"You might have great self-awareness, you might have great understanding of other people and what drives their motivations and be empathetic towards them. But that doesn’t mean that you act on those things."
Rab MacIver
Chief Science Officer
Clients ask for emotional intelligence all the time. The catch is that understanding how people feel and doing something about it are two different things.
Hannah Mullaney talks to Rab MacIver, who has spent 30 years in assessment and designed Wave around what people actually do. They cover why emotional responsiveness is the better target, which traits barely change over a career, whether every leader needs them, and how to build a feedback culture that sticks.
In this episode
Rab has worked in assessment for 30 years, and emotional intelligence was already a buzzword when he started. Here he explains why he isn’t the greatest fan of the term, and what he would measure instead.
It’s a useful listen for anyone in HR, talent or L&D who has been asked for an emotional intelligence tool, or who is building leadership programs around people skills.
- Why emotional intelligence and emotional responsiveness are different things
- What emotional intelligence questionnaires can and can’t tell you
- Why Wave was designed to measure what people actually do
- Which personality traits develop over a career, and which stay put
- Whether every leader needs to be highly emotionally responsive
- Why the pandemic was harder on some introverts than expected
- Rab’s advice for building a feedback and coaching culture
- …and so much more!
00:00:00 Hannah (Host)
Hello and welcome to The Deep Dive. I’m Hannah Mullaney, Client Solutions Director at Saville Assessment. And each episode I’ll be joined by an industry expert to discuss the hottest topics in assessment today. Let’s dive in.
00:00:20 Hannah (Host)
Hello. Today we’re talking about emotional intelligence or perhaps emotional responsiveness. I’m joined by Rab MacIver Saville Assessment’s, very own research and development director and the brains behind Wave. So, Rab, what is emotional intelligence and why does it matter?
00:00:42 Rab MacIver
Well, I mean, you’re going by I mean, people might think emotional intelligence is new, but, I’m going back 30 years, really to the start of my career in assessment and emotional intelligence became a sort of buzzword at that point in time. And I think the main thing about emotional intelligence is it’s one of those concepts that resonates as an idea that you should have some intelligence with your emotions. I kind of think there two different things. Intelligence and emotions are two different things. But the idea of linking them is certainly intuitively appealing.
00:01:19 Hannah (Host)
I certainly have probably weekly conversations with clients who are wanting to measure emotional intelligence. And when I dig into why it’s it tends to do tends to be to do with increasing receptiveness to feedback, getting better collaboration, building more empathetic leadership. Are those the sorts of things that you would pull out when you’re thinking about emotional intelligence, or do you think it goes broader than that?
00:01:58 Rab MacIver
I mean, I mean, I suppose I’m not the greatest fan of the term emotional intelligence, as I kind of think there are two different things. So those are concepts that you would find in tools that are designed to measure what’s called emotional intelligence. Personally, I think you can be intelligent with your emotions in understanding, so you can understand maybe yourself, you can understand how you are best to manage other people. You might have great self-awareness, you might have great understanding of other people and what drives their motivations and be empathetic towards them. But that doesn’t mean that you act on those things. And that’s, I think, the problem with emotional intelligence is just being intelligent in that respect doesn’t mean that you do the right thing. And really, what you’re looking for is just what you said. You know, the people that, you know really are receptive to feedback or they act on it. It’s more than intelligence. So a good example of that, for example, and I sort of recently came across and was somebody who was very extreme in terms of challenging, now even if they present themselves as extreme as a personality you mentioned, on challenging. So that’s telling people that they disagree with them, perhaps even being prepared to be argumentative, that then first of all, you want to understand what they’re argumentative about. So you do need to understand the context because probably something might be a trigger for them. So it might be treating somebody unfairly, might be a trigger for them. So even if you just know that one thing, you might not know what that looks like in practice, what they respond to. But this particular person also was much lower on the resolving area. So it’s a bit like when they actually challenged they might cause some heat in the situation very directly and maybe raise other people’s emotions because they are being criticized or challenged, but they’re not going to resolve it. So it’s a bit like they start a fight, but they walk away and let it run. And you can that person may well know that they’re doing that from an emotional intelligence point of view, but they’re still prepared to do it. That’s how they respond, which I think is different to emotional intelligence.
00:04:31 Hannah (Host)
Sounds like a delightful person to work with. So how to translate that into the more kind of traditional emotional intelligence questionnaires that are out there on the market? Would those pick that sort of stuff up or not really, because they’re not getting at the responsiveness piece?
00:04:54 Rab MacIver
I think they probably allow you to start a conversation. On that, on those areas. So and similarly, a personality questionnaire will allow you to start a question on those areas. Of course, the quality and the depth of the questionnaire and how it probes into those areas will help you in that conversation. So it’s a bit like how good a start can you get in understanding how somebody would respond. But I wouldn’t say that you should necessarily just rely completely on the responses, just an emotional intelligence, just to see that you’ve got an understanding without really having sort of a feedback and understanding of how that plays out in practice or how emotional intelligence plays out in terms of how somebody actually would respond. So even if you’re thinking about how somebody challenges somebody else, people can do that in very different ways. It can be very sort of direct. It can be just them saying no. It can be, you know, more about sort of getting into an argument. And that might feel very different to the recipient. And remember, sometimes the recipient may want very different things. So I used to have a friend who I loved to argue with, and she used to love to argue with me, but we could clear a room. And when we were having a discussion because nobody else wanted to listen to it, if there was any sort of heat. In the debate. So, you know, it’s not just you know, obviously you’re not talking just about whether the reaction is appropriate, but is it appropriate to the receiver?
