Dr. Maria Eriksen calls it the toxic workplace — an environment poisoned by insults, rudeness, bullying and explosive outbursts.
If you haven’t worked there, count yourself lucky.
It might be just one person causing untold grief, but the nastiness is mushrooming, says Eriksen, a Calgary psychologist and president of her own consulting company, MPower.
“For psychologists and people working with emotional intelligence, and I say this somewhat sarcastically, the future looks incredibly bright,” says Erickson.
During the past two years Eriksen has worked with mid-sized companies in the field of emotional intelligence — “a fancy word for people skills” — to help individuals improve their ability to function better in a team environment.
She uses a questionnaire, designed by U.S. psychologist Dr. Reuven Bar-On, to provide an objective assessment of the person’s general mood, stress-management ability, adaptability, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.
The questionnaire’s credibility has been validated in countries around the world and is backed by more than 14,000 case studies, says Eriksen. Its genesis grew from a simple question: Why do so many smart people fail so badly in their jobs?
“In the past, IQ and a degree would get you in the door,” says Eriksen. “There was no way to measure why one smart person climbed the corporate ladder and another didn’t.”
Enter EQ, the emotional intelligence quotient — a number that measures a person’s emotional skills.
While it only seems sensible that strong people skills would help workers advance, the concept didn’t capture the public’s attention until 1995 when psychologist Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ, reviewed studies of nearly 500 organizations worldwide. The results? ‘Star’ employees scored highest on EQ tests.
“Emotional intelligence matters twice as much as technical and analytic skill combined for star performances,” said Goleman.
Further studies showed gender differences. Women scored higher than men in empathy and social responsibility, while men outperformed women on stress tolerance and self-confidence measures. Both are equally intelligent emotionally, he said, just stronger in different areas.
Companies are taking the results seriously.
According to research by Dr. Cary Cherniss at Rutgers University, the U.S. Air Force has used the EQ-1 questionnaire with such success that it recommended its use to the U.S. Congress for all branches of the armed forces. A number of cases he researched showed a clear improvement in an organization’s bottom line when emotional testing was done.
Born in southern Alberta, Eriksen has worked as a psychologist “forever.” A noted community activist, she won a Governor General’s Award in 1999 for her efforts as a member of the Famous Five Foundation, plus other work with the Calgary Status of Women Action Committee; the Alberta Status of Women Action Committee; and the Alberta Legal Education and Action Fund.
Her work with EQ testing was put on hold last year with the illness of her husband Harold Arnold Hanen, who died in October of pancreatic cancer. Hanen, an architect, is known as the father of the city’s Plus-15 downtown walkway system.
Eriksen’s interest in emotional intelligence began in the early ’80s, when she set up the City of Calgary’s Employee Assistance program. When a department was under stress, she says, the program would be inundated with people having personal problems.
“I saw a lot of Band-Aid solutions,” she recalls. “Any department losing people on stress leave isn’t benefiting. All it does is create more stress in the department, because they don’t have people to get the job done.”
Her enthusiasm for working with emotional intelligence is partly due to the fact that while a person’s IQ stays relatively the same over their lifetime, one’s EQ can change.
Unlike many performance appraisals, which usually gather dust in a filing cabinet, EQ offers a plan for change.
“It’s not a pass or fail thing. You can take the test again and won’t go any lower,” she says. “You can explain to the person: ‘If you score better here, you can get your point across to your co-workers.’ That eliminates frustration and stress.”
One firm used it to decide on senior management appointments. “The more data you have to support your decision, the more comfortable you feel about the decision,” she says. “With people, there is no black and white. You can never know anything for certain. This helps.”
Of the half dozen companies she’s worked with, Eriksen says she hasn’t encountered extreme cases of bad behaviour. But she has found people needing help.
All it takes is one person to disrupt the whole department, she says. Things are doubly bad if a senior manager is at fault because staff spend most of their time talking about, or avoiding, that boss. The workplace takes on a subversive atmosphere lacking focus and weakened productivity.
Eriksen expects EQ testing to grow. She sadly observes a generation of young people graduating into the workforce with fewer people skills than ever. That spells trouble, she says. Kids spend too much time on computers and in front of the TV instead of learning social skills by playing after school.
At the same time there has been a loss of community in many workplaces. People don’t feel loyal to their employer and, therefore, are more likely to treat the workplaces with less respect. With a shortage of labour, companies sometimes find themselves hiring someone just because they need a warm body.
For Eriksen, it all adds up to a busy future.
