How Do You Feel?

Recruiters who matched this high-performance profile turned out to have been nearly three times more likely to have met their quotas than their less-successful counterparts. The model yielded five categories for rating the probable success of new recruiters based on their EQI scores -- excellent fit, good fit, fair fit, poor fit, and bad fit. This assessment turned out to be remarkably accurate. All recruiters who were considered "excellent" fits have met 100% of their recruiting quotas during the past year. More than 90% of the "good" fits met their quotas, compared to 80% of the "fairs" and less than 50% of the "poors."

The real value of that data was its ability to predict the performance of job applicants. Theoretically, the model suggests a 95% chance of success of a potential recruiter with a "good" or an "excellent" EQI profile. So Handley required every new recruiter to meet that threshold. One year later, the turnover among new recruiters had dropped from 100 to just 8. Based on an investment of less than $10,000 for EQI testing, the Air Force saved $2.76 million. "I come from an aeronautical orientation, and drag is what slows a plane down and impedes performance," says Handley. "To me, the EQI is a way to profile individual and organizational drag."

Handley went on to administer the EQI to two other groups in the Air Force -- chronic substance abusers and spousal abusers. His goal was to identify their EQI deficits. Substance abusers' key deficits turned out to be problem solving, social responsibility, and stress tolerance. Spousal abusers primarily lacked empathy and had poor impulse control and an inflated self-regard. Again, the results made sense to Handley -- and suggested a better approach to those problems. "We typically give people standard treatments," he says. "For spousal abusers, it might be anger management. The implication of these findings is that you need to individualize training to enhance the specific competencies that a person is lacking."

Handley has also begun to experiment with delivering such training through a Web site called EQ University.com. For $99, visitors to that site can take the EQI online, receive a seven-to-eight-page assessment, and participate in a 30-minute confidential telephone consultation with Handley or another trained professional. Based on that feedback, people can then select the competencies that they want to improve on and sign up for Web-based courses on 9 of Bar-On's 15 competencies. (The other 6 will be available by summer 2000.) Each course costs $49, and personal coaching is also available. So far, these courses are very basic and minimally interactive. It will be interesting to see whether deeply habitual behavior patterns can be transformed through Web-based training programs. Bar-On believes that progress will occur in increments. "We've got a good start in assessment," he says. "Successful training is what we really have to tune up over the next several years."

Daniel Goleman's Emotional Journey

No one has done more than Daniel Goleman to spark corporate interest in emotional intelligence, to launch training programs that carry the message to business audiences, and to convey the ideas of emotional intelligence in an accessible manner. Much like Peter Senge with learning organizations and Michael Hammer with business-process reengineering, Goleman has become the most visible proponent of this new field. Now he must also contend with critics who argue that in broadening the appeal of emotional intelligence and tailoring it to the needs of a corporate audience, Goleman has sacrificed and diluted its original meaning.

As in any burgeoning field, a number of questions hang in the air: Will emotional competence become a better-understood concept, with clear definitions and well-defined boundaries -- or will it slide into ambiguity as it becomes commercialized consulting property? Will companies use the demonstrated value of emotional competence to help improve performance and humanize employees' experiences -- or will they come to view it with suspicion? In short, will emotional competence emerge as a useful and valuable tool to help businesses evolve -- or will the lure of big consulting and big money distort its value, turning it into the next fad? Answers to many of those questions ultimately involve Goleman and the direction he chooses to take.

Until 1995, when Goleman published his book on the subject, emotional intelligence had languished as a relatively obscure theory. Psychologists Mayer at the University of New Hampshire and Salovey at Yale first introduced the term in 1990. Their first paper, published that same year, discussed emotional intelligence in highly technical terms. Reduced to its simplest description, emotional intelligence was defined as a group of mental abilities that help you recognize and understand your own feelings and those of others.