In society, we seem to focus considerable amounts of energy on raising and hailing ‘brilliant’ children. Yet, numerous organizations have expressed that they are seeking talent that also has emotional intelligence.
Observing behaviors in the workforce, it is understandable why employers are seeking talent pools that are emotionally wise because it is the human-centric behaviors that have an impact on the 70-90 percent project failure rate expectations.
A certain group was posturing that they did not understand the challenges within a specific branch. Resources have been hired to fulfill the position and the projects are not showing a marked improvement in the way they expected.
Is it possible that the resource challenges has everything to do with:
• Making the mistake of hiring ‘brilliant’ talent that lacks emotional wisdom
When we are sifting through resumes to determine whether they would be a good candidate, is our primary focus on the keywords for the hard skills required for that job? Where is our mindset when we’re reviewing resumes?
• Our nature of hiring warm bodies to fulfill a specific need
If the position is an entry-level position, we can have a set of acceptable risks that we are accepting. Will those warm bodies be able to mesh with the team? Does that candidate have the right attitude for you to lead them and teach them so they will be able to continue being valuable community members for your business?
• Failing to understand what our resources need and believing that leadership is telling people what to do
While observing social dialogues, our communication styles seem riddled with assumptions while we declare what people should and should not be doing, how they should and should not behave, what they do or do not understand. We behave in very presumptuous manners then sit shocked with the result of our choice in action. How many questions were posed to understand our resources? Furthermore, when we did ask questions, did we ask clarifying questions to understand what they need?
• Failing to listen to understand how we can empower our resources to make decisions because of what we want for our personal agenda
Indeed, trying to understand what we can do to motivate our crews can be difficult. How many of us believed that management would be easy? What did we learn with that assumption? Are we continuing the habit of making assumptions about what people want to see if it fits our goals?
It seems to me that the largest obstacles are ourselves. “Feelings don’t belong in the workforce!” Yet, feelings have everything to do with the workforce because, if people do not feel valued, respected, worthy, heard, and championed–they will not stay. Why should they?
Although brilliance is admirable, I believe that emotional awareness and imaginative risks to build successful teams is imperative. I believe that the Project Management Institute was astute with their statistical figures sharing that project managers believe we fail at focusing on the human-centric behaviors that has much to do with the project failure rates.
I do not know what the answer is with the current talent pool and resource gaps that have much to do with our business initiatives. I do believe that synergistic teams are founded on trust which requires emotional intelligence.
