Once leaders get promoted they enter an environment that tends to erode their emotional intelligence. Possibly worse than metrics, companies also promote leaders for their knowledge and tenure, rather than their skill in inspiring others to excel.Ĭompanies sell themselves short by selecting leaders who aren’t well-rounded enough to perform at the highest levels for the long term. While these short-term, bottom-line indicators are important, it’s shortsighted to make someone a senior leader because of recent monetary achievements. The higher you go above middle management, the more companies focus on metrics to make hiring and promotion decisions. You might get promoted with a low EQ, but you won’t outshine your high-EQ competition in your new role. The trick is, for every title in the graph above, the top performers are those with the highest EQ scores. Even though CEOs have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace, the best-performing CEOs are those with the highest EQs. CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace. The assumption here is that a manager with a high EQ is someone for whom people will want to work.īut things change drastically as you move beyond middle management.įor the titles of director and above, scores descend faster than a snowboarder on a black diamond.

Middle managers stand out with the highest EQ scores in the workplace because companies tend to promote people into these positions who are level-headed and good with people. I found that EQ scores climb with titles from the bottom of the corporate ladder upward toward middle management. Average emotional intelligence score by job title. I discovered that the answer is yes, organizations today do promote the emotionally inept … except when they don’t. To find out, I analyzed the emotional intelligence (EQ) profiles of the millions of people who have taken my emotional intelligence test-workers from the frontlines to the C-suite. Hollywood would have us believe that the Machiavellian chief exec is still alive and well.īut that’s just TV, right? How about in the real world? Do businesses still allow these inhumane relics to survive?

Over the past century, the heartless, no-nonsense CEO has become something of an icon-and a cliché-in American society.

Emotional intelligence 2.0 bradberry