Emotional Intelligence helps manage team issues - but not in every context

Past research has confirmed that emotional intelligence (EI) is more important in jobs such as teaching or nursing because it provides resources and methods for personally managing the high emotional loads common to such positions. A new paper demonstrates that jobs that involve high managerial demands benefit from EI for a different reason: the specific ability to detect emotional cues helps smooth over issues and keep team relations positive. However, in some cases, EI could be doing harm rather than good.

EI can be conceptualised in many ways, and lead researcher Crystal Farh and her colleagues chose to focus on Mayer and Salovey’s model, a purely ability-focused scheme that comprises emotional perception, the use of emotions to facilitate thinking, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions. They asked 212 early-career managers to complete web surveys that measured personality together with managerial work demands, defined by items such as "This job is a dramatic increase in scope". Managerial demands were of interest because they reflect work situations that are challenging and involve degrees of stress and intense emotions to deliver ambitious outcomes; Farh's team believed that emotional cues in these contexts need to be picked up quickly by managers. EI was measured through a series of standardised ability tests, and participants' supervisors contributed ratings of overall job performance together with perceptions of how effective the participant's team was.

 When managerial work demands were great, higher EI was associated with higher teamwork effectiveness, but the relationship disappeared when the managerial demands were at or beyond one standard deviation below the sample average. EI made a difference in busy, complex and multi-layered managerial contexts, not when managing single teams under less pressured conditions. Farh's team predicted that the first EI component, emotional perception, would be the most crucial component, because noticing emotions is a precondition to acting upon them. They duly found that when each component was analysed separately, only emotional perception maintained the effect under high managerial demands; moreover, when those demands were low, emotional perception was actually associated with a penalty to teamworking. Why? The paper conjectures that being hypersensitive to emotional cues in a low-stress environment may actually be counterproductive, leading to 'reading too much' into situations and rocking the boat unnecessarily.

Does teamworking matter? An analysis demonstrated that in this sample, higher EI was associated with better job performance, and this was due to the positive relationship between EI and teamwork effectiveness. All analyses controlled for personality, as in particular conscientiousness tends to be tied to meeting specified work outcomes.

The research adds to the literature that EI matters in a range of work roles, acting as a solution to specific problems rather than acting as a global resource that improves every situation.  The authors conclude that 'managers should recognize that selecting emotionally intelligent employees or training employees’ EI may not lead to higher performance outcomes in all situations, but that investing in the EI of employees working in jobs characterized by high managerial demands may be a worthwhile endeavour.'

Crystal I Chien Farh, Myeong-Gu Seo, & Paul E. Tesluk (2012). Emotional intelligence, teamwork effectiveness, and job performance: The moderating role of job context. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97 (4), 890-900 DOI: 10.1037/a0027377

Too much focus on 'learning from failure' can make us unhappy

When we fail, how we feel and what we end up learning from it depends upon our coping strategy, according to new research. In particular, focusing exclusively on 'learning from failure' may make us miserable in the process.

This research explored experiences of working scientists, investigator Dean Shepherd and colleagues noting how this domain involves facing disappointing project failures, see e.g. the low rates of success for bringing drugs to market.

The researchers personally contacted employees from institutions in Germany that worked in areas such as pharmacy, zoology and ageing, with 257 scientists ultimately completing surveys consisting of standard and newly developed measures. The team were interested in outcomes from failure: positive, in the form of learning how to better run future projects or how to treat co-workers when their work is floundering, and negative emotional fallout that results in avoiding project team workers or feelings of disappointment. Both are vital, as learning creates organisational knowledge and negative emotions are associated with lower emotional commitment to the organisation – a finding observed within this study.

Learning from a failure was higher when more time had elapsed since the failure itself, suggesting time provides perspective and insight. Learning was also influenced by a respondent's coping strategy or 'orientation': those who affirmatively responded to items such as 'In my mind, I often go over the events leading up to the project's failure' are considered to have a high loss orientation, and these individuals reported higher levels of post-failure learning.

As time elapsed, however, respondents with high loss orientation swung from a low level of negative emotions to a high one, suggesting that healthy reflection gives way to unhelpful rumination. Restoration orientation, a different strategy exemplified by the item 'I keep my mind active, so it does not focus on the loss of the project', is associated with lower levels of negative emotion, but doesn't provide the learning boost provided by a preoccupation with loss. A third strategy of oscillation orientation involves the willingness to actively switch from mindset to the other, giving one's mind a rest before thinking about the project. Employing this strategy led to both more learning and a time-bound decrease in negative emotion.

