The Emotional Intelligence Test – Putting Abstract Talent Into Perspective
An emotional intelligence test is frequently used these days as part of a company’s efforts to understand its employees and aid workforce development. Although Emotional Intelligence as a concept was only recognised quite recently (about 15 years ago), the key reason behind why it is quickly catching on is its widespread relevance to business success.
Why Do You Need An Emotional Intelligence test?
Central to your company successfully using Emotional Intelligence to its advantage, is the emotional intelligence test. This is a highly-condensed and structured way of quantifying what really is an abstract talent into a digestible and actionable construct. By first highlighting personality traits and preferences in situational handling, you will then be able to identify gaps and work on the areas of emotional intelligence that an individual lacks.
It can also be used as part of your recruitment process to analyse prospective candidates’ aptitude and fit towards the culture of your company.
Who benefits from the Emotional Intelligence Test?
Both the company and the individual will benefit from the emotional intelligence test, so how do you put that into perspective?
People usually spend very little effort on personal development due to other commitments. Thus, it is often left to companies to develop its workforce by getting employees on developmental programmes. The advantage for your business is obvious – staff who have more empathy for customers, bosses and fellow colleagues will be creating better business relationships.
Having said that, I would argue that the greater benefit is for the individual. Developing emotional intelligence will bring about better relationships and situational handling skills for the individual, regardless of whether or not he is at work or at home, or indeed still at the company that paid for his training in the first place! However, a company will still profit from investing in its employees, and in so doing build a platform of goodwill whereby employees will be more motivated to work for a caring employer (which is probably what you as an employer aspires to be).
An emotional intelligence test should be business-friendly
Companies need a quick, effective and objective way of assessing their employee’s situation and personal handling skills, and an emotional intelligence test of reasonable length is a business-friendly way of delivering this. Typically, a test consists of a structured question set defined according to the methodology behind a specific understanding of how emotional intelligence is constituted.
Identifying the right kind of test to use is important. There are many tests out in the market which implement different perspectives of what constitutes emotional intelligence. As long as you understands the key differences between the different tests you will be able to select one which is considered to be most suited to the way your company wishes to develop its workforce. For example, in the Enneagram-based approach, the questions are targeted to profile an individual into the 9 styles of human behaviour, whereas in the Goleman approach they are structured to fit 12 competencies.
Pitfalls of the emotional intelligence test
Before considering what different methods, processes and tests are available to you in the realm of emotional intelligence, understanding first the pitfalls of using an emotional intelligence test is crucial to formulating your organisational development strategy.
As there is no official body that regulates test providers, you should realise that tests are subjective and can be open to different interpretations. Also sometimes the individual taking the test may not answer truthfully, or the questions may be structured in such a way that there is some ambiguity.
Selecting the right emotional intelligence test for your company
It is a bit of an art selecting the right test for your organisation’s needs. It is useful to search for a few different methods and contact the practitioners to discuss how their tests and development methods fit in with your company’s strategy. You can also try a few different tests and do a self-evaluation of how relevant you think they are. Although most companies stick to one preferred emotional intelligence test, you could end up with a shortlist of two or three and choose whichever was most relevant for your testing purpose.
I leave you with five key points to consider:
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