The Difference Between Emotional Intelligence and Self-Management

Wow, wow, wow.

In the last month, my head is just spinning from all of the poor decisions accomplished, trusted, leaders in business have been making.  It’s a great time to explain the difference between emotional intelligence and self-management.

LOADS of companies espouse emotional intelligence (EI) as an important leadership quality, but you can plainly see by the illustration that EI alone does not ensure good decision making?  EI has to be coupled with self-management.

EI is not only understanding what “makes you tick” and working to mitigate behaviors that might be offensive or get you into trouble (such as a quick temper) it also requires that you recognize the emotional and mental state of others and act appropriately in social situations. EI is a component of self-management.

Self-management requires self-restraint, thoughtful responses (sometimes no response), and “decorum” which is a word my mother used all the time and which I never hear anymore.

We can use road rage as an example of EI vs. self-management. See if you can label each of the options below, correctly.

Recently, in the area where I live, a young woman was stopped in her car at a stoplight. When the light turned green she didn’t take off quickly enough for the man in the pickup truck behind her. He could have:

A.     Waited patiently – really how much longer could she sit there unaware?

B.     Honked quickly – a polite “yoohoo” to pay attention

C.      Laid on his horn – impolitely showing his displeasure at how she was impacting him

D.     Put his bumper up against hers and pushed her down the roadway for .25 of a mile

Which did you label EI? (Answer: B)

Which did you label EI PLUS self-management? (Answer: A)

Which option was a big FAIL? (Answer: D)

 In case you’re wondering, the pickup truck driver chose D.  He’s now charged with attempted murder as well as various vehicular violations.

The thing I have observed with poor self-management is that the ramifications are huge. When you observe someone with poor EI you might think s/he is “uncouth.” It’s the kind of person to whom you say, “Read the room.”  But poor self-management often results in irreversible harm – certainly to the person who lacks self-management and often to others surrounding him or her.

In the illustration for this article, we have high-ranking business executives (all from the C-suite) who have had affairs (sometimes with each other), berated employees, spied on former employees, and posted shocking things to social media. If they are doing it – imagine what the “rank and file” employees are doing.

It’s time to make self-management the skill we teach everyone in our organizations. It’s not like EI – it’s not enough to know about it. We all must be able to practice self-management or companies will have to continually spend their time and money mitigating bad behavior and collateral damage.

Team Tomorrow

According to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Future of Jobs Report (Oct. 2020), a large swath of today’s jobs will be obsolete by 2025.

2025 folks!

If someone told you today that the stock market was going to crash in three years, or that your car was going to breakdown and require thousands of dollars in repairs in three years – would you do something about the situation today, or would you just wait to see if it happens, with the hope that you’ll “figure it out then.”

Too many organizations are operating with the latter strategy (although it can hardly be called a strategy).

If you’re ready to be proactive - here’s one way to be prepared.

Team Tomorrow

Team Tomorrow is made up of a “special” group of individuals in your organization who can help to define the future and what it will take to get there.

The first group to include are your boomers. Boomers are just on the cusp of retiring and right now they hold the most knowledge in your organization. They are good prognosticators because they’ve seen and weathered many ups and downs and have an historical perspective on the organization.

It’s important to capture what they know and the wisdom of their years.

Note: None of the individuals necessarily need to be leaders in the company. In fact, it might be more useful if they are not. People who are not currently leading and strategizing don’t have preconceived notions of the direction of the company.

Team Tomorrow

The rest of your selected group should be made up of individuals of all types

·        Different departments/ specialties

·        Different age ranges

·        Different experiences and exposures to other industries in their prior employment

A great idea is to ask people to apply to Team Tomorrow, with a short application and interview process. They should identify what unique perspective they bring to the discussion and provide at least one “vision” for the future.

You don’t want more than 12 individuals on the team so that team process doesn’t get bogged down, BUT consider swapping out team members every six months or so to keep new ideas flowing.  (Suggestion, every six months 3 people rotate off the team and three new people join.)

The Process

The Team Tomorrow process includes three distinct conversations/brainstorming sessions:

1.    What is happening in the world / in our industry that may affect us? How can we capitalize on that so that it’s an asset? For instance, the use of robotics and artificial intelligence is a conversation that every organization should be having right now. Computers changed the way most work was done 30 years ago and digitization/robotics/AI is in the midst of doing that again. You don’t want to be playing catch-up. (You need to come at this “what is happening” conversation from many angles: personnel, productivity, government regulations, etc.)

 2.     The second conversation to have is, What are our competitors doing? You cannot stay in your own bubble and think that you will survive the future. Your organization should constantly be taking the pulse of its competitors to learn from their successes as well as missteps.  

3. The final conversation is Who (or what) is complementary to us? In business we’ve been taught to be wary of the competition, but we haven’t been taught to look for alliances with complementary companies. Complementary industries or organizations create synergy and greater outcomes. Why did Microsoft recently buy Activision Blizzard? They are vaguely in the same industry in that people have their hands on a keyboard/device but there must be a greater synergy that hasn’t been revealed yet. This conversation is aided by the team members who have other-industry experience.

Action

The final course of action is to create a vision for the organization 5, 10, and 15 years down the road.

An activity that is often used in coaching is: Picture that you / your organization has won an award ten years from now. What is it for? What does the headline of the WSJ article about you herald? This headline is something tangible that gives the vision substance and helps your employees to know what you are working toward. 

Planning for the future is not a one-time event.

You’ll want the Team Tomorrow meetings to continue monthly and to be constantly scanning the horizon for opportunities for excellence both internally and in terms of serving the ever-evolving desires of customers. This is one of the reasons that iPhones have such loyal fans – the folks at Apple keep re-envisioning the future and presenting it to us.

As you are constantly cycling new members and new ideas through Team Tomorrow, you’ll find your organization becomes resilient and forward thinking… making it future-proof.