Discerning the value of emotional intelligence: EA professionals must decide whether emotional intelligence services will benefit both their organizational clients and their own programs.

Employee assistance programs looking to expand their services while adding value to their organizational clients often find selecting new products a difficult task. As a "world of work" profession, we need to focus on enhancing employee performance while looking at our own professional competencies.

Emotional intelligence (EI), a still relatively young developmental topic, is gaining in popularity and being marketed to human resources professionals, counseling clinicians, and organizational behavior and development consultants. Performa, a division of Human Technologies Corporation, has been promoting E1 services as a value-added entree to our menu of program offerings for the past 18 months. Yet, at the same time we have been offering EI services, we have been questioning their value on two levels.

First, although an Internet search yields almost one million hits on "emotional intelligence," it is difficult to find substantial research on the practicality and effectiveness of EI programming for EAPs. There does exist, however, a growing body of literature building a case for how emotional intelligence contributes to the bottom line in a work organization (Cherniss 2002), and Performa's interviews and introductory workshops with organizational leaders have confirmed interest and belief in the EI approach to performance enhancement. Second, while Performa views EI as a practical and valuable development program for both individuals and organizations, we remain concerned about its effectiveness, which depends on a commitment by both the EAP and the end user to follow through.

This article begins to explore the practicality of EI service provision as a means of adding value to the work organization and the EAP itself. I invite EAPs that promote EI programs and services to e-mail me with their experiences.

WHY EI FOR EAPS?

EA professionals arguably are natural prophets of EI. In many of our dealings with clients we confront interpersonal relationship issues, which often involve emotional behavior. According to Daniel Goleman, an EI guru, "The fundamental task of leaders is to prime good feelings in those they lead. At its root, then, the prime job of leadership is emotional--or being intelligent about emotions" (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2002).

But just what is emotional intelligence? Definitions of EI vary, and it probably will be some time before real clarity and consensus are reached concerning definitions and the nature of EI (Cherniss 2001). Goleman, for one, sees El as pointing to different ways in which competencies contribute to important outcomes in the family, the workplace, and other life areas (Goleman 1995).

It is Goleman's view, along with the use of the Bar-On EQi inventory (developed by Reuvan Bar-On, who coined the term "emotional quotient," or EQ, as a counterpart to intelligence quotient), that has shaped Performa's understanding of EI as useful to EAP clients. While it would be a gross error to ignore the mass of literature being accumulated on defining EI, a simple definition for EAP purposes is that your EQ is your ability to effectively navigate your way through life--to be intelligent about how you emotionally behave and how your apply your cognitive intelligence, or IQ.

GOOD NEWS, QUESTIONABLE VALUE

The good news about EQ is that it can be developed and enhanced over time (unlike IQ, which is static). The not-so-surprising news is that those with high IQs don't always have high EQs, and those with high EQs more often than not were average students. Ask any group of highly regarded and successful leaders whether any of them graduated first in their class and you'll seldom see more than one hand go up, if that. But administer a reputable EQ inventory to the same group and you'll find their emotional quotients generally will be above average.

What's questionable is whether a high EQ really predicts success in work and/or life, as it is touted to do. For example, we might assume that a person with a high EQ would be a successful EA professional, but the necessary personality, level of cognitive ability, skills, and credentials would be a surer recipe for success. Moreover, there is not enough research on how working with individuals and teams with low EQs can help them become more successful.

Another area of controversy is how to measure EI. Several different instruments are available that claim to measure EI, and many quick tests have appeared on the Internet. Except for the Bar-On EQi, which was developed in the mid-1980s, most instruments are relatively new, all have strengths and weaknesses, and no two measure the same thing. Thus, assessing EI is not as simple as, for example, using the Myers-Briggs test as a personality indicator and being confident in the outcome.

Furthermore, the measurement instruments are self-reporting and are influenced by the variables and biases any individual brings to the test-taking process. So-called 360-degree inventories, such as the ECI 360 (Emotional Competency Inventory) developed by Richard Boyatzis and Daniel Goleman, are new to the field and may prove effective indicators of emotional intelligence as it pertains to career development. While the better-known instruments have been normed and validated, too many others have not.

The true worth of EQ measurement needs to be determined through a good longitudinal study using consistent instrumentation. Performa uses only the Bar-On EQi and takes note of the variables that may affect results, including several inventory questions that are consistently misinterpreted.

Lacking real clarity of definition, it is no wonder that the concept of emotional intelligence provokes varying responses when introduced to organizations or individuals. At first mention, almost everyone is interested in EI. Corporate leaders want their people to "feel good," and research consistently reports that employees who stay with companies do so because they have caring supervisors. Individual clients initially equate EI with love, hate, anger, joy--basic emotions that can lead to success or problems in relationships. So they, too, are interested in becoming more intelligent about emotions.

