Katherine Thomas of Xenium HR joins Brandon Laws for a discussion on emotional intelligence (EQ) in relation to IQ and why people, including employers, should start putting more emphasis on EQ in the workplace. During the episode, Katherine and Brandon discuss what makes up emotional intelligence, how to determine if someone has a high EQ, how people can develop their EQ, and how businesses can benefit from having employees with high EQ.Run Time: 27:24
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Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, this is your host Brandon Laws. Today I have a new guest with me, Katherine Thomas. She is on the HR team at Xenium and we are going to talk about emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, all of those things that a lot of people are talking about nowadays. So, Katherine, welcome!
Katherine: Thank you!
Brandon: Katherine, we hear “IQ” thrown around quite a bit, and we hear “EQ,” which is just another term for emotional intelligence. What are the differences between those two things?
Katherine: So, IQ is something that you hear a lot about growing up and it’s, I think, what people always consider the end-all, be-all measure of how competent you are.
Brandon: And how successful, maybe?
Katherine: Yeah, if you’re smart you’re going to be successful, that kind of thing. But something that we’re probably very tuned to in the HR world is that your emotional intelligence, your EQ, can say a lot more about you and how you effectively perform and connect with people in the workplace. You can be really, really smart and have a very low EQ, meaning you’re not very aware of your emotions, you may not be very perceptive to other people’s emotions. And perhaps you can have a really high EQ and lower IQ, but you might still be able to succeed because you have the skills to connect with people and read people, which can prove to be very successful in different industries. So they’re very different and not at all related.
Brandon: I’m sure we’ve all ran across those people who are just so smart. High level of intelligence, you can tell that they probably did well on the SATs back in high school and they performed really well in college, but they have no people skills at all. They can’t read emotions, they can’t do any of those things.
Do you find that there’s a balance, that most people have a balance, or do you feel like it’s one or the other?
Katherine: I definitely think that most people have a balance of the two. I think, though, that what might come into play—someone might be very capable of being able to manage their emotions or read other people’s emotions, but stubbornness comes into play for a lot of people.
Brandon: That’s me!
Katherine: So that can affect someone’s potential, perhaps, but generally speaking I think most people have a good balance of the two.
Brandon: Maybe this is scientific proof, I’m not an expert in this subject, but IQ, EQ, are they different parts of the brain?
Katherine: Yes. Something that, I guess I hadn’t really considered this, but I did do a little bit of reading and I don’t know where IQ is developed, but EQ is developed in the last part of the brain that matures. So the neurofibers that basically make pathways and mature after years and years of repetitive experience—that’s what develops your EQ.
There are different parts of the brain, they’re developed very differently, and while you can, over years and years, study as hard as you want, your IQ will have a limit. EQ is much more flexible, people can grow and learn and adjust their EQ, they just have to be open to it.
Brandon: You just said the word “develop,” that means it can be developed. IQ, maybe not so much? I feel like you can learn and keep growing from an IQ perspective, but EQ, to me, seems like you interact with a lot more people, you get to understand where other people are coming from, their background, then you would sort of have that empathetic view and really start understanding emotions a lot more. But it’s until you start dealing with people that you can develop that. People who are closed off, in the books all the time, isolated, they probably will have low levels of EQ is my guess.
Katherine: Yes. And people may not value that, they might have grown up in a family or been around people who value their IQ more, their smarts more, and there are certain industries that don’t value it as much, so it isn’t really a factor in their professional career.
Brandon: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. For me, it feels like as I was growing up, there was so much emphasis put on IQ. School, getting into college, even in college, I mean everything’s standardized tests, and very rarely did they ever test you on dealing with other people or working in teams and those sorts of things. To me, it seems like in the workplace, those things are really important. However, I can think, like, ok, you’re working in a laboratory, you work in certain situations where the IQ is—
Katherine: Necessary!
Brandon: Very necessary! Or you’re a rocket scientist, those sorts of things where IQ is very important. But you’re still probably working in teams in some capacity. Do you think more companies are putting a—I know it’s a long winded question, but—do you think more companies are putting an emphasis on EQ nowadays?
Katherine: Yes, I definitely think so. Your ability to work in a team, whether it’s in a lab or out in the field or doing sales, I mean, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, EQ’s still relevant. People may not realize it, but the difference between a team of people who have no EQ and a team of people who have high EQ or are aware of their EQ, there’s a huge difference. And actually I wanted to add that I think colleges are becoming more aware of this too, and it’s something that they’re teaching students to be aware of for when they’re in the workplace, not just Oh, here’s what you need to be able to know, it’s Here’s what you need to be able to do and manage and how you’re going to do it.
