How Do You Feel?

With Lennick's support, Cannon gathered several colleagues and six outside psychologists to develop longer versions of the initial training. The focus broadened from improving people's coping capacity to training people in the skills of emotional self-awareness, emotional self-management, and emotional connection with others. Lennick, in turn, mandated that all newly hired financial advisers receive an eight-hour version of the program as part of their job training. Since 1993, more than 5,500 new advisers have had the training, and an additional 850 "high potential" managers from other parts of AmEx have voluntarily enrolled in the full five-day course.

Cannon, who left American Express a year ago and now licenses emotional-intelligence training to corporations like Motorola, as well as to individuals, is modest but firm in her claims about the program that she helped to create. "It's a basic introduction, but what it gives people is permission, a language, and a structure for bringing their emotional lives into the workplace," she says. "It also prompts a shift in perspective. They come out seeing the world differently. For men, who are often talking about emotions for the first time, it opens a window. They finally understand what their mothers and sisters and wives have been talking about all these years when they say, 'You don't communicate with me,' and 'You never tell me what you're feeling.' For women, it's often their first confirmation that qualities like self-awareness and empathy can really make a positive difference in the workplace."

The Air Force Flies on Emotions

If emotions and life insurance seem an unlikely match, consider instilling emotional competence within the ranks of the U.S. Air Force! That experience, according to Rich Handley, 43, an organizational-development specialist and chief of human-resources development for the Air Force Recruiting Service, has been a very valuable one.

Like AmEx, the Air Force found itself stumped by a problem that seemed to defy conventional solutions. Each year, it would hire about 400 new recruiters and charge them with finding a fresh group of recruits. And each year, within just seven months, the Air Force would dismiss as many as a quarter of those recruiters for failing to meet their quotas. The cost of that turnover was catastrophic. The Air Force spends an average of $30,000 to train a recruiter. The direct cost of replacing 100 a year was nearly $3 million. The indirect costs -- which, for starters, included the missed recruiting targets -- were even greater.

For Handley, the challenge was to figure out a way to assess each recruiter applicant more accurately -- to predict a candidate's likelihood of success before hiring that person. After looking over a series of sales-aptitude screening instruments, Handley was most impressed by Reuven Bar-On's EQI. "It just seemed to go to the heart of it," he says. The 133-question self-administered test evaluates 15 qualities, such as empathy, self-awareness, and self-control, but also includes categories that seem less obviously a measure of emotional competence -- among them assertiveness, independence, social responsibility, and even happiness.

In early 1997, eager to learn more about the predictive capabilities of the EQI, Handley administered the test to 1,200 staff Air Force recruiters. They were divided into three groups: high performers who met 100% of their quotas, average performers who met at least 70%, and failures who met less than 30% of their quotas. The highest performers outscored the lowest in 14 of the 15 EQI competencies.

Handley found the results intriguing but not fully satisfying. "They were equivalent to telling you, 'Here are 14 ingredients that will make a good-tasting cake,' but then not giving you the exact amounts of the ingredients," he says. Taking his analysis one level deeper, Handley used a statistical-modeling technique to determine the top-five qualities that were associated with the highest-performing recruiters. They were (in order of importance) assertiveness, empathy, happiness, self-awareness, and problem solving. Disparate as these qualities may seem, they made sense to Handley. "Assertiveness is obviously important," he says. "If you're happier, you're more positive, and that's infectious. Someone with strong empathy skills can read a cold sale very quickly and won't waste time if it isn't going to work out. And recruiters with strong problem-solving skills think on their feet more efficiently, waste less time, and feel less stressed -- which makes them more effective in the long run." Indeed, the highest-performing recruiters put in the fewest number of hours. "The best ones work smarter, not harder," Handley says.