As important as it is to learn from our mistakes, making this our overriding focus may be counterproductive. The authors advocate giving more space for a restorative approach, accepting that it can be good not to think about failure, and actively switching mindsets to gather insights while improving attitude toward the project over time. Their data also shows that a culture that considers failures as normal, taking it in its stride, leads to lower negative emotions overall, so there are steps that organisations can take as well.

Shepherd, D., Patzelt, H., & Wolfe, M. (2011). Moving Forward from Project Failure: Negative Emotions, Affective Commitment, and Learning from the Experience The Academy of Management Journal, 54 (6), 1229-1259 DOI: 10.5465/amj.2010.0102

2012 resolution: get a handle on emotion and mood in the workplace

Find ways to cope with problematic moods

You don't need to be a believer in Blue Monday (thank goodness) to feel that January isn't the happiest month in the calendar. Here are some steps to smarter mood management.

1. Take into account the emotional legacy of positive and negative events at work. This might mean rescheduling a challenging meeting that follows a day of inordinate strain. Note that people can differ in how much of an 'emotional hangover' they feel, so be especially sympathetic to those hit harder.

2. Decide on how to manage anger in the workplace. Contrary to what some may think, this doesn't necessarily mean taking a zero-tolerance approach; in fact, evidence suggests that tolerating some outbursts of anger - especially in response to perceived injustices - is a good way to allow  organisational problems to surface. However, anger imposed on others habitually is a sure way to dampen creativity. Consider what is needed in your organisation.

3. Tolerate benign envy, but combat the toxic type - a little bit of emotional response to others' successes can buck us up and push us further ourselves. But when it threatens to impede work relationships, it's time to take a deep breath and let it go.

4. Put cynicism aside in favour of a healthy, balanced caution in negotiations. There is evidence that defaulting to distrust in negotiation situations can not only result in poorer outcomes overall but also harm the cynic's self-interests. The solution isn't naivety, but rather recognising that trust can open up opportunities for clear-headed scrutiny.

Actively leverage emotion abilities

Understanding our 'Emotional Intelligence' (EI) and deploying it in the workplace is an idea that will be familiar to many. These resolutions, then, take us a bit deeper into the implications of trying to leverage our capacity to understand and manage emotions.

5. Take better EI measurements and weigh its relevance using evidence. EI is a surprisingly controversial concept in research circles, so if you're going to rely on it, review the types of measures and what they have been proven to predict. Moreover, job applicants have inflated self-ratings of EI compared to the (presumably more honest) job incumbents - so be especially cautious if comparing scores across such groups, such as when comparing internal and external candidates.

6. Get better at expressing emotions to influence others. There is increasing evidence that showing your emotions can influence others and lead to better work outcomes, so think about how effectively you do this. Note this is not a prescription to pretend to feel emotions to get things done - the research is clear that such surface acting is if anything counterproductive.

7. Review how employees or colleagues use emotions in their day-to-day activities. Some interesting light was shed by a recent study of doctor's receptionists, revealing how their job requires them to constantly manage their emotions. If you consider how this might be true also in your organisation, you can make this clear to prospective employees and have a more informed position to help people currently struggling with these demands.

How much should we trust job applicant ratings of their own emotional intelligence?

Self-rating is a popular way to measure emotional intelligence in the workplace. Under lab conditions it's been shown that these ratings vary depending on what your (imaginary) objective is: to give a 'true' picture or to successfully win a job. A new study translates this lab finding to the workplace, finding that applicants for jobs really do rate themselves higher on EI than counterparts already working in that organisation.

The study compared scores for 109 job applicants with 239 volunteers, matched by department and managerial level. They rated themselves on four classic components of EI: self emotion appraisal, others emotion appraisal, use of emotion, and regulation of emotion. Applicants significantly outscored incumbents in all areas, on average rating themselves more than a standard deviation better. The areas of greatest divergence were in use of emotions and regulation of emotions, which have much in common with the Big Five personality traits conscientiousness and emotional stability, which we know job applicants have a higher tendency to inflate.

On all but one of the components, applicant scores were significantly more bunched together than incumbent scores, which could be seen as additional support that they were manufactured, with candidates homing in on scores that were solidly good, avoiding suspicious high or unhelpful low scores.

