Leveraging emotional intelligence & capability

The modern organization is fast emerging as a ‘hotbed of negative emotions’. Faced with the pressures of globalization, expensive top talent, relentless demands of stakeholders, ever-expanding growth plans and technological churn, companies find their resources stretched on all fronts. This confluence of factors places an exorbitant amount of stress on chief executives and the senior management team. They are constantly pressured to achieve higher growth rates, retain top talent and provide consistent returns to their shareholders. Increasing expectations by not just the board but multiple stakeholder groups seem to have magnified the problem. 

While some CEOs are able to cope with this compounding stress, others find it extremely challenging. And while some of the outcomes of this stress are externally visible, others are internal unconscious manifestations. Some of the external manifestations are micro-management and high turnover in the top ranks with CXOs resorting to job hopping. The internal negative emotions such as frustration, despair, guilt, fear, anger, doubt and anxiety, which are more harmful, obviously, hamper the ability of leaders to make the right decisions. To handle this situation, intelligent organizations are moving towards enhancing the right brain (inspiration and emotion) of its executives. It is becoming increasingly evident that focussing on developing the right brain of executives would prepare them well to achieve superior results. As the research shows, emotional intelligence would help individual leaders in taking better decisions and formulate cutting edge strategies.

While emotional intelligence is emerging as an important element in making the individual leaders more effective, a new concept called emotional capability is emerging as a critical component for the implementation of the strategy at organizational level. In other words, emotional capability has a great potential to be an enabler for strategy execution. 

Researchers such as Szulanski, Porac, Doz and N.Q. Huy found that emotional intelligence exists in the form of emotional capability at an organizational level. As defined by Professor QuyHuy of INSEAD School of Business1, it refers to an organization’s ability “to acknowledge, recognize, monitor, discriminate, and attend to its members’ emotions and is manifested in the organization’s routines related to feelings.” Professor Huy and other academicians have suggested that collective inspiration could be fostered by developing an organization’s emotional capability. It can be built, in part, by inspiring the actions of executives, which will help manage the emotional actions that inspire people to achieve the organization’s goals. This process would facilitate organizational change and renewal, which would accelerate the feeling of authenticity, pride, passion and hope - each a key pillar of emotional capability. 

When we look at the above from another perspective, emotional intelligence and emotional capability sets the basis for a renewed role of the human resource function in organizations. HR professionals by their education and training are more oriented towards right brain thinking. In a collaborative partnership with their CEOs, HR professionals have started focusing on preparing the organization for better strategy formulation and execution. Many HR professionals look at this as a great opportunity to transform themselves into domain specialists on subjects like emotional intelligence, emotional capability and other related disciplines such as Coaching, Counselling, Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). 

In terms of HR competencies, at the ‘Self’ level, an HR professional can become more self-aware, in control of his/her emotions, practice skills like empathy, compassion and listening and be more socially adept. At the ‘Others’ level, s/he could monitor, guide and develop the attributes of emotional intelligence of the CEO and senior executives. And at the ‘Organizational’ level – along with the CEO, HR could provide guidance on how the strategy is executed through periodical assessments and building the associates’ collective positive emotions at the workplace.  

Based on the above philosophy and thought process, the Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces which is known to the world for its employee passion and commitment have embarked on a journey to further build the emotional intelligence/emotional capability of its leaders/employees. Acting as role models, the senior management team members subjected themselves to an emotional intelligence testing by using the tool, EQ-i 2.0 which measured them on 5 general areas or realms like self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal relationships, decision making and stress management. These 5 general areas are further divided into 15 sub-sections or scales. The entire CXO team subsequently spent two days in an internally designed and deployed off- site to reflect on aspects related to emotional intelligence, leadership and change. The objective of this exercise was to identify the emotional blind spots and put focus on developing these leaders and develop them as a collective entity. 

Further, the senior management also decided to partner with INSEAD to conduct a joint research to test the level of emotional capability of its employees through survey and interviewing method. The purpose of this research at the workplace is to understand the emotional capability levels of its employees and take necessary steps to further build it through necessary actions which would facilitate easy execution of its business strategy. The same is work in progress currently.

As a conclusion, reflecting on the recent views expressed in HBR blogs by Professor Ram Charan (“It’s Time to Split HR”) and the counter views by Professor Dave Ulrich (“Do Not Split HR –At Least Not Ram Charan’s Way”), one could safely conclude that HR professionals can no longer be process-oriented generalists, who handle only transactions and administrative tasks. The HR function not only needs to prepare its leaders to formulate the strategy with the right emotional frame of mind but is also required to develop the entire organization to execute such strategy with high levels of emotional capability. HR, thus, can add value by creating an enabling environment, which in turn will result in developing emotionally stronger leaders who can derive the best out of their teams for organizational success.            

When the above thoughts on emotional intelligence, emotional capability and the new role of HR were bounced off to the management guru, Ram Charan, he felt that there is a valid point in this thought process. He further felt that necessary tools could be developed to implement it effectively. If that is the case, HR folks! What are we waiting for? 

References

1. Prof. N.Q. Huy, “Emotional Capability, Emotional Intelligence and Radical Change,” Academy of Management Review 24, no. 2 (1999)