Emotional Intelligence The Myths and Science in Recruiting

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Background Over the past few years the term EQ – which stands for emotional quotient - has become

increasingly popular. EQ is being discussed in many major business publications. Harvard

Business Review in 2017 wrote “Emotional intelligence has been shown to be more important

than other competencies in determining outstanding leadership” and published a four-book

series on Emotional Intelligence. Business Insider describes how some business schools are

measuring EQ to determine which applicants to admit.1 A natural conclusion is that companies

should screen for EQ in their hiring process. Forbes, for instance, published an article titled

“Look For Employees With High EQ Over IQ”. The World Economic Forum noted that

emotional intelligence is one of the 10 required skills for the future workforce2. Many of ECA’s

clients are taking the same stance. However, we have noticed that most of our clients

attempting to screen for EQ in the hiring process find it’s challenging to do so and the results

have been mixed at best.

This whitepaper is meant to serve as a quick guide on some of the challenges you will face

when trying to hire for EQ and some of the best practices you can apply to improve your results.

1 http://www.businessinsider.com/yales-emotional-intelligence-assessment-2013- 5?international=true&r=US&IR=T 2 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/.

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Understanding how you can improve your hiring practices starts with understanding what some

of the current challenges are. While working with clients on this topic we have observed the

following challenges:

i) Many companies lack a clear definition of what EQ is

One example is a billion-dollar Private Equity owned company. Their leadership team was very

committed to hiring candidates with what they referred to as “good EQ”. When speaking with

their executives it quickly became evident that EQ meant a host of different things to each of the

interviewers. We eventually managed to narrow down their definitions to the following attributes:

A. Warm personality

B. High self-awareness

C. Ability to understand other’s emotions and motivations

D. Ability to adjust management style to various people

E. Motivates employees through an emotional approach as opposed to an analytical

approach

If five different interviewers each have their own definition of EQ, and are not aware of

the differences between their definitions, they should not be surprised when a candidate is rated

as having “fantastic” EQ by one interviewer and “terrible” EQ by another.

The other challenge with a vague definition is that you don’t know if your “EQ filter” is

actually predicting on-the-job-success or not. In order for you to see if a specific interview

screen is effective, you need to be clear and consistent about your definition. You must agree

on what, exactly, you are looking for and you must agree on how to detect those skills and traits.

Looking for candidates with that special "je ne sais quoi" will not work for hiring since you have

to use the same yardstick and look for well-defined and agreed-upon skills.

Finally, even if you are aware of the differences in the definitions used, the more traits

you add to the list, the fewer candidates will check the box on all those traits. As illustrated by

the simple Venn diagram below, unless you expect these traits to be fully correlated with each

other (in which case they are measuring the same or similar skill or trait), not many candidates

will possess all of your desired qualities. While some interviewers argue that they are aware of

Reasons

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this issue and are willing to follow their colleague’s recommendation, our experience is that this

rarely happens. Most interviewers will stick to their own view regardless of what their colleagues

say.

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ii) Measuring difficulties

Clients who define EQ in these very different ways actually reflect

how some researchers and test developers define EQ:

▪ One way that EQ has been defined is as a set of

traditional personality traits such as a warm

personality, optimism, or assertiveness.

▪ A second group defines EQ as a set of traditional

leadership competencies such as influence and

teamwork.

▪ Finally, EQ has been defined as a standard intelligence or a hard skill including

the ability to accurately perceive other's emotions and the ability to effectively

manage emotions.

It is this last definition of EQ which, to us, is a new concept and something that

companies have not recruited for in the past. It's not that optimism and assertiveness are

without value. They may indeed be important in some roles but they have little to do with

intelligence and in some cases with emotions and have been measured by traditional

personality assessments for many decades. The last version of EQ – which should be referred

to as EI for emotional intelligence, is a new concept, and perhaps a poorly-understood one.

Ability EI, which was developed in 1990 by two psychologists (John Mayer and Peter Salovey3)

is an intelligence and is related to standard intelligence (IQ). Interestingly, although not

surprisingly, the concept of "EQ" stretched Mayer and Salovey’s research to tell a powerful and

best-selling story4.

What this means for recruitment is that you do not have to trade off IQ points for "EQ"

points because emotional intelligence is an intelligence, and all intelligences are related to one

another5. You can find and hire people who are smart in the traditional sense but also are able

3 Salovey, P. & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211. 4 Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. NY: Bantam. 5 Carroll, J. B. (2005). The three-stratum theory of cognitive abilities. In D. P. Flanagan & P. L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests and issues, 2nd Ed. (pp. 69−76). New York: Guilford.