The study is important because in other areas of research, score discrepancies can be found in the lab, due to different explicit instructions, that don't seem to surface in the real world, suggesting the overt nature of lab conditions can exaggerate or even manufacture differences. Yet here the effect is found again, suggesting that if we do want to rely on self-report to assess EI we should recognise that this inflation may take place, and that relying on the normative data that accompanies these tests may lead us to unrealistically high appraisals of candidates.


Lievens, F., Klehe, U., & Libbrecht, N. (2011). Applicant Versus Employee Scores on Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Measures Journal of Personnel Psychology, 10 (2), 89-95 DOI: 10.1027/1866-5888/a000036

Organisations, are your citizens impulsive and your deviants emotionally intelligent?

How would you feel about having someone impulsive join your team? It's possible you'd be concerned: all reckless decisions and blurting out sensitive information, they'll hardly help. How about someone high in emotional intelligence (EI)? A better prospect, surely: mindful of others and pretty decent all round.

In a recent study, Doan Winkel of Illinois State University and his collaborators found a different picture. Impulsivity, the degree to which we act spontaneously, was found to lead to more organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), discretionary behaviours that promote the organisation. Meanwhile emotional intelligence, as measured using an ability-based assessment (a credible research strategy we've noted before), was associated with deviant behaviours that harm the organisation. These findings are based on 234 participants who rated themselves on a series of questionnaire instruments; the participants came from a range of industries, suggesting the effect may be fairly generalisable.

The findings actually aren't so surprising. EI is a useful resource that helps develop networks, figure out hierarchy, and influence others. But the capacity for action that this provides can be put to many uses. The emotionally intelligent may figure out that they can get away with self-interested behaviours such as falsifying receipts, or calculate when a well-timed put-down will serve their interests. By rating items on these and other deviant behaviours, participants with higher EI reported more of these activities.

How can we make sense of the impulsivity finding? Well, OCBs are discretionary and can take time away from assigned responsibilities. “In an ideal world, sure I'd keep on top of organisational developments and help out my struggling colleagues, but now, with this deadline?” reasons the cautious employee. Meanwhile, the rating data suggests that their impulsive colleagues jump in to help more often, less mindful of downsides to doing the right thing. In a sense, impulsivity reflects a 'can-do' spirit, full of motivational energy to act.

The researchers expected to also find more intuitive effects of impulsivity being associated with deviant behaviours and EI relating to organisational citizenship. Surprisingly, these previously reported effects weren't found here, leading the authors to call for a greater understanding of what is needed for them to arise.

This study is not the first to find these kinds of incongruous effects. There's evidence that optimism and cognitive ability, both sought by employers everywhere, also predict deviant behaviour. These counter-intuitive findings are useful; they caution us against viewing individual qualities as forever good or bad, turning organisational people strategy into a game of Top Trumps where we try to collect the 'best'. It's clear instead that a characteristic represents both benefit and risk, is a potential rather than given, and that potential depends on many factors, including the workplace situation itself.


Winkel, D., Wyland, R., Shaffer, M., & Clason, P. (2011). A new perspective on psychological resources: Unanticipated consequences of impulsivity and emotional intelligence Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 84 (1), 78-94 DOI: 10.1348/2044-8325.002001

Emotional Intelligence: What can it really tell us about leadership?

On the heels of last month's post on a possible further component of emotional intelligence (EI), the Academy of Management Perspectives has just published a review of how EI relates to leadership. Is EI the primary driver of effective leadership? Or is evidence of its relevance to leadership “non-existent”?

A team of authors led by Frank Walter of the University of Groningen step in to arbitrate, reviewing past research as three distinct streams, an idea introduced by Catherine Ashkanasy and Neal Daus in 2005. The first stream contains research using standardised tests to measure employee's emotional such as emotion perception. Research within the second uses a rating method to make its measurements, trusting that we can accurately judge these abilities in ourselves or others. The third uses a broader definition, popular due to its power to predict work outcomes, but criticised as “including almost everything except cognitive ability”, which is less useful when we're trying to differentiate components of leadership.

The authors argue that by differentiating the streams we better detect when a case for a particular phenomena is supported by converging evidence – agreement across different streams. And such converging evidence exists for leadership effectiveness, examined through outcomes including higher effort, satisfaction, performance and profit creation within the team managed; all three streams agree on a role for EI. Similarly, there is a general consensus that EI relates to leadership emergence, the degree to which someone can manifest as a leader in situations where they lack formal authority.