00:06:32 Hannah (Host)
Okay. And so how should you go about measuring this idea of emotional responsiveness?
00:06:45 Rab MacIver
I think what you’re looking at are tools. I mean, I would say Wave is a good example of one of those, and you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that was designed to actually measure behavioral action and activity. Not so much the sort of internal feelings necessarily, but how that actually plays out in reality.
00:07:08 Hannah (Host)
Could you give us an example just to help bring that to life?
00:07:11 Rab MacIver
So, I mean, one of the things, for example, I mean, you do a lot of training and historically I’ve done a lot of training in my career. And of course, training is now different, isn’t it? Because a lot of that’s virtual. It used to be a person. We used to sit in classrooms and we could always see how somebody was reacting very sort of clearly and we got the feedback and it was more much easier to do training in that in in that environment. But one one characteristic often you have is agreeableness, which is one of the big five personality dimensions and agreeableness. A lot of that’s built around empathy, which is obviously a concept in emotional intelligence, sort of understanding the other person’s position. Now you can understand the other person’s position. But if you write a question, for example, in a personality questionnaire, which which says something like, you know, I’m worried about other people’s feelings or I’m concerned about other people’s feelings, well, that’s good. You know that You’re concerned about other people’s feelings, but it makes no difference to that person. You haven’t done anything. So actually, so if you’re a trainer, if you think about it, what do you do? You see? Are you all right under that circumstance? Is that anything that I can do? Do you want to explain it? Or you go and look for an opportunity to speak to that person individually, to sort of sound them out and check them, But you don’t, sitting at the front of the room worrying about them isn’t a useful trait. It’s an emotionally intelligent thing that you’ve picked it up, but you haven’t acted upon it. So it’s to create assessments that measure act of things that people do to make a difference. The things that they respond to.
00:09:02 Hannah (Host)
Yeah. And I think the example, I think within Wave that I think you once shared it with me, and I then use that on a lot of training courses and use it in client conversations today, when talking about the action orientation of Wave. So it’s the extroversion versus going and building relationships. Example. So rather than writing a question that explores how extroverted somebody is. You write a question that asks, How good are you at building relationships?
00:09:37 Rab MacIver
Yes. Yeah. And I mean, that’s that’s entirely right. You’re trying to move beyond, maybe just a sort of attitudinal stance. And that might be useful if you’re exploring personality from an academic point of view to understand where somebody is coming from. But when you’re trying to do raw prediction of performance, of how to improve performance, how to measure performance, how to see who’s more likely to perform well in a particular situation, the extroversion matters less than the building relationships. They’re tied together. Extroverts are more likely to be effective at building relationships of course that’s the case. But the responsive thing is if the extrovert sits in the room and some extroverts do this, they’ll sit in the room wishing they had a lot of company. You know, some extroverts, you know, sit there and they don’t call up somebody say, do you fancy going to the cinema. They just don’t have the action orientation to do the thing that does them. Now, you could say that’s a lack of emotional intelligence that they can’t take that action, you know, to do something that’s for their benefit. But more importantly, emotionally, as a response, it’s probably not good for them. And that’s the important thing.
00:10:57 Hannah (Host)
And that yeah, that’s it’s kind of the. So what piece to it? Okay. And is emotional intelligence or maybe we should start talking about emotional responsiveness now how developable is it in people?
00:11:16 Rab MacIver
Yeah, I mean, if we look at I mean, I suppose what I would try and do is I would sort of broaden out emotional responsiveness to responsiveness over other things. So you can respond to sort of emotions. You can respond to other people’s emotions, but you can respond to other things. So we shouldn’t forget that some people maybe aren’t so tied up in the world of emotions as some other people. So if you go, for example, and you look at IT developers or some people that work in very sort of analytical financial positions, then they’re much more tied up with getting things right and doing things in the correct way and being factually accurate and where else. So if they’re going to challenge about something, right, they’re not maybe going to challenge are likely to challenge about something. Let’s say, that’s sort of emotional or they’re concerned they’re probably going to go you’ve you’ve got that number wrong. You realize you’ve got that number wrong and be upset about it. About that, that thing. So I think you have to broaden out your understanding to a sort of wider set of personality, because emotions play out across personalities. So I think the first thing I would say before, sort of discussing is just to almost say, right, well, if we look at personality characteristics, including one does that maybe are more tied or more thought of as related to emotional intelligence, how developable are they? We did a study that sort of tracked how things developed across the career and that was called University of the University of Life. We called the thing. And it was basically saying if you looked at work experience or you looked at getting a secondary education at the university or college, you know, how did those impacts your your personality, how did your personality develop and the things that did change were actually some of the things about, for example, creating innovation and some of the things actually even about drive, maybe you switched on or off a little bit more over time, but once you learned maybe your trade, maybe you became a bit more innovative in your trade because you had an understanding of maybe what you could do differently. But the things that didn’t move were actually things like building relationships and communicating information. So if you go back to your extrovert example, in a way, if people are a bag of fun when you meet them at 20 years old, they’ll probably make you laugh your socks off when they’re 50 to be just the same as engaging and charismatic interpersonally as they ever were. But similarly, if they bored you rigid, then it’s unlikely 30 years ago that suddenly you’re going to think, Oh, let’s go out for a drink together and have a laugh. It’s probably not going to happen.
