On Monday, Caroline and Regan presented to the class about
IQ versus EQ. I thought their information was really interesting and well
presented. I have been thinking a lot about the importance of emotional intelligence
in the workplace and just in general. I think EQ plays a huge role in every
part of our lives.
While going into interviews for summer internships, I have
been talking to some people preparing for them. I have been saying that you can
be very smart and super overqualified, or you can be qualified and more in
touch with yours and others’ emotions, and the emotionally intelligent person
is more likely to get the job, in my experience. I believe that no matter how
smart you are, it ultimately comes down to how much the interviewer likes you,
or how well you are able to connect with the person in a short amount of time. You
have to make yourself desirable, sell yourself to the interviewer. Those skills
require a high EQ to enact. Even in friendships, people are more attracted to
spend time with those who understand you well and are able to empathize, sympathize,
or have meaningful conversations with you.
Having a high EQ allows a person to be more approachable
because they are more in touch with their emotions, more receptive to the
emotions of others, and more responsive in situations of conflict. I believe
that being able to connect with people and understand how to relate to other
people is the key to any successful interview or interaction. I really
appreciated Caroline and Regan’s presentation because it further supported my
theory that EQ is just as important, or even more important, than IQ.
One of my friends once told me: "your resume gets you the interview, your personality gets you the job." I agree with you that no matter how smart you may be, I think it definitely comes down to whether you connect with your interviewer and if your personality would fit in with that specific organization.
ReplyDeleteWhen I talk with senior executives I ask a few of the same questions at the end of the interview. One of them is "What do you look for when hiring leaders? Evaluating leaders?" The answer almost always has something to do with EQ. Here's a nice example from Gary Ulicny, the CEO of the Shepherd Center, the largest rehab hospital in the country: "Well, we want someone who we, who we feel, the first and foremost, will they fit in to our culture? We do some kind of personality, we also do some behavioral interviewing kinds of things to look at that. We ask questions about their sense of humor. We have created some scenarios that asks an employee to look at their compassion. An employee comes to you and their mother's dying and they can't work this weekend. You absolutely have to have them. What do you do? How do you problem solve through that? What takes precedence? We try to look for people that really fit our culture, that one, are accountable, two, they're compassionate, they understand data and how to use data to make decisions, and they're just generally nice people."
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