TRAINING FOR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

 

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers broadly to refer skills and/or abilities that enable awareness of the emotional states of oneself and others and the capacity to regulate or use emotions to positively affect role performance. As noted recently by Joseph, Jin, Newman, and O'Boyle (2015), since its introduction in the popular media by Goleman (1995), EI has garnered considerable attention in both mainstream culture and the business world. It “is currently considered a widely accepted practitioner tool for hiring training, leadership development, and team building by the business community” (pg. 298).

Despite debates over emotional intelligence as a legitimate construct (see Antonakis, Ashkanasy, & Dasborough, 2009; Locke, 2005; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008), human resource practitioners spend considerable resources selecting and training a more emotionally intelligent workforce (Fineman, 2004; Nafukho & Muyia, 2014).

Emotional intelligence was first introduced as a construct over 25 years ago (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and has been popularized as a means to predict performance beyond standard measures of general intelligence (Goleman, 1995). It is worth noting that the EI literature is largely split between two primary models of the construct, either ability-based or mixed-model.

There are specific reasons why organizations may seek to improve the emotional intelligence of its workforce. First, skills generally nested under EI constructed definitions (e.g., self-awareness and emotional regulation) are important for essential to many jobs (e.g. nurses and managers). Accordingly, needs assessments may target the value in enhancing these skills. Second, EI is so commonly thought of, particularly in the popular press and popular management literature, as something that is “good,” that it organizations are likely to find ways of developing it in their workforces in any way possible. For example, Slaski and Cartwright (2003) tested the efficacy of a EI training program, hypothesizing that increased EI could also increase one's health, well-being, and performance. Other empirical studies that investigated the trainability of EI linked increased emotional intelligence with enhanced project management, sales performance, and leadership effectiveness (Cherniss, Grimm, & Liautaud, 2010; Clarke, 2010b; Gignac, Harmer, Jennings, & Palmer, 2012).

As opposed to increasing a workforce's emotional intelligence via more long-term or costly talent management approaches (e.g., selection processes) EI training programs could provide a more immediate benefit to organizations by increasing EI among incumbent employees and managers. Thus, cumulative evidence that EI can be improved via training would argue for its use by organizations seeking to improve performance and affective outcomes for employees and managers

GENDER AS A MODERATOR

Women are commonly assessed as having higher EI than men (e.g., Goldenberg, Matheson, & Mantler, 2006; Schutte et al., 1998; Van Rooy, Alonso, & Viswesvaran, 2005). Accordingly, it might be anticipated that if EI is affected by training, the same training program should have a greater effect for men (who start out lower on average) than for women. By analogy, when there are differences in strength training reported for men v. women, it is the women (who start out on average lower) who benefit more (Ivey et al., 2000). The potential for the same training program to have differential impact for groups differing on an individual difference variable is a form of a selection-regression threat to internal validity (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). In the extreme, groups scoring higher on a pre-test would show no change from the intervention; groups scoring lower would show positive gains (Campbell & Boruch, 1975).

 

 

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