00:14:12 Hannah (Host)
And what does that mean in practice for L&D or talent folk who I think spend a lot of time building leadership development programs, focused on a lot of that people’s stuff.
00:14:36 Rab MacIver
Yeah, well, I think it’s interesting. I mean, it’s interesting now isn’t it. As leadership is changing. For the you know, for the period of that, we won’t mention what happened over the last time as we get bored of talking about it. But, now, you have to think about we have to think about leadership more, more from a different lens. But I think anyway, even before that was the case and most leadership was in person, then the assumption that suddenly you were going to transform somebody into, you know, being a leader, that was sort of more, you know, a interpersonally affable and connected and whoever else was probably trying to make them something that they genuinely aren’t. So, you know, I’m not saying every leadership development program does that, but I think you’re right that some probably spend a lot of time on those sort of leadership characteristics when that could be spending time on stuff that they can more easily develop. And to have more benefit.
00:15:43 Hannah (Host)
And I think it is interesting that people, I think, are still spending time focusing on trying to build those sorts of behaviors up across the leadership population when actually, I guess some of the work we’ve been doing together over the last 18 months, Rab, on leadership identification has actually been more around what type of leader might you be and sort of appreciating that there are different types of leadership And so would you say that actually for some leaders maybe to pick up on your point in about the post-pandemic world that we’re now living in, is it okay for some leaders to not have this concept of emotional responsiveness, emotional intelligence? Can you get away without it now?
00:16:43 Rab MacIver
Probably. It depends what you’re doing and it depends who you’re who you’re dealing with. I think people are emotionally sort of responsive in different ways. I mean, sometimes if you’re, for example, in something that’s very analytical, the worst thing, for example, would be an IT developer might be if you’re running a set of ideas or a scrum team that somebody comes in who is really emotionally intelligent and wants to, you know, be responsive about all and talk about all of your emotion when it’s the last thing on earth you want to do. You want to get on with programing. And actually who you would value as a leader is a superstar programmer that you can respect and look up to because that’s what you come into work to do. Yeah, your primary focus is getting the job done, right? It’s not all about, you know, the managing relationships and some of the other things, but there may be other cases where that when it’s very, very important that you’ve got somebody that’s emotional, responsive, and in the right way where, you know, they’re dealing with a number of difficult inflammations, very difficult situations, very challenging situations. And, you know, being appropriately emotionally responsive is very important. But also it doesn’t necessarily have to come from one person. You know. One of the you know, one of the things is maybe about being emotional response is I kind of think, at least being aware to pick up on feedback. And that you’ve I think it’s also maybe for the organization to have a culture which allows that feedback to flow so that leaders at least know, if they’re doing something that, you know, was, you know, emotional response. I think over the years you’ve once or twice told me that I could have done something, that I could have done something in a different way. And you know, that that’s the sort of feedback. Loop. That you want to. Have sort of established, I guess.
00:18:47 Hannah (Host)
And that, again, I think thinking about client conversations that I’ve had and I think this topics come up again more and more in a post-pandemic world and maybe the two things are linked are this idea of a feedback culture. So organizations I speak to seem to either want to build a feedback culture, a coaching culture, or preferably both together. So to reflect perhaps on the now the hybrid world in which we now work. What would be given what you know, what you understand about personality, what would be your top tips for organizations who want to build a culture of feedback? Build a culture of coaching, and help their leaders get to a place where that can happen.
00:19:45 Rab MacIver
Okay, big question. I mean, I suppose at this point in the world, I mean, maybe the first thing I would sort of start by asking a different question, which hopefully will help, and that is that I think sometimes some of the things that we assume that are true in the post-pandemic world in terms of how people react weren’t necessarily true. So, for example, I think there’s an assumption which would make sense that extroverts really feared badly. In the because they were sort of locked down and they didn’t want to be. The case in actual fact, my experience was probably the opposite that actually the extroverts sort of a found ways of carrying on. You know, they went online. They did. Quizzes and tastings and.
00:20:34 Hannah (Host)
The house party app.
00:20:35 Rab MacIver
House party app that’s right, don’t remind me and and phoned their friends and they did all of the things and they sort of made made a life out of it Not as good a life obviously, but they made a life out of it. But if you’re an introvert, then sometimes the more natural thing was when you came in to work, then you naturally got the sort of social you might not have to say much, but there was a little bit of a buzz around you. You didn’t want to party round you, but, you know, coming in, smiling at somebody, seeing somebody having a little chat and whatever else. And then and that was taken away, that little bit of an important social interaction was removed. And that meant that that was quite difficult for some introverts. So it isn’t necessarily the case. I think that how we expect people to react, I mean, it was a biggest social experiment, obviously, that, you know, on on a global scale that you could possibly imagine and we’re still understanding some of the the aspects and the features of it. And in fact, I was just back from the European work and organizational Psychology conference and when there was a South African partner, I actually did a piece of research and giving feedback. With Wave on personality and virtual feedback and learning some of the things that you had to do differently in terms of giving feedback in that situations. So sorry, what was your question?
