The Benefits of Social and Emotional Intelligence in MultiCultural Organizations

Today’s workforce is more global than it was in the past and has multiple generations working under the same roof. According to a paper in the International Journal of Information Business & Management the diverse nature of the work environment we find that social and emotional intelligence is important for the overall ability to deal with and relate to people of different backgrounds (Njorge & Yazdanifard, 2014). Organizations rely on the skills of future managers to create highly functional and highly diversified workforces that can meet tomorrow’s challenges. 

Having emotional and social intelligence is beneficial for executives and managers that must effectively work with and motivate employees from different backgrounds. Through their ability to act and interact with various cultures they can help people stay focused on organizational objectives and command a higher level of multicultural leadership. The management of global firms requires executives and managers with stronger global capabilities. 

It is beneficial to discuss the definitions of emotional and social intelligence.  Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, control, and expresses emotions while creating empathetic relationships with other people. Social intelligence is the ability to negotiate and navigate complex social environments and create meaning out of these networks.

The ability to relate to other people is a very valuable skill that people often use to further their influence. Bridging two cultures to create networks and influence are extremely difficult as each side has their own way of viewing the world. The more in tune we are with our own emotions we are able to understand others and use social networks to connect to a wider group of people.

Emotional and social intelligence are soft skills that are learned over a long time. You can teach the components to communication, impression, critical thinking, etc... but you can't easily teach someone to tune into the nature of other people. As a soft skill developed over a lifetime it is important for organizations to consider hiring people to meet these in firms where inter-generational and inter-cultural reside. Those executives and managers who have already developed these skills can use these skills to create alignment toward organizational objectives by understanding the different cultural lenses at play within the workplace.

Njorge, C. & Yazdanifard, R. (2014). The impact of social and emotional intelligence on employee motivation in a multigenerational workplace. International Journal of Information, Business & Management, 6 (4).

The Emotionally and Socially Intelligent Leader

Researchers have explored different genres of leadership success for some time. They have come to some interesting conclusions of what makes one leader more successful over another. Intelligence, cognitive flexibility, and skill have provided only partial explanations. Research by Singh (2013) further lends credibility that leaders with high emotional and social intelligence are capable of influencing organizations to achieve objectives at a level

Leadership can be seen as a social skill which encourages strong followership. It is associated with emotional intelligence factors such as attitude, confidence, respect, and trustworthiness (Fehd, 2001).  Through positive actions, leaders foster the success of others and encourage beneficial human-to-human relationships. They have the ability to disarm negativity and work toward stronger goal achievement. 

Leaders work around a shared vision. It is the selling of this vision that truly helps people to adjust their behaviors toward a specific end. It is often necessary for leaders to engage in collegiality to create collaboration that allows for enough subordinate power to become part of the vision realization process (Singh, 2008). As employees begin to understand the vision and create synergy toward its achievement releasing additional power can act as both a reward and an efficiency generator.

Leadership is about influencing others. There are many options of power usage but those that can influence others create self-perpetuating growth. Leadership involves the influencing of others to act toward the attainment of a goal through the use of social relations versus simple structural constraints (Hellriegel, et. al., 2006). In such situations administrative activities should enhance social leadership but not be the foundation of such leadership. When administrative leadership is restrictive and limiting it runs the risk of discontentment and breakdown. 

Superior performance is often seen in the realm of skills but this doesn’t explain in meaningful depth previous success stories. According to Singh & Manser (2008), around two-thirds of competencies linked to superior performance are emotional and social qualities that exist in the realm of self-confidence, persistence, empathy, flexibility, and the ability to work with others. Therefore, leaders can perform when they are cable of understanding and working with the various human elements by relying on their high emotional intelligence.

This leaves some wondering what emotional intelligence is. According to Caruso (1999), emotional intelligence can be clarified as, “EI is the ability to use emotions to help you solve problems and live a more effective life. Emotional intelligence without intelligence, or intelligence without emotional intelligence, is only part of a solution. The complete solution is the head working with the heart” (p. 26). Thinking and emotion work together to create the highest levels of leadership performance and environmental navigation. 

EI and social intelligence come together and can be considered a single construct of emotional and social intelligence. Such leaders have the following abilities (Orme & Bar-on (2002):

1. Understand and express emotions appropriately.
2. Understand the feelings of others and establish interpersonal relationships.
3. Cope with new situations and solve problems on a personal and interpersonal nature.
4. Be optimistic, positive, and self-motivated toward goals. 

