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Supervisor: Frances Jørgensen
Aarhus School of Business Master Thesis University of Aarhus August 2008
Emotional Intelligence The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Recruitment Process
Margrét Grétarsdóttir 280040
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Executive Summary The idea with this paper is to investigate the term emotional intelligence and its importance
during the recruitment process. Over the last few decades a continuous growth has been in the
interest in the area of leadership, with both managers and leadership researchers trying to
identify the behaviour which increases a leader’s effectiveness. Despite of research, there
appears to be little emerging consensus regarding what characterises an effective leader. It
also seems to be quite common to recruit managers on the basis of their technical
qualifications rather than their ability to communicate with others which could be prevented,
or at least minimised, by taking so called “soft” management procedures (focus on the
personal aspects in working environment) into considerations during the recruitment process.
Recently, emotional intelligence as a predictor of effective leadership has gained the attention
of researchers and recruiters. Emotional intelligence can be generally defined as a set of non-
cognitive competencies that are linked to interpersonal effectiveness or “people skills” at
work. More specifically, emotional intelligence includes the ability to monitor one’s own and
others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use that information to
guide one’s thinking and actions. Emotional intelligence has become extremely popular
within the fields of management because it is thought to underlie various aspects of workplace
performance and success not accounted for by traditional intelligence measures or personality.
The research question put forward in the paper is: “to what degree are managers recruited
and selected on the basis of emotional characteristics versus technical qualification?” In
order to connect theories of emotional intelligence with reality interviews were conducted
with six HR managers of different companies in Iceland. They were all asked the same ten
questions and the findings indicate that managers are being recruited on the basis of their
emotional intelligence characteristics rather than technical qualifications but that the best
combination would be good people skills as well as good technical qualifications. Grades
were also mentioned in connection to this which contradicts the theories that this paper was
based on. According to researchers David McClelland and Daniel Goleman grades in school
and IQ do not indicate how likely it is that an individual will succeed in life and at a work
place.
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No evaluation measure gives perfect results. Self-evaluations are vulnerable to skews from
people wanting to look good. Therefore, when it comes to assessing emotional competencies,
there is always the danger that a person with low self-esteem does not evaluate accurately his
or her own strengths and weaknesses. Even though self-evaluations can be helpful, if people
really trust that the results will be used for their own good, they can be less reliable without
this trust. Having emotionally intelligent managers does not guarantee that the company gains
more market share or a better bottom line but research throughout the years have indicated
how important the human mind is for the growth of organisations and therefore “soft”
management like emotional intelligence has gained increased popularity.
The outline of this paper is twofold; the first two chapters cover theories of traditional
management and leadership and the main chapters cover the concept of emotional
intelligence, both in theory and practice. It is important to understand the evolution of
management because management problems remain mostly the same over time. While value
systems and perspectives may have changed, experts have gained a better understanding of
what motivates employees.
In the beginning of the twentieth century Mary Parker Follett pointed out in her behavioural
theory that the role of the manager and his influence on employees was becoming more and
more important. Henry Fayol argued that leaders emerged from managers’ authority derived
from their position in the hierarchy but Follett proposed that knowledge and expertise should
decide who would be the leader at any particular moment. Characteristics of managers are
very personal but they are very important for understanding how managers behave, how they
treat and respond to others and how they help contribute to organisational effectiveness
through the four managerial functions; planning, leading, organising and controlling.
When people approach tasks in life with emotional intelligence they should be at an
advantage to solving problems. The kind of problems that people identify and the way they
handle them will probably be more related to internal emotional experience. Such individuals
are more likely to choose a career that will make them happy instead of thinking how much
they will earn and they are also more likely to be more creative and flexible in arriving at
possible alternatives to problems. Individuals who have developed skills related to emotional
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intelligence understand and express their own emotions, recognise the emotions of others and
they also use moods and emotions to motivate adaptive behaviour.
A person with emotional intelligence can be thought of as having attained at least some form
of positive mental health. These individuals are aware of their own feelings and those of
others, are open to positive and negative aspects of internal experience and are able to
communicate them when appropriate. This leads to the fact that an emotionally intelligent
person is often a pleasure to be around, has good influence and makes others feel better. This
person however does not mindlessly seek pleasure, but rather attends to emotions which lead
to growth.
People are being judged by new yardsticks and it is not how smart they are or what kind of
education they have or expertise, more focus is on how people handle themselves and others.
This yardstick is becoming more important and is increasingly applied when choosing whom
to hire. This new measurement focuses on personal qualities but takes for granted peoples
intellectual abilities and technical skills. Emotional intelligence is even more crucial today,
because organisations are shrinking and the people who remain are more accountable and
visible.