00:22:09 Hannah (Host)
Big one, given the world in which we now live hybrid working, post-pandemic, what advice would you give to organizations, talent folk in organizations looking to build feedback culture, coaching culture and helping their leaders get to a place where they can do that.
00:22:32 Rab MacIver
I think I mean, it sounds obvious, but you have to work at it and you have to sort of work hard at it. There’s some interventions you can do. So actually giving people feedback, doing self-awareness, doing self-awareness things where people share the results and understanding with each other. So teams genuinely understanding, you know, understanding that, you know, the person over there is an analyst and I’m an innovator and that you’re you’re you’re more likely to to say what’s wrong with it. And I’m likely to say, well, what what else could we do with it to make it work? And understanding where people are coming from in terms of that is part of that sort of culture because you’re starting to talk to each other about how you’re different from one another. And I think that’s important. I mean, it’s another aspect of sort of diversity and inclusion is to understand and be accepting of people’s personalities, not to actually necessarily look at somebody’s personality who’s different from your own and say that it’s wrong.
00:23:44 Hannah (Host)
Because it’s easier to work with people who are similar to us. Yeah, right.
00:23:48 Rab MacIver
Yeah, absolutely. And you have to remember that that interacts with other aspects of D&I. So you, you might, you might meet somebody from a different ethnic minority than, you know, you’re in in the majority position in that circumstance, now you’re not you’re not going to dislike them because of that. But if they’re very different from you in terms of creativity or they’re very critical or analytical, that might bug you. But that could be confused because you are you’re actually be you’re not being inclusive about their personality, but they may assume that the reason for inclusion is different. Yeah, so, you know, that is inclusion goes sort of interacts and goes beyond maybe the simple sometimes people think personality you don’t have to be inclusive about, but you do.
00:24:38 Hannah (Host)
You do. Yeah. And I think in organizations, I think where I’ve seen that done really well, it’s where there’s been almost a kind of top down approach. So your leadership team does what you’ve just described and sort of models that behavior that is essentially we’re all exploring how we’re all similar, how we’re all different, where are our strengths, where are our challenge areas? What might that mean for us in terms of team dynamics? How might we want to work together moving forward? And then it sort of cascades down the organization. But I do think it kind of has to be modeled from the top because I guess for some people it might feel a little vulnerable.
00:25:17 Rab MacIver
I think that that’s I mean, I think that’s right. I mean, I think that’s the best way to do it. But I mean, sometimes I think sometimes those cascade things sort of end up stopping. They sort of get down to, well, they sort of get from the board down to senior managers. And then, you know, it’s a sort of weaker incarnation running through the organizations. So to that point of, you know, you’ve got to work hard at it, I think you’re right. That’s where you start if you possibly can. But it’s not a bad thing even when you’re doing it. If you’re if you imagine even it’s not a cascade down. But but what somebody says when you’re walking in and you’re you know, you’ve just started and you’re you’re doing your workshop or your exploration of, of difference and understanding and then somebody says, no, no, that the, you know, the top team are doing it right now this day, the same as you, you know. So you know that that kind of feels.
00:26:15 Hannah (Host)
It sets the tone.
00:26:16 Rab MacIver
It sets the tone.
00:26:17 Hannah (Host)
And I guess the other piece is around the right people in the right roles at leadership. So if your argument and the University of Life Research suggests that it’s very difficult to develop some of those behaviors, that to do with sort of people oriented leadership, I guess the answer to that is making sure you get folk who have those areas of strength in to succession plans for those roles.
00:26:50 Rab MacIver
Yeah. Or or at least, I mean, sometimes, you know, there’s an assumption that everybody at the top has to have everything. They have to be, you know, all of the characteristics. Now, it may be that, you know, you know, that for some of the rules, so long as you’ve got it across the teams and there’s an understanding, for example, you know, that your FD doesn’t have it or, you know, some of that. Well, whatever whatever we’re looking for in the people area or wherever looking at in terms of emotional intelligence, sometimes somebody else, you know, will work with them. They may have a people manager alongside them in their group or team if they recognize that. So it’s sometimes not being honest sometimes and not always assuming that one person has everything for a role. And sometimes thinking actually their strength in what matters for the role is so great. But we understand they’ve got something that they’re lacking and we need to shore that up somehow.
00:27:53 Hannah (Host)
Final question for any listeners who are sitting here thinking I was actually just about to Google emotional intelligence tool, what do you want to tell them?
00:28:10 Rab MacIver
I suppose I would just think about what it is that you’re trying to do. Back to your question rather than look for the tool. Start with what are you trying to solve for? And then ask your question. Right. If I’m going to solve for that, what’s the best way to get to that? So if it is a coaching culture or if it is improving feedback, or if it is actually getting a read on whether my new graduates are going to be resilient enough in a big because there’s a big period of change coming for as we digitally transform our company. I don’t want to have to end up having to lose a lot of graduates because the the can’t handle, you know, all of the change process that’s going to go through. Then, you know, think about that. That’s that’s probably not an emotional intelligence questionnaire, but think about what it is that you should be using, or how you should be applying it. And sometimes you shouldn’t be using a questionnaire at all, if I’m honest.
