In the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves contend that emotional intelligence, or EQ, predicts 58% of job performance. Their Emotional Intelligence Appraisal also happens to be our favorite assessment for measuring EQ.
Assessing and Improving Your Emotional Intelligence
Drawing from half a million survey results, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 argues for the importance of emotional intelligence to job performance. It also describes how to develop your EQ. The book includes online access to the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal and to 66 strategies proposed to help you discover and begin building your emotional intelligence skills.
The online instrument assesses the leader relative to four skills. Those skills are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. It also gives an overall score and provides some recommendations for working on areas of weakness.
We prefer using the book when working on areas of weakness because the computer-generated report only picks the lowest area and only gives three recommendations for corrective strategies. The book enables you to work on more than one area and gives you more ways to improve.
If you take or have already taken the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, be sure to record your results at the end of the “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” section of our free ebook, Eliminate Executive Blind Spots.
Coaching Questions
- What are your greatest areas of strength in emotional intelligence?
- How can you use them to your advantage?
- Where do you lack strength, and how can you improve?
- Set goals based on this information and create a strategy for achieving them.
The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal is only one of several assessments we use frequently in executive coaching engagements. For additional recommendations, see our last two One-Minute Coaching™ posts, Understanding Others’ Behavioral Styles and How to Leverage Strengths as an Executive.