“… you do not have to trade off IQ points for "EQ" points …”

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to read others, understand people and manage emotions effectively. That is, people who are

emotionally intelligent. The problem is – how?6

iii) Why Ability EI Matters

Staying focused on EI as an ability or intelligence, which is

what is truly unique and new about this concept, we next need to

ask why it matters. First, it's critical to realize that no psychological

trait predicts the bulk of "success", despite any popular claims to the

contrary. Second, EI does not predict everything and this is key to its

use in recruiting. If you are looking for a turn-around specialist who

parachutes into a corporate battlefield then high EI may not be

necessary. Certainly, someone who manages their own emotions

well might be less inclined to burn out but generally, the skills of EI

may not matter all that much in that role or other roles that are transactional in nature. Why,

then, would you want to screen for high EI leaders? People high in EI (measured as an ability)

read the emotions of others more accurately, are more aware of their own emotions, are more

resilient, are better communicators, establish quality relationships, engage in less destructive

behaviors, are more likely to achieve their goals and do so by communicating and mentoring

people7. This last result is important: high-EI leaders are not just "nice" people, they get the job

done8. And, increasingly, in an environment that is becoming more sensitive to "how"

corporations achieve their goals, recruiting for EI may be socially responsible.

It should be noted that EI to a much greater extent predicts how managers get their work

done (r=0.52) than what managers achieved (r=0.26)9. Expressed differently, if your

organization is primarily results driven, and there is not a large emphasis on how these results

were achieved, you can focus on other factors. However, if you care deeply about how these

results were achieved (as well as what was achieved), recruiting for EI can be helpful. Even if

6 Our focus in this white paper is on emotional intelligence but it's worth mentioning that there are fairly low-risk and accurate ways to hire smart people. Colleges do that for you through their admissions process by requiring grades and results of standardized tests. 7 Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D.R. (2008). Emotional Intelligence: New Ability or Eclectic Mix of Traits? American

Psychologist, 63, 503-517. 8 For reviews of what EI predicts see Mayer JD, Caruso, DR & Salovey P. (2016). The Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence: Principles and Updates. Emotion Review, 1-11. 9 Rosete, D. (2007). Does emotional intelligence play an important role in leadership effectiveness? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

“… no psychological trait predicts the bulk of success …”

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managers with higher EI do not create exponentially better results, they are better at creating

environments that are perceived to be more enjoyable by most. People higher in EI:

▪ Engage in more pro-social behavior

▪ Have better quality relationships

▪ Have greater sensitivity and empathy

▪ Create a more positive work environment

▪ Are better at handling conflict

Almost 30 years after EI was described as a scientific theory its time may have come. But we

still have to measure it.

More About the Ability Model of EI. Ability EI consists of four related abilities. First, you

accurately Map emotions, that is you identify how you and others feel by observing people, and

map their emotions onto a 2 x 2 grid called a Mood Map. Once you identify the relevant emotions

you then Match those emotions in two ways. The first is you automatically take on the underlying

feelings of the identified emotions, to gain emotional empathy with the other person or persons.

And you also Match the emotions to the task at hand, where the emotions become an aid to

thinking and decision making. As you take on and Match the emotions you next determine the

underlying Meaning of the emotions – what caused them, how they might change over time and

what they are called.

Finally, emotions are not static and the situation is constantly changing so you need to Move the

emotions in the desired direction, making slight to major adjustments to them to stay on track. It’s

relatively simple and easy to do this, but extremely difficult to do this well on a consistent basis.

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iv) Clear idea of how EQ is measured

Once you have a solid definition of EI, or EQ, you need to

measure it. There are three main ways to measure a skill:

▪ self-report tests,

▪ other-report methods,

▪ ability tests

Consider basketball as an example. If you were the coach of a

professional team recruiting players you can ask players to self-

report how good they are, you can ask other team members,

coaches, sports pundits, etc. to indicate what they think of each player or you can run try-outs.

Evaluating recruits for their emotional intelligence also uses these three approaches and we

examine advantages and disadvantages of each of these next.