00:29:18 Hannah (Host)
But if you’re going to use one, you should use Wave. Rab, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us today.
00:29:27 Rab MacIver
Thanks. As always Hannah.
00:29:28 Hannah (Host)
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Deep Dive. If you have, please remember to like and subscribe, to stay tuned for all our latest content. If you want more information on any of the topics you’ve heard today, check out the show Notes for Case studies, resources and articles. I’ve been Hannah Mullaney. See you next time on the Deep Dive.
Hello and welcome to The Deep Dive. I’m Hannah Mullaney, Client Solutions Director at Saville Assessment. And each episode I’ll be joined by an industry expert to discuss the hottest topics in assessment today. Let’s dive in.
00:00:20 Hannah (Host)
Hello. Today we’re talking about emotional intelligence or perhaps emotional responsiveness. I’m joined by Rab MacIver Saville Assessment’s, very own research and development director and the brains behind Wave. So, Rab, what is emotional intelligence and why does it matter?
00:00:42 Rab MacIver
Well, I mean, you’re going by I mean, people might think emotional intelligence is new, but, I’m going back 30 years, really to the start of my career in assessment and emotional intelligence became a sort of buzzword at that point in time. And I think the main thing about emotional intelligence is it’s one of those concepts that resonates as an idea that you should have some intelligence with your emotions. I kind of think there two different things. Intelligence and emotions are two different things. But the idea of linking them is certainly intuitively appealing.
00:01:19 Hannah (Host)
I certainly have probably weekly conversations with clients who are wanting to measure emotional intelligence. And when I dig into why it’s it tends to do tends to be to do with increasing receptiveness to feedback, getting better collaboration, building more empathetic leadership. Are those the sorts of things that you would pull out when you’re thinking about emotional intelligence, or do you think it goes broader than that?
00:01:58 Rab MacIver
I mean, I mean, I suppose I’m not the greatest fan of the term emotional intelligence, as I kind of think there are two different things. So those are concepts that you would find in tools that are designed to measure what’s called emotional intelligence. Personally, I think you can be intelligent with your emotions in understanding, so you can understand maybe yourself, you can understand how you are best to manage other people. You might have great self-awareness, you might have great understanding of other people and what drives their motivations and be empathetic towards them. But that doesn’t mean that you act on those things. And that’s, I think, the problem with emotional intelligence is just being intelligent in that respect doesn’t mean that you do the right thing. And really, what you’re looking for is just what you said. You know, the people that, you know really are receptive to feedback or they act on it. It’s more than intelligence. So a good example of that, for example, and I sort of recently came across and was somebody who was very extreme in terms of challenging, now even if they present themselves as extreme as a personality you mentioned, on challenging. So that’s telling people that they disagree with them, perhaps even being prepared to be argumentative, that then first of all, you want to understand what they’re argumentative about. So you do need to understand the context because probably something might be a trigger for them. So it might be treating somebody unfairly, might be a trigger for them. So even if you just know that one thing, you might not know what that looks like in practice, what they respond to. But this particular person also was much lower on the resolving area. So it’s a bit like when they actually challenged they might cause some heat in the situation very directly and maybe raise other people’s emotions because they are being criticized or challenged, but they’re not going to resolve it. So it’s a bit like they start a fight, but they walk away and let it run. And you can that person may well know that they’re doing that from an emotional intelligence point of view, but they’re still prepared to do it. That’s how they respond, which I think is different to emotional intelligence.
00:04:31 Hannah (Host)
Sounds like a delightful person to work with. So how to translate that into the more kind of traditional emotional intelligence questionnaires that are out there on the market? Would those pick that sort of stuff up or not really, because they’re not getting at the responsiveness piece?
00:04:54 Rab MacIver
I think they probably allow you to start a conversation. On that, on those areas. So and similarly, a personality questionnaire will allow you to start a question on those areas. Of course, the quality and the depth of the questionnaire and how it probes into those areas will help you in that conversation. So it’s a bit like how good a start can you get in understanding how somebody would respond. But I wouldn’t say that you should necessarily just rely completely on the responses, just an emotional intelligence, just to see that you’ve got an understanding without really having sort of a feedback and understanding of how that plays out in practice or how emotional intelligence plays out in terms of how somebody actually would respond. So even if you’re thinking about how somebody challenges somebody else, people can do that in very different ways. It can be very sort of direct. It can be just them saying no. It can be, you know, more about sort of getting into an argument. And that might feel very different to the recipient. And remember, sometimes the recipient may want very different things. So I used to have a friend who I loved to argue with, and she used to love to argue with me, but we could clear a room. And when we were having a discussion because nobody else wanted to listen to it, if there was any sort of heat. In the debate. So, you know, it’s not just you know, obviously you’re not talking just about whether the reaction is appropriate, but is it appropriate to the receiver?
00:06:32 Hannah (Host)
Okay. And so how should you go about measuring this idea of emotional responsiveness?
00:06:45 Rab MacIver
I think what you’re looking at are tools. I mean, I would say Wave is a good example of one of those, and you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that was designed to actually measure behavioral action and activity. Not so much the sort of internal feelings necessarily, but how that actually plays out in reality.
