When Your Emotional IQ Matters

High emotional intelligence (EI) doesn’t generally translate to better job performance, according to a new study by Myeong-gu Seo, associate professor of management and organization. Seo had often wondered if there was any real provable connection between a person’s ability to manage their feelings and their success on the job.

But Seo did find that there is one particular context in which having high emotional intelligence does make a big difference: When participants were in jobs with high managerial work demands — requiring the management of diverse people, functions and lines of business, with multiple stakeholders and competing agendas.

The stress and intense emotions involved in this kind of work environment naturally trigger emotional reactions. High emotional intelligence lets team leaders facilitate, understand and manage their own and other’s emotions.

“We think that being in a diverse environment may prime people with high emotional intelligence to use it because they know that differences can lead to misunderstanding,” says Seo. “That awareness, and then the way they used it, made them more effective leaders on their teams.”

Seo, with co-authors Paul Tesluk of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Crystal Farh, a PhD student at Smith, recruited 346 full-time professionals and early-career managers from the Smith School’s part-time MBA program to take part in the study. They took surveys that measured their emotional intelligence and helped determine if their job had high managerial work demands. Their supervisors were then asked to provide performance ratings for the participant, confidentially rating the person’s teamwork effectiveness and job performance.

People who can perceive, understand and interpret emotional cues can use that information to guide and inform their decision making, Seo says. A manager with high EI might notice when an employee is under stress and step forward to reassign tasks or re-set priorities, for example.

In a related study, teams of MBA students evaluated each other’s teamwork, including the relative value of each person’s contribution to the team and whether he or she was perceived as a leader within the group. Seo found a strong correlation between a person’s emotional intelligence and the way other people perceived his or her leadership. Students with high EI were seen as contributing more to the group. This effect was even stronger in diverse teams — those with differences in race, ethnicity or age.