Self-report: Developing a self-report test is straightforward. You decide what you want to

measure and write some test items. For example, if you want to measure how "nice" someone

is you would ask the person to answer questions such as "I am very kind" and "I treat people

well". The advantages of self-report tests are they are fairly easy to create, and can be

completed by candidates in a short timeframe. You can likely see the problems with this

approach. The test relies on honesty, and if the test you take is being used to hire you then you

might be motivated to stretch your answers a bit. Another problem is that even if you answer

honestly, we only get to measure your opinion of yourself. You may view yourself as kind, and

still treat others with contempt. While it's important and interesting to know how people view

themselves this method is far from ideal in the hiring process.

In the article "Incompetent but unaware"10, the researchers note that it takes skill in an area to

know how skilled one actually is. Another research article specifically on EI found that many

people tended to overestimate their EI11. Even worse is that people who overestimate their EI

are much less interested in developing their skills. You probably see this at play in your office on

10 Kruger J & Dunning D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134. 11 Sheldon, O.J., Dunning, D., & Ames, D.R. (2014). Emotionally unskilled, unaware, and uninterested in learning more:

Reactions to feedback about deficits in emotional intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99, 125-137.

“… When asking candidates to self-report their EI, you are not only running the risk of candidates wanting to mislead you. You may also face “incompetent but unaware” candidates …”

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occasion when you wonder how your colleague cannot see what everyone else sees. He may be

unaware of his problem behaviors because he lacks the skill to know better.

Other-report: We can take the questions asked in self-report tests and ask people who know

you to evaluate you. With some personality characteristics this method works well because

people who interact with you a great deal have many opportunities to observe your behaviors.

The advantages of other-report are these tests can be adapted from self-report tests and so are

not terribly hard to develop and do not take a great deal of time to complete. The problems with

other-report are that others have to know you well, they have to be accurate observers of

behavior, their own biases can influence how they respond (they can be too negative or

positive) and they have to answer honestly (while these are confidential some respondents

worry that those they evaluate might retaliate or they may cost their friend a prospective job if

they rate them too poorly). For hiring, other-report is logistically difficult because of the difficulty

of finding raters. Other-report may also not be a great way to measure certain characteristics

like traditional intelligence (IQ) or emotional intelligence (EI). In one recent study, observer-rated

EI had statistically significant correlations with actual (ability) EI but these correlations were

small. Also, the observers worked with the people they were rating and knew them well12.

Many companies also try to measure EQ through phone, video, or in-person interviews

using a combination of behavioral and situational interview questions. Many interviewers ask

questions or come up with situational tests that they think will measure a candidate’s ability.

Most often, these ratings tend to be a version of other-report tests. However, in this case, the

evaluations are not conducted by people who know the candidate for a long enough time to

have observed their behavior in multiple contexts, but rather by fresh interviewers. This method

may work well in some situations, but are more likely provide the interviewer with a false sense

of security regarding their evaluation of candidates. We'll provide some suggestions on how to

increase the likelihood that this method will provide accurate and helpful data.

12 Elfenbein, H.A., Barsade, S.G. & Eisenkraft, N. (2015). The Social Perception of Emotional Abilities: Expanding What We Know About Observer Ratings of Emotional Intelligence. Emotion, (15), 17–34.

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Ability: Want to know if a candidate accurately perceives how

other people feel? Then show the candidate a picture of a person

expressing a certain emotion and ask the candidate what emotion

is being expressed. In this case, there is a right and a wrong

answer. Of course, reliable and valid tests of a person's ability

require a large number of test items for each specific ability being

assessed. Remember when you took the ACT, SAT or GMAT?

Interview style tests using one or two questions are more likely to

provide you with a false perspective than the person’s true ability.

If you were in charge of admissions at a college, would you rather look at the SAT score of

applicants or do one SAT style interview question? We need lots of test items to measure different

skills so that your score from test to test to test remains stable. And we also need to give the test

to many people to develop "norms", that is, to determine what a low or a high score is. The

advantage of ability tests is that you cannot "fake good" and you gain an estimate of a person's

actual aptitude. The disadvantage is that such tests are often time-consuming and require a

professional to administer and interpret. New tests must also be created every now and then so

that the answers are not available to people. Some people also feel that these tests are too

narrow. We have, for instance, seen interviewers come up with their own ways to measure a

candidate’s emotional intelligence as they feel that EQ tests don’t accurately measure it. These

interviewers would highly benefit from comparing the predictive power of their self-developed tools

with those of better standardized tools.