To test this social leadership concept Singh (2013) used a sample of 474 participants from 200 organizations. The survey included 55 questions that ranked the strength of observable EI characteristics. They found that the following concepts had the highest rankings of leadership:

Communication

Relationships

Trust

Leadership

Empathy

Conflict Management

Professor Prakash Singh argues that to move the bottom line of employees from dependency to independence requires the ability to bring them into a shared vision of reality. Administrative structures are designed for management/control purposes but interpersonal leadership is designed to bring people willingly into productive actions. The ability to communication, create trust, foster relationships, provide a level of empathy, and manage conflicts as they rise is important for encouraging people to see a more productive perspective. When the emotionally and socially intelligent leader builds relationships around a vision, employee satisfaction level rises. 

Previous research has indicated the employee satisfaction is the drawing in of employees to fulfill grander purposes for the organization. It is a process of being part of something greater than oneself in an attempt to participate in the bounded rationality of organizational objectives. When employees are drawn as individuals into the success of an organization and can contribute in their own unique ways they can raise their performance and skill levels in a way that can be hedged by leaders to enhance the firm. The positive of leadership is like the catalyzing agent that bridges the gap between the administrative factors and the economic-social needs of the employees. 

Caruso, D. & Salovey, P. (2003). The emotionally intelligent manager. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fehd, L. 2001. Emotional intelligence: An executive handbook. Austin: Good Pages.

Hellriegel, D., Jackson, S.E., Slocum, J., Staude, G., Amos, T., Klopper, H.B., Louw, L. & Oosthuizen, T. (2006). Management. Oxford: Cape Town.

Orme, G. & Bar-On, R. 2002. The contribution of emotional intelligence to individual and organisational effectiveness. Competency and Emotional Intelligence, 9, 23-28.

Singh, P. (2013). A collegial approach in understanding leadership as a social skill. International business & economics research journal, 12 (5). 

Singh, P. & Manser, P. (2008). Correlation between the perceived emotionally intelligent interpersonal behaviors of school principals and the job satisfaction of their teachers. The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture & Change Management, 8(1), 189-200.

Online Learning through Social Constructionist Practices

Education is more than transferring knowledge from one person to another without integrating the information. It requires the building of a sense of community so that students can see themselves in a different light and find support for their goals. A study by Shackelford & Maxwell (2012) helps to define how a sense of community is developed in an online educational environment. Accordingly, they found that introductions, group projects, sharing personal experiences, class discussions, and exchanging resources made all the difference. Of these exchanging resources for learning seemed to be the most important. 

Online education is not simply about posting information in a forum. It is about the way in which that information is presented for maximum learning and having students cognitively engage in the process of learning. There are varying aspects of learning that include social reinforcement and mental processes that further the way in which students understand the information and how it may enhance their lives. 

Social constructivism is a concept whereby people make meaning out of information by actively engaging in it. It is a process of learning new information, testing it, sharing it, and manipulating that information to gain higher levels of understanding. The purpose of online education is to create conduits of social constructivist learning through activities infused with information. 

To effectively engage students it is required that they have full expression of themselves through social and emotional processes. The use of cognitive, social and teacher presence it is possible to enhance learning through multiple paths of understanding. It is this environmental framework that creates higher levels of motivational cognitive activities that are encourage through social engagement. 

The survey was conducted with 381 students. The researched looked at the overall social factors and interaction of students. A Likert scale and reverse coding were used. SPSS was the statistical software and a Chi-square analysis was conducted to understand the relationship between frequency and importance. 

Interactions are associated with a sense of community. The more people interacted the more they viewed themselves as a group. Using introductions allowed students to foster the rapport needed for the rest of the semester. Students who shared experiences personalized and incorporated their information to more real life scenarios. Sharing resources between students allowed students to take ownership over their learning instead of relying on the instructor only. 

The report doesn’t indicate this concept but it is important to see such social learning as active versus passive learning. When students develop a sense of community, find their own ways of relating to the material, and find resources that help them achieve their goals they are taking an active role in their learning. They are no longer passive receptors of information but become part of the overall process and own that education to a higher degree. Social, cognitive, and resource develop appear to be an important part of the higher education process.

