Earlier I mentioned research by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis. They’ve created an Emotional and Social Competency inventory. The goal is to help business professionals improve social intelligence. In OnPoint, from Harvard Business Review, they identify seven social intelligence components:
- Empathy
- Attunement
- Organizational awarenes
- Influence
- Developing others
- Inspiration
- Team work
In this and subsequent posts, I’m going to share how we implement the above using practical systems at Intertech.
In work assignments, empathy, I believe, is tied to retention. For example, want a way to make employees flee from your firm? Give a high talent person a mundane, rote task without an end date and don’t recognize that the work is beneath their skill set. To combat this, if our hand is ever forced to have our people temporarily do work that’s not satisfying, we’ll:
- Meet with the employee and share that we recognize the work is mundane, rote, and/or beneath their skill set
- Set a hard end date where they know they’ll be transitioned to more meaningful work
- During this period, offer an option to work on an “extra credit” more challenging project or sign up for one of our classes at Intertech
Recognizing the issue, empathizing that the employee slogging thru the boring assignment, setting an end date, and providing an opportunity to do something more engaging results in employees who don’t have to “vote with their feet” to find more rewarding work.
Coming Up: Attunement