“… The advantage of ability tests is that you cannot fake good …”

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Suggestions: Testing for "EQ"

Given the state of assessment for EQ, what do we recommend?

Even though one of us is a co-author of an ability test of emotional

intelligence we suggest that you follow several steps before

recruiting for EQ, or EI. And, using an ability test of EI is likely not

going to achieve your goals. We will get to that point, but first we

examine your steps.

i) Do a job analysis and identify the skills and traits required.

Don't assume that EQ is important in your recruiting. It may or may not be, and simply accepting

what you read in some business magazine or heard "others" are doing are not good reasons to

test EQ. Start with a job analysis, determine the skills and traits that your star hires possess.

Psychologists who focus on the workplace can help you construct this skills and traits profile.

ii) If the job analysis identified EQ as a critical differentiator, make sure you have a good

operational definition of EQ.

Recall the list of how people define EQ. The term is much too broad, and so your analysis must

include specific skills and traits. Skills could include language fluency, or the ability to manage

stress and the emotions of your team. If you settle on EQ as an important differentiator you

have not conducted due diligence on the role since EQ means many different things. Traits

could include assertiveness, reality testing, influence, or friendliness. With a detailed and

defined list in hand you can then find ways to measure the qualities you seek.

iii) If EI is a critical skill, make sure that the test is set up in an appropriate way.

Recall that EI is an intelligence and consists of related abilities of reading emotions accurately,

knowing how emotions impact thinking, understanding emotions and effectively managing

emotions. We feel that you should measure EI as an ability or a skill and your assessment of

this skill should be objective. Candidates are often motivated to "fake good" intentionally so

measure their actual skill level, not what they report their skill level to be.

iv) It takes one to know one.

“… measure EI as an ability or a skill, and your assessment of this skill should be objective …”

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If you don't assess candidate's EI you can assess and train your interviewers on EI. This is an

efficient and effective way to hire. If you want to assess a person's foreign language fluency you

need an interviewer who is fluent in that language to evaluate the candidate. Screening your

interviewers for high EI is easy enough to do. Assign your more emotionally intelligent

interviewers to focus on these skills and have other interviewers assess technical skills or

industry expertise and knowledge.

v) Even high-EI interviewers should have a structured approach.

You need consistency across interviewers, and given that

estimating other’s EI is difficult make sure you use behavioral

or structured interviewing (for the most part) to assess EI

skills. Using the classic “Tell me about a time when you . . .”

opening for your questions works well. But it is also important

to have “correct” answers ready so that you can later

recognize what strong and weak responses look like. In an

ideal world, you would create a scoring or coding rubric for the

answers. What sorts of questions to ask? It depends, as

always, on the specific EI skills you are looking for. If you need someone who is emotionally

resilient and constructively manages conflict you can adapt a question such as "tell me about a

time you managed a difficult interpersonal conflict at work?" Ask follow-up questions to get at

the specific behaviors the person engaged in and the outcome – for all parties involved.

vi) Cautions and Warnings. Before you jump on the EQ bandwagon realize that there are

potential downsides to aspects of high EQ people. There is data to suggest that in some

situations these people can be manipulative. The "dark side" of high EQ may not be common,

but be aware of potential downsides. For the most part, we don't see downsides to high EI.

There is a downside to emotional empathy as we mentioned earlier and perhaps you would not

recruit someone with a lot of emotional empathy and limited emotion management skills for a

turn-around situation. Otherwise, emotionally intelligent leaders will create a positive workplace

culture and will create an ethical and productive workplace.

“… You need consistency across interviewers … it is also important to have “correct” answers ready so that you can later recognize what strong and weak responses look like …”

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6. A data-driven approach to hiring

You have dashboards and forecasts and analysts for your

core business so why don’t you do this for hiring? We've provided

you with a few suggestions on how to hire for EI but you should

collect data on your hires to find out what's working and what's not

working.

i) Tweak your hiring approach to test new hiring strategies – but

don’t use the new approach.

