Equest Asia

Positive Emotions Drive People. People Drive Performance

Is EQ More Important Than IQ?

eq-eight

An excellent CV doesn’t by itself imply that an employee will get along well with their peers, managers, and clients.   Nor how they will cope with stress or unplanned changes. Their levels of motivation, optimism, patience, and self-confidence can’t be assessed in a CV!

Traditional academic aptitude, school grades, and advanced credentials simply did not predict how well people would perform on the job or whether they would succeed in life. - Daniel Goleman summarising the findings of Professor David McClelland's 1973 landmark paper 'Testing for Competence rather than Intelligence'.

In 1998 Daniel Goleman conducted a survey of American businesses which revealed that more than half of employees lacked the motivation to keep learning and improving in their job.  40%  were found to be unable to work cooperatively with fellow employees, and just 19% applying for entry-level jobs had the required self-discipline to perform their required duties.

Observations from Psychology.about.com

  • Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.
  • IQ alone is not enough; EQ also matters. In fact, psychologists generally agree that among the ingredients for success, IQ counts for roughly 10% (at best 25%); the rest depends on everything else—including EQ.
  • A national insurance company found that sales agents who were weak in emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, and empathy sold policies with an average premium of $54,000. Not bad, right? Well, compared to agents who scored high in a majority of emotional competencies, they sold policies worth an average of $114,000.”