or what they might be thinking in a given situation. So, do we even know how they're feeling? Can we establish rapport? Do we even care? Are we concerned? And do we even want to help others? It's an important leadership skill. Empathy allows people to connect on a deeper, more emotional level and creates meaningful relationships. And it also helps people to understand why. Why someone might be feeling in a certain way and respond with a more understanding and compassionate approach. And the other emotional quotient is communication. Being able to effectively communicate one's feelings is key to successful relationships. And, listeners, when I say communicating your feelings, I'm not talking about getting woo-woo or having a kumbaya moment. Or, of course, if that's the path you're going down, that's completely up to you. What I'm talking about is being able to express oneself in a moment of disillusionment, frustration, where the individual can articulate what they're upset about without becoming overly emotional and are willing to talk about it so we can all move on. People who have developed the EI skills or the EI muscle express themselves in ways that are more constructive. They can discern when it's an appropriate time to demonstrate frustration and know how to display it in a way that's more persuasive. Getting their point out without shouting, pounding their fists, or coming across in a threatening way, that can intensify the situation, hence creating a hostile work environment. And the fourth is self-regulation. This is your ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviors and manage your emotions in healthy ways. Take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances. This means excelling in both personal and professional responsibilities for the benefit of yourself, your team, and the organization. In his defining work on emotional intelligence, best-selling author Daniel Goldman found that it's twice as important as other competencies in determining outstanding leadership, which are the skills that I stated earlier around self-awareness, empathy, communication, and self-regulation. Leadership competencies are leadership skills and behaviors that contribute to exceptional performance. By using a competency-based approach to leadership, organizations can better identify and develop their future leaders. You know, once the pandemic surfaced, organizations and leaders were grappling with how to effectively work from home, whether or not to go hybrid, what that was going to look like, what it was going to sound like, since every part of our workday was going virtual. The questions were constant and consistent around accountability, productivity, and communication. I was often asked, and still am, how to reestablish those expectations and accountability, how to communicate them effectively. You know, the onset of COVID seemed to toss any emotional intelligence out the window, or at least from my lens, it appeared that way. Tensions were high, teams at all levels were battling with what the best meeting approaches would be, how to meet deadlines, how the pandemic affected their work, their performance, how it affected behavior. This went on and on. It was as if someone tossed a huge bag of marbles on a street of oncoming cars and no one knew how to navigate through it. So, why is this important to you as a listener? If you're a hiring manager, if you're an HR pro, you want to ensure that candidates you're bringing into the business have a good level of emotional intelligence. It's an important tool for successful communication, building those relationships, demonstrating accountability, having good leadership skills, managing stress, and including personal growth. EI is a tool that's used in so many different forms of dialogue today, and I reinforce it over and over. I reinforced it during the COVID, and I continue to reinforce it as a reminder to provide effective feedback instead of personal criticism and challenging behaviors, not people. And supporting colleagues through recognizing their emotions and working to reduce stress and anxiety, especially during the pandemic when there was so much uncertainty. However, this all still applies, right? Additionally, self-regulation, self-management is a highly desirable skill and is ranked as number one quality when recruiting top talent and building human capital. It's becoming the EI go-to tool during the interview process. Organizations use various personality assessments to do a deep dive into a candidate's characteristics, personality, and they want to see what's underneath the surface, right? However, we need to turn the interview process over on its head. Why do I say that? Because, listeners, today there's no denying it, we're in very different times. If firms want to stay on the competitive advantage nationally and globally, they need to involve other techniques into the interview process, such as EI. This will give the interviewer greater insight into a candidate's leadership competencies and demonstrate, you know, their strengths, their limitations, how self-motivated and adaptable is the individual, including getting a good glance at critical thinking skills, the candidate's ability to learn from past failures, how they manage work, how they manage their own performance, and their ability to influence others. So, why should you as a hiring manager make EI a part of the hiring process? Well, EI is an essential qualifier for successful recruitment and should be a major factor in the interview process when bringing in new talent. So, I was curious what other