00:07:08 Hannah (Host)
Could you give us an example just to help bring that to life?
00:07:11 Rab MacIver
So, I mean, one of the things, for example, I mean, you do a lot of training and historically I’ve done a lot of training in my career. And of course, training is now different, isn’t it? Because a lot of that’s virtual. It used to be a person. We used to sit in classrooms and we could always see how somebody was reacting very sort of clearly and we got the feedback and it was more much easier to do training in that in in that environment. But one one characteristic often you have is agreeableness, which is one of the big five personality dimensions and agreeableness. A lot of that’s built around empathy, which is obviously a concept in emotional intelligence, sort of understanding the other person’s position. Now you can understand the other person’s position. But if you write a question, for example, in a personality questionnaire, which which says something like, you know, I’m worried about other people’s feelings or I’m concerned about other people’s feelings, well, that’s good. You know that You’re concerned about other people’s feelings, but it makes no difference to that person. You haven’t done anything. So actually, so if you’re a trainer, if you think about it, what do you do? You see? Are you all right under that circumstance? Is that anything that I can do? Do you want to explain it? Or you go and look for an opportunity to speak to that person individually, to sort of sound them out and check them, But you don’t, sitting at the front of the room worrying about them isn’t a useful trait. It’s an emotionally intelligent thing that you’ve picked it up, but you haven’t acted upon it. So it’s to create assessments that measure act of things that people do to make a difference. The things that they respond to.
00:09:02 Hannah (Host)
Yeah. And I think the example, I think within Wave that I think you once shared it with me, and I then use that on a lot of training courses and use it in client conversations today, when talking about the action orientation of Wave. So it’s the extroversion versus going and building relationships. Example. So rather than writing a question that explores how extroverted somebody is. You write a question that asks, How good are you at building relationships?
00:09:37 Rab MacIver
Yes. Yeah. And I mean, that’s that’s entirely right. You’re trying to move beyond, maybe just a sort of attitudinal stance. And that might be useful if you’re exploring personality from an academic point of view to understand where somebody is coming from. But when you’re trying to do raw prediction of performance, of how to improve performance, how to measure performance, how to see who’s more likely to perform well in a particular situation, the extroversion matters less than the building relationships. They’re tied together. Extroverts are more likely to be effective at building relationships of course that’s the case. But the responsive thing is if the extrovert sits in the room and some extroverts do this, they’ll sit in the room wishing they had a lot of company. You know, some extroverts, you know, sit there and they don’t call up somebody say, do you fancy going to the cinema. They just don’t have the action orientation to do the thing that does them. Now, you could say that’s a lack of emotional intelligence that they can’t take that action, you know, to do something that’s for their benefit. But more importantly, emotionally, as a response, it’s probably not good for them. And that’s the important thing.
00:10:57 Hannah (Host)
And that yeah, that’s it’s kind of the. So what piece to it? Okay. And is emotional intelligence or maybe we should start talking about emotional responsiveness now how developable is it in people?
00:11:16 Rab MacIver
Yeah, I mean, if we look at I mean, I suppose what I would try and do is I would sort of broaden out emotional responsiveness to responsiveness over other things. So you can respond to sort of emotions. You can respond to other people’s emotions, but you can respond to other things. So we shouldn’t forget that some people maybe aren’t so tied up in the world of emotions as some other people. So if you go, for example, and you look at IT developers or some people that work in very sort of analytical financial positions, then they’re much more tied up with getting things right and doing things in the correct way and being factually accurate and where else. So if they’re going to challenge about something, right, they’re not maybe going to challenge are likely to challenge about something. Let’s say, that’s sort of emotional or they’re concerned they’re probably going to go you’ve you’ve got that number wrong. You realize you’ve got that number wrong and be upset about it. About that, that thing. So I think you have to broaden out your understanding to a sort of wider set of personality, because emotions play out across personalities. So I think the first thing I would say before, sort of discussing is just to almost say, right, well, if we look at personality characteristics, including one does that maybe are more tied or more thought of as related to emotional intelligence, how developable are they? We did a study that sort of tracked how things developed across the career and that was called University of the University of Life. We called the thing. And it was basically saying if you looked at work experience or you looked at getting a secondary education at the university or college, you know, how did those impacts your your personality, how did your personality develop and the things that did change were actually some of the things about, for example, creating innovation and some of the things actually even about drive, maybe you switched on or off a little bit more over time, but once you learned maybe your trade, maybe you became a bit more innovative in your trade because you had an understanding of maybe what you could do differently. But the things that didn’t move were actually things like building relationships and communicating information. So if you go back to your extrovert example, in a way, if people are a bag of fun when you meet them at 20 years old, they’ll probably make you laugh your socks off when they’re 50 to be just the same as engaging and charismatic interpersonally as they ever were. But similarly, if they bored you rigid, then it’s unlikely 30 years ago that suddenly you’re going to think, Oh, let’s go out for a drink together and have a laugh. It’s probably not going to happen.
00:14:12 Hannah (Host)
And what does that mean in practice for L&D or talent folk who I think spend a lot of time building leadership development programs, focused on a lot of that people’s stuff.