I recently had a conversation with one of my colleagues here at Xenium who was talking about how her daughter wasn’t getting into the school she wanted and so they had a conversation at home about how do you measure success, is it your test scores or is it your ability to build relationships and solve problems and bring people together during stress, so things like that. Not just organizations, but I think colleges are also becoming very aware of it. It’s definitely a topic that’s being discussed in society more in general.
Brandon: And I hope that that is the case! What is emotional intelligence made up of? I know there’s tons of books now written about emotional intelligence or EQ, what really is the foundation for emotional intelligence?
Katherine: What comes to mind for me with emotional intelligence is it’s your self-awareness and your perception of others’ emotions and your ability to manage your own emotions and manage your relationships. So there are actually two main categories, personal competence and social competence. Within personal competence includes your self-awareness and your management of your emotions, so self-management. And social competence is your social awareness of your surroundings and how people are perceiving you, receiving your emotions and their emotions. And your emotional management skills, so your ability to manage relationships with those people that you work with.
Brandon: It’s funny because it seems like all of those things are intertwined.
Katherine: Yes.
Brandon: I think of self-awareness, social awareness, the way you described it almost sounds very similar, but the self-awareness seems like an internal, like how am I feeling right at this moment? And then social awareness is, How am I feeling at this moment, and how is everybody else perceiving me at this moment? Or maybe on an ongoing basis.
Katherine: Right! Or, What is the mood of this meeting right now and how are people? Stressed? Should I bring up this question? It’s reading other people.
Brandon: Yes. And it’s so fascinating to me, because when you break it down, you talk about self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, these are the foundational pieces to dealing with other people, and, this is a poor word to use, but almost like manipulating in a way? It’s a terrible word to use!
Katherine: Right, I see what you’re saying.
Brandon: But it’s understanding how somebody else is going to react to what you’re about to say or how you’re feeling or whatnot and just really getting a sense for the moment.
Katherine: Right! And think about how many situations. Like, sales has to use that, they have to read the client—How should we send this message to the client based on how they are feeling?
Brandon: It’s really navigating through any situation.
Katherine: Exactly! Whether it’s conflict, or it could be a positive situation, but it’s navigating those relationship dynamics between people.
Brandon: And how often, I could think of many situations where the other person has probably a low level of emotional intelligence but you if you have a high level of emotional intelligence you’re able to read the situation and probably get more out of the interaction than if both people had no emotional intelligence.
Katherine: Right, right. Well, when I think about it, actually, I have a story. This is somebody who I know outside of work who was working with a client that was really frustrated with one of their clients and they’re in the software industry and so one might assume that that industry, historically, had not valued EQ as much. And so this client of this person I know was writing a really nasty email because he’s frustrated with this client he had. And then this person I know forced them to take a step back, think about how this is going to damage this relationship permanently. How can you humble yourself? Think about how they might be reacting the way that they are and just come at it with a very open-minded perspective, and that saved the client relationship. So in conflict resolution, sometimes you have to humble yourself. Take a step back, not only analyze how you’re feeling—
Brandon: There’s that self-awareness part.
Katherine: Yep! It’s self-awareness and then the reception. Why do I think they’re reacting the way they are? What could be influencing them and how can I make them feel like this is an okay situation for them to have this conversation?
Brandon: The words you used to describe that, how you just articulated that, is somebody who’s in a situation where most people would get angry, and maybe you are for a second, but somebody who has a low level of emotional intelligence is probably going to be reacting versus responding.
Katherine: Yep, exactly.
Brandon: Because they’re understanding their internal, their body, what they’re feeling at the moment, and then, Oh, okay, if I react, how’s the other party going to react? Well, I think the response is probably a better way to articulate it because it’s kind of coming full circle. You’re sort of understanding what the outcome’s likely going to be before you even have the interaction.
Katherine: Right, and anticipating maybe what that person might come back with or respond with based on what their reasons are for why they’re reacting the way they’re reacting. So even if it’s easy to jump to conclusions if you’re really mad at something. It feels good to kind of be mad before you think about why you’re mad. But it’s okay to go back and think about Okay, here’s what I could have done differently, here’s maybe why they reacted the way they did, maybe I can go back and acknowledge that. It’s one way you can teach yourself to be more perceptive, that’s part of what building those neural pathways is, is training yourself, literally talking yourself out or through a situation. Here’s why I’m feeling this, here’s why they’re feeling that, here’s what I’m going to do next time. That’s really what it is, is building those bridges in your brain to do that more naturally.
Brandon: If you’re going to describe somebody with high emotional intelligence, what words would you use to describe them? What would they say, what would their attitudes be?
