Good example of emotional intelligence: the billion dollar mistake research paper

Daniel Goleman noted that many companies and corporations are spending and wasting millions of dollars in the ineffective training of its employees. Many of these training programs have no lasting impact and are at most of the time ineffective in building emotional competence of the trainees. This amounts to what Goleman refers to as the ‘ Billion-Dollar mistake’. To cultivate competencies for emotional intelligence, there is the need of understanding of the fundamentals of behavior change. The failure of taking into account these fundamentals of behavior change in building emotional competencies has always led to the waste of millions of dollars in training and development. Many companies have had to learn the hard way that soft skills are usually hard to train and that significant improvements in the organization are usually rare as a result. Goleman (1998) found out that the soft skills which are responsible for personal and social outcomes are difficult to train and also rare to find among people. It has been found out that most organizations hire their staff based on their hard skills hoping that the soft skills can be trained only to be disappointed because the training methods usually carried out do not usually utilize the best methods.
Emotional intelligence has been proven to raise the social and emotional competence of adult workers in an organization. Most organizations have organized for training programs for their workers with this aim but most of the time the process is usually flawed (Cherniss& Goleman, 2001). It is widely agreed that the success of an Organization or business is mainly influenced by qualities such as self-control, perseverance, empathy and other social skills. To build individuals social and emotional competence requires a different approach from cognitive and technical learning. Growing bodies of research have found out that it is possible to build a person’s emotional competence at any age through the focusing on his/her behaviors. According to Goleman et al. (1998), emotional incompetence is usually from habits developed earlier on in life. These habits tend to be incorporated into normal life as the experiences shape the brain.
In carrying out trainings on building emotional competencies among staff, organization must be able to differentiate between the two types of learning which include cognitive learning and emotional learning. Declarative knowledge is the knowledge of knowing a concept while procedural knowledge is putting the concept into action. Goleman (1998) proposed that to be able to achieve an effective social and emotional learning the following guidelines needed to be adhered to: assessment of both the job and the individual, assessments on the person’s strength and weakness, preparing the staff for the training and learning, motivation, making desired changes to be self-directed, encouragement and support of staff, provision of models to be used in training and the carrying out of evaluations are important. Emotional intelligence has proven to improve life and improve performance in work. EI provides workers with the capacity to assess and regulate their emotions and also the social skills that are important in cooperation, collaboration, conflict resolution and the maintenance of a positive work environment. Emotional intelligence correlates with effectiveness in an organization hence the empowerment of staff with emotional competencies will improve the general performance of the organization or company.
For organizations to achieve the best from their staff, improve performances and promote real change within their organizations, they will either need to hire the best staff with high emotional competencies or utilize the best training methods that would include all the aspects of emotional learning. The cultivation of emotional intelligence within an organization using the appropriate training methods will save companies money and ensure improved performance and the promotion of real change hence avoiding the billion dollar mistake.

References

Cherniss, C., & Goleman, D. (2001). The emotionally intelligent workplace: How to select for measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.