00:14:36 Rab MacIver
Yeah, well, I think it’s interesting. I mean, it’s interesting now isn’t it. As leadership is changing. For the you know, for the period of that, we won’t mention what happened over the last time as we get bored of talking about it. But, now, you have to think about we have to think about leadership more, more from a different lens. But I think anyway, even before that was the case and most leadership was in person, then the assumption that suddenly you were going to transform somebody into, you know, being a leader, that was sort of more, you know, a interpersonally affable and connected and whoever else was probably trying to make them something that they genuinely aren’t. So, you know, I’m not saying every leadership development program does that, but I think you’re right that some probably spend a lot of time on those sort of leadership characteristics when that could be spending time on stuff that they can more easily develop. And to have more benefit.
00:15:43 Hannah (Host)
And I think it is interesting that people, I think, are still spending time focusing on trying to build those sorts of behaviors up across the leadership population when actually, I guess some of the work we’ve been doing together over the last 18 months, Rab, on leadership identification has actually been more around what type of leader might you be and sort of appreciating that there are different types of leadership And so would you say that actually for some leaders maybe to pick up on your point in about the post-pandemic world that we’re now living in, is it okay for some leaders to not have this concept of emotional responsiveness, emotional intelligence? Can you get away without it now?
00:16:43 Rab MacIver
Probably. It depends what you’re doing and it depends who you’re who you’re dealing with. I think people are emotionally sort of responsive in different ways. I mean, sometimes if you’re, for example, in something that’s very analytical, the worst thing, for example, would be an IT developer might be if you’re running a set of ideas or a scrum team that somebody comes in who is really emotionally intelligent and wants to, you know, be responsive about all and talk about all of your emotion when it’s the last thing on earth you want to do. You want to get on with programing. And actually who you would value as a leader is a superstar programmer that you can respect and look up to because that’s what you come into work to do. Yeah, your primary focus is getting the job done, right? It’s not all about, you know, the managing relationships and some of the other things, but there may be other cases where that when it’s very, very important that you’ve got somebody that’s emotional, responsive, and in the right way where, you know, they’re dealing with a number of difficult inflammations, very difficult situations, very challenging situations. And, you know, being appropriately emotionally responsive is very important. But also it doesn’t necessarily have to come from one person. You know. One of the you know, one of the things is maybe about being emotional response is I kind of think, at least being aware to pick up on feedback. And that you’ve I think it’s also maybe for the organization to have a culture which allows that feedback to flow so that leaders at least know, if they’re doing something that, you know, was, you know, emotional response. I think over the years you’ve once or twice told me that I could have done something, that I could have done something in a different way. And you know, that that’s the sort of feedback. Loop. That you want to. Have sort of established, I guess.
00:18:47 Hannah (Host)
And that, again, I think thinking about client conversations that I’ve had and I think this topics come up again more and more in a post-pandemic world and maybe the two things are linked are this idea of a feedback culture. So organizations I speak to seem to either want to build a feedback culture, a coaching culture, or preferably both together. So to reflect perhaps on the now the hybrid world in which we now work. What would be given what you know, what you understand about personality, what would be your top tips for organizations who want to build a culture of feedback? Build a culture of coaching, and help their leaders get to a place where that can happen.
00:19:45 Rab MacIver
Okay, big question. I mean, I suppose at this point in the world, I mean, maybe the first thing I would sort of start by asking a different question, which hopefully will help, and that is that I think sometimes some of the things that we assume that are true in the post-pandemic world in terms of how people react weren’t necessarily true. So, for example, I think there’s an assumption which would make sense that extroverts really feared badly. In the because they were sort of locked down and they didn’t want to be. The case in actual fact, my experience was probably the opposite that actually the extroverts sort of a found ways of carrying on. You know, they went online. They did. Quizzes and tastings and.
00:20:34 Hannah (Host)
The house party app.
00:20:35 Rab MacIver
House party app that’s right, don’t remind me and and phoned their friends and they did all of the things and they sort of made made a life out of it Not as good a life obviously, but they made a life out of it. But if you’re an introvert, then sometimes the more natural thing was when you came in to work, then you naturally got the sort of social you might not have to say much, but there was a little bit of a buzz around you. You didn’t want to party round you, but, you know, coming in, smiling at somebody, seeing somebody having a little chat and whatever else. And then and that was taken away, that little bit of an important social interaction was removed. And that meant that that was quite difficult for some introverts. So it isn’t necessarily the case. I think that how we expect people to react, I mean, it was a biggest social experiment, obviously, that, you know, on on a global scale that you could possibly imagine and we’re still understanding some of the the aspects and the features of it. And in fact, I was just back from the European work and organizational Psychology conference and when there was a South African partner, I actually did a piece of research and giving feedback. With Wave on personality and virtual feedback and learning some of the things that you had to do differently in terms of giving feedback in that situations. So sorry, what was your question?
00:22:09 Hannah (Host)
Big one, given the world in which we now live hybrid working, post-pandemic, what advice would you give to organizations, talent folk in organizations looking to build feedback culture, coaching culture and helping their leaders get to a place where they can do that.