We don't mean to be cryptic. Ideally, you would introduce new processes and

procedures in hiring, take notes and collect the data, but make your decisions as you have

before. Later, you examine the new methods and determine whether those new methods would

have resulted in different decisions. This is a classic method in selection but it's also

problematic. If you can, one option is to validate your new methods by having existing

employees go through the new hiring scheme.

ii) Go back and check if your EI tests truly predict on-the-job performance or not

As you revise your hiring process, don’t assume it's working well. Be skeptical and be

data driven. Once you have enough performance data in hand on a new hire (depending upon

your business you might need as much as a year's worth of data) determine whether the EI

assessment was predictive of actual performance. Were there any red flags that the EI

component raised? Were these problematic for the employee?

iii) If your approach fails and you hire someone who lacks EI skills, consider training and

development for that person

We are advocating a more research-oriented and data-driven approach to hiring but at

the same time we recognize that every person you hire needs to succeed. Non-interference

may be the "Prime Directive" for research but your business success demands that you take

steps to ensure that the people you bring on board have the resources and help they need to

perform at the highest level. If your hiring approach fails, or if your approach hints at some

problem areas, be proactive and help that employee. For example, if your hiring process

“… As you revise your hiring process don’t assume it's working well. Be skeptical and be data driven …”

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suggests that the person may struggle "reading" people accurately, set them up for success by

offering training and coaching. Compensatory strategies can work very well for EI skills in what

we have called a "GPS for emotions"13. If you lack spatial intelligence we can teach you map

reading, which takes a lot of time and may not change your spatial IQ, or simply get you a GPS.

Compensatory EI strategies work the same way: if we cannot enhance your emotional

intelligence per se we can teach you to read people better by relying on others or asking

specific questions (asking “how are you?” will fail but asking “is this a good time to talk about the

sales forecast or should we postpone?” might be a better question to ask).

7. Examples of what might work.

EI Test. One of us co-authored an ability test of emotional intelligence known as the

Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test14. Its 141 questions take about 45 minutes

to complete and yields several scores: Total EI, and scores for each of the four EI abilities

(Perceive Emotions, Use Emotions, Understand Emotions, Manage Emotions). Before using the

MSCEIT in recruitment, consider what its use signals to your applicants. Some might be put off

by test use in general. Some of the items do not seem relevant to the work people do as the test

measures some of the skills indirectly. Consider the potential downsides, and also whether the

definition of EI in this model is your definition of EI.

Personality Tests. If you read about EI you'll discover that our position is that EI must be defined

and measured as an intelligence, a hard skill, and that approaches to EQ, while of value, should

be called what they are: traditional personality traits or leadership competencies.

We realize not everyone shares this world view but we urge you to read up on your

own15. If your firm requires people who are assertive you can utilize well-validated tests of

assertiveness as part of more omnibus personality assessments. There are a number of

assessments of what is called the "Big Five" personality traits that may meet your needs. These

13 Caruso, D.R & Rees, L.T. (2018) A Leader’s Guide to Solving Challenges with Emotional Intelligence. CT: EI Skills Group. 14 Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. & Caruso, D.R. (2002). Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems. 15 Joseph, D. L., Jin, J., Newman, D. A., & O’Boyle, E. H. (2015). Why does self-reported emotional intelligence predict job performance? A meta-analytic investigation of mixed EI. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), 298-342.

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include the California Psychology Inventory, the 16-PF (measures 16 factors but also yields big

5 traits) or the NEO scales (there are multiple versions). Some of these traditional personality

traits are more readily observable than others and so a well-trained interview team may be able

to estimate some of these traits.

It should be noted that finding personality tests that can accurately assess a job

applicant’s personality is just half the battle. Once you have such a test, you should stay critical

to your initial hypothesis. Take a step back and check if those personality traits actually predict

better performance.

Structured EI interviewing. You may discover accurate insights into candidates by using

behavioral interviewing techniques tied to the abilities of emotional intelligence. One method

we've used is outlined below. You can address individual EI skills and/or use a method that

asks about a difficult situation where you collect data on all four skills. An individual approach to

measuring EI could be to ask: Tell me about a time when you made a good/bad decision when

you ignored/listened to your feelings? This could reflect skill in Matching emotions. Detecting

skill in the Meaning of emotions could be attempted by these questions:

▪ Tell me how you learn about your direct reports?

▪ How do you reward your direct reports?

▪ Tell me how you learn about your major clients?

▪ How do you provide customized approach with different clients?

▪ Tell me about a time when someone’s reaction surprised you. In retrospect, were there

any missed clues?

A more global approach might be best. We start by asking the candidate "recall a recent

difficult work interaction with another person where the outcome was negative. This is a

situation where the wrong decision was made or a conflict was unresolved." We then ask

follow-up questions:

• What was the situation?

• Who was involved?

