Intelligent Action: Aligning Hearts and Minds
Written by: Brett Richards, M.A.
President, Connective Intelligence Inc.
Published in AQP Journal, (Association of Quality and Participation), Winter, 2003

In the Winter 2003 issue of The Journal for Quality and Participation I proposed that learning is at the root of sustained high performance, and if organizations truly want to enhance their ability to learn, they should reflect on how well they are teaching. The theme for this issue is a wonderful example of the symbiotic relationship that exists between learning and teaching. “Changing individual behavior”, the theme for this issue, cannot occur without learning. Employees, managers and leaders alike need to learn how to change their behavior. Equally important, but often overlooked or underestimated, organizations need to learn effective methods to teach or facilitate thinking and behavior change within their institutions. In order to effectively modify individual behavior, learning needs to occur at the individual as well as the organizational level. I would argue that the speed and quality of individual behavior change is positively correlated and directly related to the quality and effectiveness of the teaching activities taking place within the organization.

Aligning Hearts and Minds

There are various types of teaching activities such as, formal training and development, performance coaching and mentoring, and of course on-the-job experiences if they are supported with suitable debrief and reflection. Another way organizations support their teaching activities is through the development of competency architectures. Over the last several years I’ve been asked to assist organizations in their efforts at creating effective leader and corporate competencies, with the intent of focusing functional management activities, as well as supporting learning and development initiatives. The pervasive challenge that many organizations face is alignment: creating a meaningful connection between the competencies (behaviors) the organization feels are most crucial to achieving their vision and objectives, and the hearts and minds of the managers who must effectively enact those same behaviors. The challenge is often framed as, “how do we get our managers to truly embrace the organization’s competencies”? Peeling the onion back further, it would seem that the real question, and indeed challenge, is more like, “how do we accelerate behavior change”? The underlying, and I believe accurate, assumption to this latter question suggests that the quicker the workforce aligns their behavior with the organization’s objectives, the more successful the organization will be at achieving desired results, such as making more money in the for-profit world or providing better service in the non-profit world.

Managing the performance of each employee in a way that ensures organizational success can be tricky for the obvious reason that every individual is unique. The best way I’ve found to reinforce and celebrate the uniqueness of the individual while providing meaningful links to their current strengths and areas of development is through mapping personal skills and preferences with organizational competencies, in the same terms. In other words, utilize the same common, business-based language to align the personal energies of the individual with the task demands of the organization. A simple and practical common language is essential in order to achieve the necessary alignment between the hearts and minds of people and the task demands associated with organizational objectives.

Without an objective starting point, it is very difficult to enact behavior change because there is no context or common platform in which to initiate development. Employees need an objective and meaningful starting point from which to embark on the task of learning and subsequent behavior change. Due to the speed and urgency in which organizations need to effect change, it becomes imperative that whatever strategy they use to change individual behavior must be practical, business-focused and tool rich. In other words, organizations need to provide easy-to-use and easy-to-learn tools and methodologies that will support the desired shifts in behavior at work and in the field.

Emotions Influence Behavior

Research shows that emotions influence behavior. Our emotional intelligence - how we use our emotional and social skills - affects our actions, our decisions and consequently the results we get. Our IQ determines how smart we may be, our emotional intelligence determines how successful we likely will be. Since emotions underlie behavior, it is possible to identify specific emotional competencies that will impact the successful fulfillment of corporate and leader competencies. For example, let’s look at the competency of Interpersonal Relationships, which one organization defined as “the ability to use one’s communication skills to build rapport and good relationships with individuals at all levels”. If you were to identify key emotionally-based competencies that would drive success with this particular competency, what would you choose? We identified the following certainly as strong possibilities:

Corporate Competency Interpersonal Relationships The ability to use one’s communication skills to build rapport and good relationships with individuals at all levels

Required Emotional Competencies (using Bar-On’s EQ-i™ Model see below) Interpersonal Relationship Empathy Self Regard Impulse Control

Discussion

To successfully fulfill this specific competency, individuals will need to maintain composure and potentially modify their behavior depending on who they are talking to within the organization (Impulse Control). They must be willing to emotionally engage in a mutual exchange of giving and receiving affection (Interpersonal Relationship). They must have a good degree of self-acceptance, realistically assessing both their positive and negative aspects (Self Regard). And they will require the ability to emotionally read other people, being sensitive to how and why others feel the way they do (Empathy). The degree to which they will be able to enact these emotional skills and abilities will largely depend on their own emotional fluency. Individuals who have strong fluency with these emotional skills will likely be more able to fulfill this particular competency.