Katherine: I would think open-minded, willing to compromise. People who are stuck in their ways may not be willing to let go of their own ideas, but the perspective of someone who has a high EQ is going to understand that they might be confident in their own ideas but a good team is going to share the best of everybody’s ideas. That collaboration, I think that collaborative mindset, you see in job postings that collaborative mindset is so important and that feeds into the whole EQ capacity.
Brandon: You bring up a good point, like you see job postings that say that. So if I’m an employer or recruiting manager or whoever I am and I’m trying to attract somebody to come work for me, what sort of words should I be using?
Katherine: Collaborative, definitely! Team-oriented, a problem solver, willing to work in stressful situations with the team to create the best solution. I see that a lot, and it’s interesting, we were just talking about EQs being more talked about. We have clients who are posting jobs, and I’ve noticed a lot of the language is starting to include more of that EQ language, so less Here’s that program you need to know, less Here’s the financial information you need to know. Though in certain positions that would be crucial! But if it’s trainable, we’ll worry about that later. If you have the skills to work with our team and work in our organization, we’ll get you there, but we want to mesh with you well, and that’s all EQ.
Brandon: I hear oftentimes that a lot of the great leaders have EQ. Why do you think that is?
Katherine: Because you have the best of both worlds. You can bring people together. If you’re a leader, you’re the face of an organization, and you might be smart but if you can lead people and people will believe in your leadership, that’s through those relationship management and building skills, people will see you as more confident and will follow you. And hopefully you have empathy for others, whether it be your employees, your superiors, in other organizations your clients, and your colleagues. It’s about people being able to look at you and trust in your skills. They say that men and women have different strengths, so women might be better with their self-awareness, men might be better with managing their distressing emotions, but a good leader is able to do both and people can trust in that. In the end that turns into good leadership, when you can get good people behind you.
Brandon: I agree. I want to dive a little bit deeper. We kind of started broad, but I really want to understand why people do what they do, in a way. You turned me on to this great TED Talk, I think it’s from 2007, it’s Daniel Goleman. He had a talk on, I don’t know if he called it emotional intelligence or maybe just empathy and compassion. I think it was more compassion-based. But he gave this example of how, I think they did the study where students would be going from one building to the next, they’re late or in a hurry, and they staged somebody, I think, on the side, bent over, having a health problem, choking or something.
Katherine: Yeah.
Brandon: Something like that. And how most people, if they were late, I think almost everybody, they actually just blew right past the person. Why, when we’re in a hurry, or feeling like we’re late or whatever it is, why do we show less compassion?
Katherine: Because we’re being self-absorbed.
Brandon: [Laughing] Great answer!
Katherine: It’s true, it’s true! We’re worrying about what we have to do, how it’s going to impact us. You know, If I’m late to class, the teacher’s going to get mad at me, I might get a poor score. That’s what we’re worried about, when in reality, if we stopped to help the person, we’d probably feel a lot better about ourselves. That shouldn’t be the only motivation, but, you know, we get caught up in how we might be impacted rather than how someone else is being impacted at the moment.
Brandon: In that same TED Talk, he talks about a lot of the activities that we do nowadays, that we’re so absorbed in, that sort of turn off emotional intelligence. What were some of those things?
Katherine: When you’re absorbed in your technology, whether that be your computer, your phone, your games, your TV, we are no longer connected to the people around us. We are connected to something that is not alive, we are tuned into something that is just feeding the need for constant entertainment.
Brandon: I couldn’t agree more on that! We have a need to be entertained.
Katherine: But we’re disconnected to those around us.
Brandon: As we have these phones and laptops and tablets all around us, and if we take public transportation or drive in a car together, we’re around a lot of people and we’re absorbed in those electronics, we’re not connecting with other people. We’re not getting to understand where they’re coming from, what kind of people they are, how they feel, how they act. So I think people who are absorbed in those electronics, what you’re saying is, they’re going to have a lower EQ?
Katherine: Right, or somebody, anybody is capable of getting sucked into their phone.
Brandon: I do it all the time!
Katherine: Yeah! You might have a really high EQ but you’re not practicing it if you’re sucked into your phone.
Brandon: Talk about the upside of EQ, what are the downsides of having low EQ? What would somebody even know? If they have no self-awareness anyway, would they even know that they don’t have it? It’s kind of a paradox.