• How did each person feel at the time? How did you know? (Map emotions)

• How did these feelings influence their perspective? (Match emotions)

• Why did each party feel the way they did? (Meaning of emotions)

• At the start, what did you predict the outcome would be? (Meaning of emotions)

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• How did you manage the interaction? (Move emotions)

• How did you manage your own emotions and reactions? (Move emotions)

• And did you try to manage the other person's reactions? How? Was this successful?

Why or why not? (Move emotions)

• What was the outcome?

• How did you feel about the outcome? And the other person? How did you know? (Map

emotions)

• What could you have done differently – if anything – to have achieved a positive

(desired) outcome? (Meaning of and Move emotions)

These questions are grounded in the ability model but you have to be ready to recognize good

answers. You don’t, and should not, do this in real-time, but instead take good notes and then

subject the responses to the rubric you developed earlier. Otherwise you run the risk of falling

back on personal judgment. That rubric might include getting a good read of the other person’s

emotions (“he seemed angry and I asked whether this was a good time for him to focus on the

prospectus and he indicated that he was a bit distracted by something at home but that we

could go ahead”), understanding of the other person’s position in a conflict (“her compensation

scheme drove her to arrive at that approach”), reflecting that perspective (“I can see why you

chose that approach”), and managing your own emotions to calm down (took a short break and

then explained the demands I was under). You can also collect information across multiple

candidates, compare their responses, and have one or more high-EI staff help to ascertain

better and worse responses. This approach has another advantage. The open-ended responses

can also be analyzed for fit with organizational values, that is, if the organization values

teamwork and the responses show a single-minded focus on the individual, that can be an

important data point. And of course, none of the tests above are truly valuable if you don’t follow

the previously recommended steps of checking if they are improving your ability to predict the

traits you are looking for.

Comprehensive Assessment. If you employ an ability EI assessment to measure actual

emotion skills you can also include a personality assessment (or “EQ” assessment) since these

two measures have little overlap. That is, you can measure and screen for the ability to read

people, empathy and manage emotions with ability EI as well as measuring for warmth or

optimism or assertiveness with traditional personality tests (EQ tests are basically standard

personality measures).

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Do your homework. The main take-away of this paper is that you need to do your

homework. Don't blindly jump onto the bandwagon. Instead, consider your hiring needs, come

up with defensible operational definitions of key skills and traits and develop objective screening

methods. Even though you may have read about EQ in a magazine don’t assume it's what your

candidates need.

Test your hypotheses. Yours is likely a data-driven organization. Bring some of the

same analytical fervor and skepticism to your hiring methods. Generate alternative hypotheses,

test your methods and analyze your results. Tweak and revise your hiring methods based on

performance data over the long haul. It's been said that hiring is an art, and there is plenty of

room for creativity, but we prefer the science of hiring.

You can have it all. The hype that is associated with EQ is unfortunate. Our focus is on

EI, emotional intelligence, which is defined and measured as a hard skill or a form of

intelligence. You can find and hire people who are smart in the traditional way – possessing a

high IQ – and who are also excellent at reading, understanding and managing emotions –

possessing a high level of EI.

Summary and Next Steps:

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David R. Caruso, Ph.D. is a management psychologist who

conducts research on emotional intelligence and develops and

conducts emotional intelligence training for executives around

the world. He is the special assistant to the Dean of Yale

College and a research affiliate at the Yale Center for

Emotional Intelligence. David received a Ph.D. in psychology

from Case Western Reserve University and was a

postdoctoral fellow in developmental psychology at Yale

University. David has co-authored dozens of scientific

publications, as well as the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional

Intelligence Test. He co-wrote, with Peter Salovey the “The

Emotionally Intelligent Manager” and with Lisa Rees “The

Leader’s Guide to Solving Challenges with Emotional

Intelligence”. David is the co-founder of EI Skills Group which

provides certification in the MSCEIT, the ability test of

emotional intelligence, and offers hands-on skills training on

emotional intelligence.

Atta Tarki is the Managing Director and CEO of ECA, a

specialized Executive Search Firm, placing top-tier

management consultants into permanent and interim roles.

Atta has assisted numerous Fortune 500 companies and

Private Equity funds with hiring executives critical to their

organization’s success. Atta is frequently invited to speak at

universities and conferences about how organizations can

improve their recruiting strategies.

About the Authors:

David Caruso

david@eiskills.com

Atta Tarki

atarki@eca-partners.com