Emotional intelligence has become a formal model in its own right, but the ideas it taps into are also found in many other frameworks. For example, data from Korn Ferry Leadership Architect suggests there are many leadership competencies that correlate best with EQ, and yet we tend to value most highly the competencies that are related to “hard skills.” Just like with EQ, we can’t all be good at all competencies, but we can at least give more attention to workplace competencies that can make us better leaders. There may arise different questions, such as acceptability of whistleblowing in ethics. In case you are curious, the “soft skills” competencies most correlated to emotional intelligence are:
- Managing Conflict
- Managing Ambiguity
- Driving Engagement
- Interpersonal Savvy
- Valuing Differences
- Organizational Savvy
- Instilling Trust
- Situational Adaptability
- Collaborating
Where does personality type fit in all of this? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tool connects to emotional intelligence. While I do not know the MBTI types of Obama or Putin (nor would I think it ethical to guess), I do know that all of our personality type preferences connect to potential “gifts” of emotional intelligence, and all our preferences have potential blind spots. When I think of my own INFP preferences, I can see how these preferences help me, and how when I don’t use them in a developed way (i.e., over- or under-using them), they don’t work for me.
During times of stress (and leadership certainly can be stressful), we tend to overuse our preferences. More specifically, we tend to exaggerate the heart of our four-letter type. That part for me is Feeling in the introverted world. This means that I may get on my soapbox where only my values count and no others. I can come across as emotionally rigid and not open to anyone else’s point of view. If you are curious how this might relate to you, download the graphic below for examples for all of the preferences from a resource titled, “Introduction to Type and Emotional Intelligence,” by Roger Pearman.
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