hiring managers, leaders, and other organizations are doing to inject EI into the interviews and if it's a value for them. And here's what a hiring manager and leader had to say at Stanford Healthcare. I screen for individuals who can take accountability for their actions. This reinforces a high-performing team and creates an environment where employees thrive. When you have employees in a team that have a it's not my fault syndrome, you then find yourself fighting a cancer that spreads and becomes problematic for everyone. Finger pointing isn't productive and it becomes a barrier to high performance. So, when asking EI questions, I listen for critical thinking and those who take accountability for their mistakes. And that was a quote from an executive leader at Stanford Healthcare. They have greater self-awareness. They're better with interpersonal skills and have the ability to work well with others in a more collaborative and productive manner. This is especially important in today's workplace where team collaboration is the norm, but it's also the expectation. With team collaboration comes the need to be able to recognize and manage emotions. Those with a higher level of EI can do this more effectively. In addition, they're able to manage their temperament, use self-reflection as a way to kind of do a self-check-in. They have the ability to focus and pivot between meetings and projects and go with the flow. This is especially important in high-pressure, high-performing, stressful environments. As a hiring manager or HR manager, you want your organization to know that you're recruiting top talent that can keep their cool under pressure and remain productive during the most difficult times. And also who display a good amount of resiliency. It's also important for employees to have the ability to understand and read other people's emotions. It allows them to better understand other people's perspectives, see it from a different lens, walk in somebody else's shoes. They're able to build positive, more lasting relationships. This is especially important in customer service or patient care. We're understanding the patient or customer needs and providing helpful solutions is key. For those of you who might be in a leadership role and participate in conducting interviews to hire within your own department, remember that the interview process is a two-way interview. So why do I mention this? Because when EI is made a part of the process, you as a leader should be allowing the candidate the courtesy of following up with future questions before they even accept the role, of course, if it's offered to them, and or before they onboard. This invites the candidate to take a few minutes of your time to ask questions in a more relaxed one-on-one interaction. So here's a real-life scenario of a client of mine who came to me with some red flags after he was hired within a company. After several interviews, he accepted this leadership role in a very large organization, and I'm going to call him Jeff just to protect his name. So the role was perfect for Jeff, allowing him to do what he really loved. He went from an executive to a senior executive, and he was looking forward to starting with the company, building new relationships with his peers, his boss, and his team. So he had asked his leader if he could meet with her, and she agreed. So once they met, Jeff moved in and started asking her some leadership questions, mostly about her leadership style to get to know her and, you know, how the team perceived her as a leader. So he was asking significant questions and really good questions. So by the way, for some of you out there that might be speculating or thinking, why didn't Jeff ask these questions earlier in the interviews? Well, because there were quite a few interviews, and his leader only was able to meet in one of those interviews. So in this case, that's why she extended the invitation. So again, Jeff, being mindful of her time, kept the conversations brief. But he mentioned to me that the conversations with his new leader felt rushed. She was responding to him, but very short and curt manner. So this raised some red flags for Jeff that, you know, he also stated that she seemed like she was in a rush every time and was short with her responses. And one of the last statements that she made to him was, is that it? Is this all? So this type of interaction can be perceived as off-putting, a bit insincere, not very welcoming, especially with a new hire. So she didn't demonstrate a very healthy level of emotional intelligence as a leader. My point here is, it's as important for you as a leader or hiring manager to walk the talk and display a good level of emotional intelligence, skill sets when engaging with new hires. Workers who have managers with a high level of EQ are four times less likely to quit than those with managers who have a low EQ. And the cost of not putting your best foot forward is getting a short-term employee who quits the boss, not the company. So I've shared quite a bit around emotional intelligence at this point and all the different components. So I want to give some examples and tips on weaving in emotional intelligence questions into the interview. And how to get those responses that you're listening for from the candidate during that interview. So it's beneficial to ask questions that are related to emotional intelligence. Your question should be posed in an open-ended and nonjudgmental manner. So remember, you want to design questions that are going to give you insight into the candidate's cognitive part of the brain. And