Shackelford, J. & Maxwell, M. (2012). Sense of community in graduate online education: contribution of learning to learner interaction. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13 (4).

The Emotionally and Socially Intelligent Leader

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) is an important quality in a leader.  Barrett (2006) stated,

Emotional Intelligence is emotional and social knowledge and the ability to be aware of, understand, and express yourself, be aware of, understand and relate to others, deal with strong emotions and control your impulses, adapt to change, and to solve problems of a personal or a social nature. (p. 14)

Many studies have been published on how individuals with high emotional intelligence can enhance and increase the potential for positive outcomes.  For example, people can work to increase their emotional intelligence, thus, improving performance.  Emotional intelligence is a learned and practiced skill.  Goleman (2012) stated that for individuals in leadership positions, 85% of their competencies are in the EI domain.

In fact, one’s professional success can be improved when emotional intelligence is improved (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009).  “EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.  It is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence” (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009, pp. 20-21). (Bottom line that should appeal to all... more money can be made when you have a high EI.) 

Emotional intelligence “refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic” (Cherry, 2010).  Although we are born with emotions (consider a crying or laughing baby). However, we are born with the intelligence to develop and refine our emotions.  Learning when and how to use these emotions to gain the trust of others is emotional intelligence.  Work and personal relationships can be positively affected by EI.

Social Intelligence

“Social intelligence requires the leader get beyond his or her own needs and focus on what the individual or group needs to be successful” (Mueller, n.d.).  A socially intelligent individual can evaluate the emotional environment of a group of people, and then make a constructive response.  When a person has social intelligence, he or she can lead a group into being creative, thinking as a team, and discovering inventive methods to conquer barriers.  In simple terms, social intelligence can be called 'people sense' or 'people smarts'.  Social intelligence is not just associated with work relationships, but it is also related to personal relationships.

Goleman and Boyatzis (2008) found that emotions were based off of experiences and one could not experience one without the other.  Social intelligence is “a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits (and related endocrine systems) that inspire others to be effective” (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2008).

Conclusion

Emotional and Social intelligence are being used as new leadership models.  For example, when looking at candidates for a job, employers are seeking those that show emotional and social intelligence.  Murphy (2012) stated,

Virtually every job (from neurosurgeon to engineer to cashier) has tests that can assess technical proficiency. But what those tests don’t assess is attitude; whether a candidate is motivated to learn new skills, think innovatively, cope with failure, assimilate feedback and coaching, collaborate with teammates, and so forth. (para. 4)

The former Southwest Airlines CEO, Herb Kelleher, stated, “we can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude” (Murphy, 2012).

It seems to be very hard to dissect emotional intelligence from social intelligence.  We are born with the ability to form emotions and grow up in a social world where we must express our emotions appropriately.  As a corporate trainer, I had coached several managers on communications and dealing with one's emotions.  I told the audience to remember this: "When in doubt about saying something wrong, count to ten and don't say anything at all.  Let your brain kick in.  Get your emotional and social intelligence in line... then, you can speak with a calmer more rationale voice."  The very next day a co-worker did something downright irresponsible.  My rage was rising to the top and I was about ready to spew words that just were not professional.  I stopped and pulled together my thoughts.  Never let them see you sweat!

Author: Andree C. Swanson, EdD

Barrett, D. J. (2006). Leadership communication: A communication approach for senior-level managers. Rice University. Retrieved from http://scholarship.rice.educ/handel/1911/27037

Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional Intelligence 2.0. San Diego, CA: TalentSmart.

Cherry, K. (2010). Emotional Intelligence - What Is Emotional Intelligence. Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/emotionalintell.htm

Goleman, D. (2012). “Emotional intelligence: Issues in paradigm building.” Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations.

Goleman, D., & Boyatzis, R. (2008). Social intelligence and the biology of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 1-4. Retrieved from http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2008/09/social-intelligence-and-the-biology-of-leadership/ar/1

Mueller, A. (n.d.). How to enhance your physical, emotional, social and spiritual intelligence Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/how_2309762_enhance-physical-emotional-social-spiritual.html#ixzz1ysqYdY6m

Murphy, M. (2012, Jan). Hire for attitude. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/01/23/89-of-new-hires-fail-because-of-their-attitude/