As pointed out earlier, however, emotional intelligence goes beyond the basics. A proper EQ assessment combined with a strategic development plan can increase individual and organizational EI, enhance workplace relationships, and add value to the employer by contributing to the bottom line. But because EI is about development, there may be a long wait for an organization to realize a return on its investment.

EI programming takes time, talent, and treasure to implement successfully. On the up side, if an EI program is successful, it can be an effective value-added product for both the organizational client and the EAR On the down side, if EI is not approached realistically, it can quickly drain the time, talent, and treasure invested in it. You simply cannot implement EI programming without first developing the competency.

GETTING STARTED

So, how do you decide if EI is the right product for your EAP and one or more of your customers? There are many questions to answer before jumping on the EI bandwagon, and one of the first is, "Why are we interested in emotional intelligence?" A big part of the answer must be, "It will add value to what we are already doing to meet the performance needs of our clients and will also complement our own mission."

If that is indeed your answer, more questions are in order. Do you see EI as a product that will sustain itself through time, or as a fad you must cash in on just to please a client or two and beat the competition? What motivates your program, and what motivates the employer(s)? Have you conducted a needs assessment, whether formal or informal, real or perceived? Are the needs of your employer clients consistent with your EAP's mission, work style, and competencies?

The next step is conducting research--a lot of it. Read about EI, then read some more. Attend workshops. Call other EA professionals already engaged in EI programming. Search the Internet. Take all the free tests available so you can experience the contradicting approaches to EI. Then arrange to take a valid instrument.

Now that you have a personal feel for El, sit back, close your eyes, and think. Ask more questions: Am I still interested in EI for my EAP and clients? What's our vision? Would we implement EI as a personal development program, an organizational development program, or a leadership, career, or community development program? Can we afford it? And who will provide the services?

Becoming certified to provide EI services can be costly. Because EI can be used for both clinical and career development purposes, professionals with both clinical and organizational behavior experience are the "right" EAP candidates for credentialing. Do you have such a person on your staff?

Even if you have the talent available, can your EAP devote time and treasure to the program? Who will market and sell it? Will you have a designated professional for the program? Can you afford another staff person?

POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Clearly, it will take money--both yours and your clients'--to make money from EI. An overview of Performa's experience with EI will provide some indication of what an EAP can hope to gain from an investment in EI.

In our 18 months of using the Bar-On EQi and complementary programming, we have administered approximately 40 individual inventories and four organizational group reports and held an invitation-only breakfast for business executives to introduce EI. We also have held three open enrollment educational workshops on EI (without test administration), held one leadership workshop on EI (again without test administration), begun conducting preliminary research on the practicality and effectiveness of the EI concept for EAPs, and developed a new competency.

We have one certified EI professional on our EAP staff and are the only known provider of EI services in our area. We do not limit our EI services to our EAP clients, and in fact less than 25 percent of our EI activity is from our EAP book of business.

On the down side, our organizational client work has yielded no developmental programming, and our educational workshops have produced few sales of instrumentation and developmental programming. We have not broken even on our expenses (which include our start-up costs of training), we have essentially given away approximately 20 percent of our inventory as promotional, and we often reduce the cost of the inventory and further programming through "special time-limited pricing."

There's more: We have no real marketing plan, our EI professional is not a dedicated EI employee, and we have had technical difficulties with our provider, costing additional time. We know that we cannot sell inventories to our everyday individual EAP clients (due to expense and conflict of interest), leaving unanswered the question of how to market to individual clients. We experienced dissatisfaction by a corporate client that decided the results were wrong, while our most satisfied clients have come from self-referrals and not from employees who are part of an organizational team. And we have discovered that the process of providing EI services can be time consuming for us and our clients.

So, have we been successful? Inasmuch as we see EI as a value-added program for both interested clients and for ourselves in building a new competency, we have been successful. But we must decide how successful we want to be with EI and whether it is cost-effective for us to aggressively market our services or to continue our EI activity at its current level as a "menu item." Thus far we do not regret investing in EI as a product, and we hope greater clarity in the field of EI will help hone our future focus.

References

Cherniss, C. 2001. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace. Jossey-Bass.

Cherniss, C. 2002. "The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence." Research report prepared for the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations.

Goleman, D. 1995. Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books.

Goleman, D., R. Boyatzis, and A. McKee. 2002. Primal Leadership. Harvard Business School Press.

Norma Montagnino-Gemza is director of Performa, headquartered in Utica, New York. She can be reached at [phone] or [e-mail].