Katherine: Probably not? I feel, and I don’t want to over-generalize or offend people, but people who have a lower EQ I think often, whether it be at work or in personal relationships, miss opportunities for growth. If you have a high EQ, you are going to more likely be receptive to feedback and change, and you’ll be more adaptable. But if you have a lower EQ and something isn’t going your way and problem-solving skills aren’t necessarily your strong suit, you might miss an opportunity to grow or gain a new skill or maybe mend a relationship. If you have low EQ, you might put blame, perhaps, and not accept responsibility. You might look internally and think, Well, I feel this way and this person did this to me, have kind of the victim mentality as opposed to thinking about the other person and how they might be impacted in the same situation. So I think there’s missed opportunities when you’re at least not aware of your EQ. If you have a bad EQ and you know it, that’s progress! But if you don’t know it and you don’t think you have work to do, then you’re going to be stuck. You’re just stuck.
Brandon: Yeah, that makes sense. So, what are some ways that somebody with low EQ recognizes that they have low EQ? What are ways they can develop it?
Katherine: It’s funny because I even tried to look this up, just how do you improve your EQ? It’s one of those things where you really have to train yourself. You can go to classes, you can get a life coach.
Brandon: Read a ton of books.
Katherine: You can make all those steps, but ultimately it falls on your lap and if you’re not the one holding yourself accountable when it comes to checking your emotions: Am I responding appropriately? What can I do to make this situation—let’s say it’s with a friend or maybe a client relationship—easier for the both of us? Am I reacting appropriately? What might their insecurities be in this situation? How can I make them feel more comfortable? Why might they feel the way they feel? And it’s just asking those open-ended questions whether it’s consciously or subconsciously. The more you do that, the more habit it feels and you’ll see progress, you’ll see improvement. Even for people with a very high EQ, that can be challenging at times. So anyone and everyone can practice that in any given situation where you’re working with people.
Brandon: This was before your time here at Xenium, but a while back, maybe 3 years ago, we read a book called The Artist’s Way at Work. And I think originally there was a book called The Artist’s Way. And At Work was more about just really about understanding you and bringing out the creativeness in you. One of the things that you had to do, it was almost like a course—you read this book and it had weekly activities. But one thing stayed true throughout the whole book. And we did it as a group here, so we really got to understand how we all felt about it. But one of the things was called “morning pages,” where you would journal your emotions, you’d just write for five minutes straight, let’s say. You would write down your emotions, how you’re feeling, you could write down anything you want. But to me, going through that exercise, when you have ups and downs of your emotions throughout the day and throughout the week and throughout the month, and it changes drastically in how you’re perceived by other people, it seems like journaling could be a really good way to sort of understand how you’re feeling.
Katherine: Yes!
Brandon: And also take a step back and see how maybe how you’re feeling would impact other people in a way. So it seems like journaling would be a good way to, again a longwinded answer, but it seems like journaling could be a good way to develop emotional intelligence.
Katherine: I think that’s a really great suggestion actually, because journaling serves as kind of a mirror, a reflection. Sometimes you’ll write something that you didn’t realize you felt and then look back at it and go, Oh, well there was that opportunity where I could have done this differently, or, Here’s where that situation turned, good or bad, and I need to do that again or shouldn’t do that again. Writing is like a mirror, so I think that’s a great suggestion.
Brandon: It’s therapeutic.
Katherine: And it doesn’t have to be like a “Dear diary…”, it can be super informal, it can be words, just words.
Brandon: It could be bullet points, it could be anything.
Katherine: It could be pictures! Whatever you want.
Brandon: Absolutely! A picture of how I’m feeling, just paste a bunch of pictures in there.
So I want to bring this full circle, we’ve talked a lot about the broadness of emotional intelligence to give people a kind of understanding of what it is and how it differs from IQ. I want to bring it back to the workplace. So if business leaders really want to bring in and develop people with high emotional intelligence, and let’s say they did that, they accomplished that, they have a bunch of people in the organization who have high emotional intelligence, hopefully high IQ as well! How does that business act? What does it feel like to work there? What did the people act like when you have a bunch of people with high emotional intelligence?
Katherine: I think “happy” comes to mind. It’s a happy workplace because if you know your colleagues have a high EQ, they probably have good problem-solving skills and can manage their stress well so that you can actually rely on them to accomplish something instead of getting stressed out and just panicking. People are going to trust each other more, they can rely on the relationships they’ve built with people to be collaborative, come up with new ideas. I think innovation comes out of people that are able to work together. So, presenting new ideas, forming task forces to bring new deliverables to whatever is relevant to the company. Here at Xenium it’d be deliverables and new procedures. I think that innovation comes out of those good, hardy relationships that can endure stress together, solve problems, and innovation comes out of that. I think that leads to a happy workplace.
Brandon: I agree! Couldn’t agree more. Katherine, thanks for joining the podcast, really appreciate it. It was a really fun discussion.
Katherine: Thank you very much for having me!