Character Over Credentials: Why EQ Takes You Further Than IQ Alone
In the current “highly optimized” job market, a high IQ and a polished resume are now just the baseline. Emotional Quotient (EQ) also known as Emotional Intelligence (EI) is what actually sets leaders apart.
How can you differentiate yourself from the crowd?
Show potential employers that not only do you have practical skills (you can run numbers, forecast, and demand plan, etc.), but you can handle unpredictability, team dynamics, and supply chain volatility with adaptability, collaboration, and resilience.
EQ is now the leadership skill that matters most, particularly when guiding teams through industry shifts and periods of high stress, according to TalentSmartEQ.
A high EQ is absolutely critical for “levelling up,” reading the room, and aligning diverse stakeholder perspectives from the store floor to the C-suite.
“Navigating relationships with senior leadership presents a perennial challenge for middle managers. Learning how to speak their supervisor’s language, align with their goals and priorities, and anticipate their needs are critical skills for upwardly minded managers. These skills are commonly referred to as “managing up,” and they all require a level of emotional intelligence to execute,” Harvard DCE.
How to develop your EQ in the Building Industry
A great resource for developing your EQ is cultivating your growth mindset.
In short, that’s your ability to move from feeling stuck, limited, and frustrated to feeling more empowered, determined, and unstoppable. This is a crucial piece of the character-building puzzle; this LinkedIn article can help you get started.
How do you communicate your EQ during an interview?
Employers have been screening for job-specific skills and behaviors for years now, but as the need for emotionally intelligent employees has risen to the top of the list of job qualifications, so has the interview process evolved.
Mark Fisher, TZR president says “For the job candidate, this means you need to do more thanjust “claim to be empathetic”. Be prepared to answer questions that begin with, “Tell me about a time when…” by sharing specific, possibly even challenging stories of how you de-escalated a conflict or pivoted a failing project without throwing your team or your boss under the bus.”
This feature from Indeed provides further guidance and a TZR-approved checklist of these types of interview questions that will help you prepare.
Hiring managers, this applies to you as well, so you need to ditch the generic prompts you may have been using in interviews.
Ask behavioral questions specifically designed to reveal self-awareness and relationship management, such as asking a candidate to describe a time they failed or how they handled a highly critical colleague.
This Forbes article has great suggestions on assessing emotional intelligence, as does this ASAE Center article.
TZR Takeaway
At TZR, we pay close attention to how candidates talk about former and current employers and colleagues, noting whether a candidate takes accountability for past missteps and learned from them.
As you know, AI can scan a resume for keywords in seconds, but an algorithm cannot look a candidate in the eye and assess their adaptability, problem-solving skills, or integrity. If you’re looking to make it into the TZR Talent Vault, exceptional EQ is the key