The three-streams view also helps expose where evidence is gappy, as it is for specific leadership behaviours and styles. Can EI predict transformational leadership, a charismatic, visionary style that stimulates its followers? Definitely, if we consider streams two and three. But the stream one, hard ability EI evidence is thinner on the ground. For other leadership styles, such as the laissez-faire leader, the evidence is also unclear. For Walter and his colleagues, the jury is definitely out, as they believe that data from stream one is the best foundation for understanding what incremental value EI gives over and above other factors like personality.

The authors conclude that there is encouraging evidence that EI is a useful construct for understanding leadership, but warn that “the pattern of findings reported in the published literature suggests that EI does not unequivocally benefit leadership across all work situations.” They call for more stream one evidence, and insist there is a need to consistently control for both personality and cognitive ability, a step taken in only a single study reviewed.

Finally, the Digest HQ welcome their entreaty that “incorporating EI in leadership education, training, and development should proceed on strictly evidence-based grounds, and it should not come at the expense of other equally or even more important leadership antecedents.”

Happily, the review is freely available to access from the site of Michael Cole, one of its authors.


Frank H. Walter, Michael S. Cole, & Ronald H. Humphrey (2011). Article: Emotional Intelligence: Sine Qua Non of Leadership or Folderol? Academy of Management Perspectives, 25 (1), 45-59

Influencing others by showing emotion: a new emotional ability?

Many workplaces recognise that besides more cognitive notions of intelligence – our capability to solve problems, use logic, process and judge factual information – they also need Emotional Intelligence (EI): the capability to recognise, make the most of and manage emotion. Now a new theoretical paper makes the case that we should be expanding this concept of EI to include the ability to influence others through emotional displays.

EI currently focuses on spotting, dealing with and making sense of emotions. Can I figure out why I was feeling increasingly uneasy through the meeting? Spot how you are feeling right now? Guess what might cheer you up? Authors Côté and Hideg focus their attention on another feature of emotions: that we display them physically to others in emotion displays. This insight goes back to Darwin, and has since been extensively researched notably by Paul Ekman (whose work is popularised in the TV series Lie to Me) with the field now recognising that the face, voice and touch are all used for this purpose. Emotional displays, even subtle ones, can cause our heart rate to rise, our skin to sweat, and our emotions to swell, often to then be displayed onwards in ripples of emotional contagion, such as when laughter gathers any within earshot.

Côté and Hideg draw attention to the workplace consequences of these displays. Anger at those who have neglected their duties can provoke them to redouble their efforts, guilt displays increase the likelihood of forgiveness, and positive emotions can result in more pro-social behaviour. Clearly there is an advantage to being adept at these displays, and the authors point out at least two ways in which one can be better. One is displaying the right emotion for the situation; considerations include the communication medium, as some emotions, such as anger, are displayed more strongly via the voice than the face (and the reverse can be true). Another is displaying that emotion effectively, facilitated by approaches such as 'deep acting' which tries to change the emotion itself, contrasting surface acting, which just acts on behaviour and can be perceived as inauthentic. (You can decide for yourself what's going on in the photo above.)

Côté and Hideg amass research showing genuine variety in how well people can influence others through displays, for instance the ability of bill collectors to communicate urgency to debtors. They argue that all this evidence suggests a real human capability that shows individual differences, concerns emotions, and can result in better or worse outcomes. On this basis, they call for it to be considered as a new emotional ability within the Emotional Intelligence framework.

In an illuminating section the paper explores how influencing others through emotional displays also relies on another: the intended recipient. They may fail to recognise the display if they come from a different culture with different cues. They may be unmotivated to give their attention to your display, because they don't trust you, because they hold the power in the interaction and are blase about how you may feel, or because they don’t see the value in trying to understand the situation (what the authors refer to as epistemic motivation). There is evidence for each of these factors moderating the effect of emotion displays.

We all know that people are influenced by the emotional reactions of those around them. But it’s valuable to recognise the ways this does and doesn’t work, know its genuine workplace consequences, and be aware that this may be better treated as an ability, rather than an unaccountable influence in the workplace. This paper does a fine job of this, drawing together a wealth of evidence, and because this research is clear, readable, and released in the freely-accessible Organizational Psychology Review, I'd encourage having a look yourself.

Côté, S., & Hideg, I. (2011). The ability to influence others via emotion displays: A new dimension of emotional intelligence Organizational Psychology Review, 1 (1), 53-71 DOI: 10.1177/2041386610379257