In school - at least “in the olden days” - you earned your grades by either applying yourself or coasting; and you got a relatively good idea of where you stood amongst your peers, as far as general cognitive intelligence and work habits were concerned. But how does one go about evaluating one’s emotional intelligence (EQ)? What quasi-objective voice out there is going to reflect that back to you? And before we attempt to go any further, what does EQ even mean?

When Daniel Goleman published his groundbreaking book that introduced the world to the concept of EQ back in 1995, he stunned us all by saying it was even more important than IQ. And we understand, an author’s gotta sell books (although he has later said that this was misconstrued). EQ really only trumps IQ in those “soft” domains where intellect is relatively less relevant for success. In fact, thousands of studies have shown that IQ - not EQ - predicts which career rungs a person can manage.

But if you want to determine, within an intellectually demanding profession, who will become the strongest leader, then EQ is the competency that best predicts who will lead most ably. So at the very highest eschelons of business, EQ competence matters. C-Suite are hired for their intellect and business expertise - and then fired for a lack of emotional intelligence.

The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character. By the same token, the root of altruism lies in empathy - the ability to read emotions in others. In a post-911, post-COVID world, these two moral stances are most certainly called for. Indeed, deficiencies in EQ heighten a spectrum of risks from violent expression to drug abuse. In a world more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, the workplace is increasingly the arena where unmet and unregulated emotional needs are acted out.

The most ancient root of our emotional life is in the sense of smell, nestled in the ring around the brainstem called the limbic system (one of the reasons why we can’t stand certain people is that we literally can’t stand the smell of them). But piled on top of the limbic system is the neocortex - the centre of thought. It adds to a feeling what we think about it. The limbic system can still “over-ride” and call an emergency pretty much any time it likes, before the neocortex even has a chance to evaluate what is actually happening.

Our response to the alarm bell is either flight, flight, freeze or fawn - depending on the situation, our personalities, and our learned patterns of behaviour. Whatever the response, it’s swift, and pre-thought, because these neural alarms are the repository for emotional memory, and can trigger a maladaptive PTSD response. Early childhood experiences are the wordless blueprints for emotional life. What remains as adults are chaotic, inexplicable feelings - but not words - for the early experiences that formed them.

So what can we do when our neocortical response is so much slower than the hijack mechanism? Unlike IQ, which remained unquestioned as an innate quality for decades, Goleman has said EQ is a skill that can be learned. But it’s astonishing how bad people are at even naming the emotions they’re experiencing. So that’s a good place to start. Even admitting to yourself that you’re experiencing an emotion and naming it under one of eight basic primary emotion categories is a start. Most emotions fall under: anger, sadness, fear, disgust, shame, surprise, enjoyment, and love. Note the over-representation of negative feelings.

In fact, what most people mean when they talk about EQ - and why there is such a great interest in it - is basically: How do you tolerate people you can’t stand; workplaces that are dysfunctional; and leaders that are toxic? How do you deal with people who are so unlike yourself as to cause significant amounts of stress and derail your ability to do your job as effectively as you can and as well as you might aspire to? That’s the common definition of EQ.

And the answer to that is to just make better choices about where you’re going to show up and how much of yourself you feel safe to disclose. Because no amount of EQ is going to make up for a lack of psychological safety in a broken organizational culture.

So deal with your personal issues as best as you are able; actively seek out your vulnerabilities and trigger points and try to do something about them - possibly work with the help of a psychologist or coach; and develop the skills and strategies required to become both more resilient and get better at choosing workplaces that are right for you.

And this ties in to another type of intelligence: Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Although Howard Gardner posits 11 types of intelligence: visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, musical-rhythmic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and bodily-kinesthetic, not all of these are necessarily applicable to the workplace. But since CQ is not only the awareness of difference, but the curiosity to learn more and the desire to work these learnings into one’s own world view - it’s a concept worth exploring. I’ll draw on some of my own research to help explain.

Organizationally, CQ implies opportunity for growth and relationship building, with the understanding that it’s a continuous process of changing the way we do work, in a way that allows us to do so more harmoniously, productively, and successfully. This is contrary to the opinion of many people in the workplace, who express notions such as: “Cultural intelligence depends on the experience within your family of origin. No matter how many trainings you take, it’s hard-wired” (Garleff 2017).

Racism may be learned at home, but is definitively NOT hard-wired. Neither is homophobia, or any other kind of prejudice. In fact, one of the best indicators of cultural intelligence is the ability to embrace ambiguity and to change one’s mindset. One interviewee (Garleff 2017) expressed it this way: “White privilege? All they’ve ever seen is the way things are supposed to be, not the way it is NOT supposed to be in how you are treated.”

Fundamentally, CQ is the profound understanding of one’s own positionality and access to opportunity — and the willingness to take the position of the ‘Other’ in order to understand one’s own worldview through their eyes. Moreover, it’s an awareness that one’s own cultural habits, moral compass and traditions may, in fact, be offensive to others. What is ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and ‘familiar’ in one culture, may well be completely alien to another.

Furthermore, one must not conflate ‘culture’ with ‘ethnicity’ or ‘nationality’ — or worse, notions of ‘race’. Culture refers to the shared understandings, gestures, manners, values, mores, and ways of communicating within any group of people who define themselves as sharing both a sense of belonging and a sense of history. Hence: corporate and organizational culture, LGBTQ2S culture, military culture, and so on.

Neither IQ, EQ, nor CQ, is innate. These are not fixed measures of ability or limitations that one is born with; rather, they can grow or even stagnate over time. Rooted in self-awareness and closely related to EQ, CQ is decisively contingent on the awareness that we each are at different points within the experience of cultural intelligence. A person with high CQ is adept at pattern recognition, able to differentiate between personality and group; between attributes that are neither universal nor idiosyncratic. The expansive spectrum that lies between those two poles — is culture.

Another interviewee explained: “The front-line learning from clients shapes you as staff. One hour with a client and you download their experiences, their struggles. If that doesn’t affect you, you are stone-hearted. That has been a transformation.” (Garleff ). One never ‘arrives’ at cultural intelligence, just as one never stops aging. It is a process through time, space, and communication — both overt and covert, conscious and unconscious, individual and collective.

CQ is dependent on gender, age, ethnicity, personality, language fluency, mental and physical abilities, family of origin, community support, wealth or poverty, school and travel experience, education — and myriad other factors. It is complex, messy and elusive, like most social phenomena. There is never ‘one answer’, it is never static; and must be seen as a set tools rather than an accomplishment or destination. It is a reflexive verb rather than a quantifiable noun; constructivist rather than reflective of an objective ontological reality.

About the Author

Anna is an organizational psychologist and executive coach, with a special interest in all things technology. We’re part of the team at Garleff Coaching and Consulting Group. If this article has struck a chord, please let us know.
Anna Garleff Cell: +1 587 224 3793 / anna@garleffcoaching.com
www.garleffcoaching.com