00:22:32 Rab MacIver
I think I mean, it sounds obvious, but you have to work at it and you have to sort of work hard at it. There’s some interventions you can do. So actually giving people feedback, doing self-awareness, doing self-awareness things where people share the results and understanding with each other. So teams genuinely understanding, you know, understanding that, you know, the person over there is an analyst and I’m an innovator and that you’re you’re you’re more likely to to say what’s wrong with it. And I’m likely to say, well, what what else could we do with it to make it work? And understanding where people are coming from in terms of that is part of that sort of culture because you’re starting to talk to each other about how you’re different from one another. And I think that’s important. I mean, it’s another aspect of sort of diversity and inclusion is to understand and be accepting of people’s personalities, not to actually necessarily look at somebody’s personality who’s different from your own and say that it’s wrong.
00:23:44 Hannah (Host)
Because it’s easier to work with people who are similar to us. Yeah, right.
00:23:48 Rab MacIver
Yeah, absolutely. And you have to remember that that interacts with other aspects of D&I. So you, you might, you might meet somebody from a different ethnic minority than, you know, you’re in in the majority position in that circumstance, now you’re not you’re not going to dislike them because of that. But if they’re very different from you in terms of creativity or they’re very critical or analytical, that might bug you. But that could be confused because you are you’re actually be you’re not being inclusive about their personality, but they may assume that the reason for inclusion is different. Yeah, so, you know, that is inclusion goes sort of interacts and goes beyond maybe the simple sometimes people think personality you don’t have to be inclusive about, but you do.
00:24:38 Hannah (Host)
You do. Yeah. And I think in organizations, I think where I’ve seen that done really well, it’s where there’s been almost a kind of top down approach. So your leadership team does what you’ve just described and sort of models that behavior that is essentially we’re all exploring how we’re all similar, how we’re all different, where are our strengths, where are our challenge areas? What might that mean for us in terms of team dynamics? How might we want to work together moving forward? And then it sort of cascades down the organization. But I do think it kind of has to be modeled from the top because I guess for some people it might feel a little vulnerable.
00:25:17 Rab MacIver
I think that that’s I mean, I think that’s right. I mean, I think that’s the best way to do it. But I mean, sometimes I think sometimes those cascade things sort of end up stopping. They sort of get down to, well, they sort of get from the board down to senior managers. And then, you know, it’s a sort of weaker incarnation running through the organizations. So to that point of, you know, you’ve got to work hard at it, I think you’re right. That’s where you start if you possibly can. But it’s not a bad thing even when you’re doing it. If you’re if you imagine even it’s not a cascade down. But but what somebody says when you’re walking in and you’re you know, you’ve just started and you’re you’re doing your workshop or your exploration of, of difference and understanding and then somebody says, no, no, that the, you know, the top team are doing it right now this day, the same as you, you know. So you know that that kind of feels.
00:26:15 Hannah (Host)
It sets the tone.
00:26:16 Rab MacIver
It sets the tone.
00:26:17 Hannah (Host)
And I guess the other piece is around the right people in the right roles at leadership. So if your argument and the University of Life Research suggests that it’s very difficult to develop some of those behaviors, that to do with sort of people oriented leadership, I guess the answer to that is making sure you get folk who have those areas of strength in to succession plans for those roles.
00:26:50 Rab MacIver
Yeah. Or or at least, I mean, sometimes, you know, there’s an assumption that everybody at the top has to have everything. They have to be, you know, all of the characteristics. Now, it may be that, you know, you know, that for some of the rules, so long as you’ve got it across the teams and there’s an understanding, for example, you know, that your FD doesn’t have it or, you know, some of that. Well, whatever whatever we’re looking for in the people area or wherever looking at in terms of emotional intelligence, sometimes somebody else, you know, will work with them. They may have a people manager alongside them in their group or team if they recognize that. So it’s sometimes not being honest sometimes and not always assuming that one person has everything for a role. And sometimes thinking actually their strength in what matters for the role is so great. But we understand they’ve got something that they’re lacking and we need to shore that up somehow.
00:27:53 Hannah (Host)
Final question for any listeners who are sitting here thinking I was actually just about to Google emotional intelligence tool, what do you want to tell them?
00:28:10 Rab MacIver
I suppose I would just think about what it is that you’re trying to do. Back to your question rather than look for the tool. Start with what are you trying to solve for? And then ask your question. Right. If I’m going to solve for that, what’s the best way to get to that? So if it is a coaching culture or if it is improving feedback, or if it is actually getting a read on whether my new graduates are going to be resilient enough in a big because there’s a big period of change coming for as we digitally transform our company. I don’t want to have to end up having to lose a lot of graduates because the the can’t handle, you know, all of the change process that’s going to go through. Then, you know, think about that. That’s that’s probably not an emotional intelligence questionnaire, but think about what it is that you should be using, or how you should be applying it. And sometimes you shouldn’t be using a questionnaire at all, if I’m honest.
00:29:18 Hannah (Host)
But if you’re going to use one, you should use Wave. Rab, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us today.
00:29:27 Rab MacIver
Thanks. As always Hannah.
00:29:28 Hannah (Host)
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Deep Dive. If you have, please remember to like and subscribe, to stay tuned for all our latest content. If you want more information on any of the topics you’ve heard today, check out the show Notes for Case studies, resources and articles. I’ve been Hannah Mullaney. See you next time on the Deep Dive.
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