Why Psychological Safety Is Impossible Without Emotional Intelligence

In today's episode, Tim and Junior will also talk about why psychological safety is impossible without emotional intelligence and the connection between these two important concepts. Emotional intelligence or EQ, as we define it, is your ability to interact effectively with other humans. It's your delivery system. This is a practical episode full of tips on improving your emotional intelligence and interactions in general. 

(03:40). Is EQ something that can be improved? There's a difference between a fixed trait and a learnable skill. Based on longitudinal studies, behavioral and social scientists have concluded that EQ is absolutely learnable. How would your life be different if you significantly improved your EQ? This episode is an opportunity for introspection and self-reflection, and this is the first self-reflection question that Tim and Junior ask during the episode. 

(06:27) Junior shares some stats surrounding EQ and its effects in the workplace. 71% of employers value EQ over IQ, and HBR found that EQ is a better predictor of workplace success than IQ in most jobs. The Center for Creative leadership found that 75% of careers are derailed from reasons related to emotional competencies like handling interpersonal problems, and unsatisfactory team leadership during times of conflict, and World Economic Forum named EQ a top 10 skill for 2020. 

(13:45) What is EQ? EQ is your delivery system and conduit of influence. This concept is applicable regardless of your role or profession, whether you're a chef, network engineer, journalist, or fishing guide. 

(16:12) Emotional intelligence is our ability to interact with other humans. Interpersonal effectiveness comes from 3 things: awareness (what you perceive about yourself and others), beliefs (what you believe about yourself and other people), and behaviors (the way you act, what you say and do).

(21:16) EQ as an individual metric leads to psychological safety as a group metric. When we're talking about EQ, we’re talking about you as a person, your self-regard, social regard, self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and social management. So when we measure emotional intelligence, we don't do it in groups, we do it at the individual level. But psychological safety? That gets measured at the group level since it's essentially the collective EQ of the group. 

(30:29) Teams don't outperform their leaders, they reflect them. We learn leadership and we learn culture by observing the modeling behavior of the leader. How would a team outperform the leadership that is modeled by the leader? They're not going to outperform that leader, they’ll reflect them. That's just Newtonian physics applied to organizational behavior.

(36:58) What’s the anatomy of culture? From habits to norms, and from norms to cultures, culture is made up of discrete, everyday interactions.