Performance Management with Emotional Intelligence

Aligning behavioral competencies with insight on emotional intelligence provides a pivot point for employees, managers and leaders to understand their personal competence and develop practical strategies to improve their performance. It gives employees a way to connect with their organization’s competencies through their own emotional frame of reference. It offers a common language between people and leaders to engage in more productive performance-related discussions. For example, it helps to deal with emotionally charged issues such as resistance, indifference and hostility in a more adaptive way.

Motivation, Thinking and Emotional Skills

Motivation, ability and degree of confidence are strong functions of job performance. They are also functions of personal thinking and emotional preferences. The Rhodes’ Thinking-Intentions™ Profile (TIP) reflects the degree of motivation and energy level associated with particular types of thinking and particular types of tasks. How I utilize the Rhodes’ TIP and the Effective Intelligence™ system will be highlighted in another AQP article called, Leadership Development at Toronto Rehab: Aligning Thinking and Behavior. For this article, then, I will focus on aligning emotional skills and preferences to achieve better person-job fit. The EQ-i™ (Emotional Quotient Inventory) developed, researched and validated by Dr. Reuven Bar-On with thousands of people all over the world is a very effective tool at pinpointing 15 specific emotional skills. The focus of Bar-On’s research was to find out why people succeeded! The EQ-i™ is an inventory of emotional and social abilities and competencies. It is designed to provide individuals with a benchmark of their current use and fluency of emotional intelligence on a day-today basis.

If an employee’s emotional preferences and abilities match the type of emotional and social skills that are required to successfully accomplish the tasks associated with their job function then:

Their motivation to perform the job will likely increase,
Their ability to perform and/or learn the tasks of the job will likely increase, and
Their confidence in their ability to perform the tasks of their job will also be stronger

Figure 1 provides a handy model to engage in performance management-related discussions. Simply stated, the stronger the match between the individual’s emotional fluency and the unique emotional requirements of their job, the more likely they will achieve high levels of performance. Individuals new to the job, but who enjoy the right emotional fit, will be motivated to work hard, and it would be expected that they would likely achieve higher levels of performance over time.

In my experience coaching many managing and leaders I have come to appreciate the pervasive impact emotional skills have on organizational performance, as well as personal satisfaction. As leaders become aware of their unique emotional strengths and watch-outs they begin to realize a) why they feel the way they do about certain types of organizational tasks and activities, b) why they are frustrated and/or satisfied, and c) perhaps most importantly, why they are hitting a performance barrier either personally, socially or corporately. Exploration of emotional skills provides managers and leaders with new ways of understanding and changing their behavior so as to increase their personal and professional performance.

Could anyone dispute the fact that organizations today are emotionally charged environments? Concrete walls and computer chips do not have emotions, so it must be the people within the organizations who are both creating and experiencing this emotional charge. Emotions drive the behavior and performance of people within organizations.

The practical goal or business-based orientation to the exploration of emotional intelligence is to become more aware and skillful and utilizing our emotional abilities. In most organizations today, people need to increase their emotional resilience to better cope with continuous change and increasing levels of complexity in their world. A key challenge for most people in organizations is to be increasingly more skillful with the application of their emotional energy so they can respond to life’s pressures in such a way that is effective, rather than destructive or performance-limiting. The primary goal, then, should be to improve personal resilience and performance by learning to be more conscious of our emotional states and more skilful with the application of our emotional energy.

By extension, organizations who are serious about “changing individual behavior” to align with their corporate objectives should consider the pervasive impact of emotions within the walls of their institutions. Emotional energy is intellectual capital in that it is largely an invisible or intangible resource that drives the innovation and competitive power of organizations. The paradox of intellectual capital is that we cannot see it and yet it represents the true value of organizations, particularly in a global, knowledge economy. Making emotions quantifiable and visible in a practical way puts a new slant on an old challenge: managing the performance of organizations and the people within them.

About Brett Richards:
Brett is the President of Connective Intelligence. He is a performance coach and a certified North American Effective Intelligence™ Master Trainer. He is dedicated to helping people, teams and organizations realize their full potential, by helping them to transform their brainpower and intelligence into more effective action.

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