this is the part of the brain that helps us understand and relate to the world around us more effectively. But also you want to include those visceral responses to your questions, which is their emotional response. So here's some examples of questions. And of course, listeners, you can listen to this podcast over again and listen for these questions and use them however they fit your need. So my first question, I've designed it in a couple of different ways so you get the gist of what I'm talking about. My first question, for example, is how do you handle stress or a difficult situation? Or I can rephrase it and ask it in a different way. Tell me about a stressful or difficult situation. What was it? How did you handle it? My next question is how do you manage your emotions when faced with a challenging situation? How do you evaluate a situation before acting on it? Tell me about a failure you had. And listeners, I love asking this question because this helps me listen for the candidate's opportunity to learn from their failures. What didn't go well? What did they learn from it? And how do they apply it today? That, my friends, is emotional intelligence. My next question is what do you do to stay motivated when working on a difficult task? How do you respond to feedback, both positive and negative? How do you maintain a positive attitude even when faced with setbacks? So, there are so many creative ways of approaching or putting your own spin on EI questions during the interview. My recommendation is that you think through the questions beforehand. Write them down. Ask a colleague or a team member to review your questions and provide feedback. Again, remember, you need to make sure that you design the questions to get the responses that you're looking for. Let's talk about the downside of not incorporating emotional intelligence into the dialogue for the interview process. It gets you a whole lot more of the same, which is low-performing teams, low productivity, higher turnover rates, lack of accountability, and poor morale. The value and the benefit of organizations such as Stanford Healthcare that are weaving in emotional intelligence into their hiring process is they get higher-performing teams, more collaboration, cooperation, and more engagement from their stakeholders. There's greater accountability, greater profitability and productivity, less absenteeism, fewer safety issues, and higher retention. So, everybody wins. The department wins, the team wins, the manager wins, and the new hire wins because they're walking into an emotionally intelligent organization who promotes wellness and overall well-being. So, institutions benefit from EI questions during the interview and can effectively evaluate the candidate's emotional and social skill sets right from the beginning. And organizations are constantly looking to promote a healthy landscape. They want to be the employer of choice, and it begins at the hiring process. So, employers today are focused on cultivating talent who are thinkers, problem-solvers, and who can handle conflict. By evaluating a candidate's emotional and social skill sets in the hiring process, the manager can identify the candidates with the necessary skill sets to succeed in a given role, especially in a leadership role today. We need leaders who have a good dose of emotional intelligence skill sets, who can navigate through critical situations, whose behavior are aligned with the firm's values. And I highlight this often with my coaching clients. It can help assess the candidate's potential and how well they fit into the organization's culture, how she or he might interact with other employees and internal and external customers, and while they're helping to maintain a successful and productive work environment. Who doesn't love that? So, to summarize all of this, emotional intelligence is a fantastic tool for organizations that are elevating their leadership standards. They're moving into an A grade of healthy performers and moving out of a D grade of low organizational performance, creating space for emotional intelligence to promote a more mindful and holistic methodology to recruiting talent who they see as the next generation of leaders. It's a good business strategy and it makes good business sense that EI is a best practice when weaved into the interview dialogue. This way, for you HR professionals that are listening or hiring managers, you can quickly assess whether the individual has those EI skill sets. Additionally, in our new landscapes, firms today are looking to maintain a healthy workplace while promoting and supporting well-being, mental health, and work-life balance. And this means choosing new talent that have a strong level of emotional and social skill sets that align with the company's core values. This includes recruiting leaders that demonstrate higher levels of emotional and social skill sets. Well, we've reached the end of our podcast. In addition to the informational podcast, I produce one-on-one coaching leadership sessions. If you're interested in being a guest or you're a subject matter expert, please go to my website, www.epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com and submit your request on the Let's Chat link. That's it for this podcast of Coachonomics Presents. You can also find me on my LinkedIn or my website, epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com. Much gratitude to my listeners. And if you love the show and learn from it, pay it forward and share my podcast with your friends. I'm Laura Perez Earhart. Until next time, stay safe and be well.