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Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6
1. Traditional Management ........................................................................................................ 9 1.1 Theoretical Scope of Management ...................................................................................................... 11 1.2 Management Theories ......................................................................................................................... 13
1.2.1 The Universal Process Approach ................................................................................................. 14 1.2.2 The Operational Approach ........................................................................................................... 16 1.2.3 The Behavioural Approach .......................................................................................................... 18 1.2.4 The Systems Approach ................................................................................................................ 20 1.2.5 The Contingency Approach ......................................................................................................... 21 1.2.6 The Attributes of Excellence Approach ....................................................................................... 22
2. Leadership ............................................................................................................................ 24 2.1 Models of Leadership .......................................................................................................................... 27
2.1.1 The Trait Theory .......................................................................................................................... 27 2.1.2 The Behaviour Theory ................................................................................................................. 28 2.1.3 The Contingency Theory ............................................................................................................. 28 2.1.4 The Transformational Theory ...................................................................................................... 29
2.2. Management vs. Leadership ............................................................................................................... 30 2.3. The Human Side of Managers ............................................................................................................ 32
3. Emotional Intelligence ......................................................................................................... 35 3.1 Theoretical Scope of Emotional Intelligence ....................................................................................... 37 3.2 Models of Emotional Intelligence ........................................................................................................ 41
3.2.1 The Abilities Model ..................................................................................................................... 42 3.2.2 The Mixed Model ........................................................................................................................ 43
3.3 Emotional Intelligence and Its Effect on Leadership ............................................................................ 46 3.4. Emotional Intelligence and the Recruitment Process .......................................................................... 47
3.4.1. The Selection Process ................................................................................................................. 48
4. Emotional Intelligence in Reality ......................................................................................... 50 4.1 Business Research Methods ................................................................................................................ 51 4.2 The Research Method .......................................................................................................................... 52 4.3 The Process of the Interviews .............................................................................................................. 54
4.3.1 Participants .................................................................................................................................. 54 4.3.2 The Interviews ............................................................................................................................. 55
4.2 Findings of the Interviews ................................................................................................................... 57 4.3 Analysis of Findings ............................................................................................................................ 59
5. Discussion of Findings ......................................................................................................... 62 5.1 Evaluation of Methods and Findings ................................................................................................... 64
6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 65
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 67
Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................... 70
Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................... 72
Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................... 74
Appendix 4 ............................................................................................................................... 76
Appendix 5 ............................................................................................................................... 78
Appendix 6 ............................................................................................................................... 80
Appendix 7 ............................................................................................................................... 82
Appendix 8 ............................................................................................................................... 84
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Introduction
During the last few decades a continuous growth has been in the interest in the area of
leadership, with both managers and leadership researchers searching to identify the behaviour
which increases a leader’s effectiveness. Despite of research, there appears to be little
emerging consensus regarding what characterises an effective leader. Recently, emotional
intelligence as a predictor of effective leadership has gained the attention of researchers and
recruiters. Emotional intelligence can be generally defined as a set of non-cognitive
competencies that are linked to interpersonal effectiveness or “people skills” at work. More
specifically, emotional intelligence includes the ability to monitor one’s own and others’
feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use that information to guide one’s
thinking and actions.1
Emotional intelligence has become extremely popular within the fields of management
because it is thought to underlie various aspects of workplace performance and success not
accounted for by traditional intelligence measures or personality. Several studies highlight
that traditional forms of intelligence only account for twenty percent of overall success at
work.2 That leaves eighty percent of the variance unaccounted for. With personality and
motivational measures approximately contributing another ten percent to the puzzle, there still
seems to be a lot that is unknown about what makes some individuals perform better or why
some people are always a step ahead. Therefore, measuring emotional intelligence or the
‘softer skills’, as they are often known, could explain what differentiates between who will be
an effective leader and who will not.
In today’s competitive business world, where the “higher education” level of many leaders
and managers is increasing, emotional intelligence has the potential to become a core
differentiator in terms of selecting the best leaders for organisations. Lack of interpersonal
skills can have tremendous influence over the career prospects of highly intelligent, qualified,
and experienced professionals and can easily destroy them. Scoring high on IQ tests and
1 Salovey and Mayer (1990) 2 Goleman (1995)
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getting high grades in school counts for little if the individual has difficulty in dealing with
e.g. uncertainty and pressure at work and handles relationship with others badly.3
This paper is about emotional intelligence and to what degree managers are recruited and
selected on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualification. It
is important to understand the evolution of management because management problems
remain mostly the same over time. While value systems and perspectives may have changed,
experts have gained a better understanding of what motivates employees. In the first chapter
the concept of management is defined and various theories are covered in order to see how
they have developed, where the human mind was considered valuable and made a difference.
In the beginning of the twentieth century Mary Parker Follett pointed out in her behavioural
theory that the role of the manager and his influence on employees was becoming more and
more important. Henry Fayol argued that leaders emerged from managers’ authority derived
from their position in the hierarchy but Follett proposed that knowledge and expertise should
decide who would be the leader at any particular moment.4 With this in mind the second
chapter is focused on leadership as more and more managers are becoming aware of how
important different leadership styles are and are trying to incorporate them into their personal
leadership style.
Characteristics of managers are very personal but they are very important for understanding
how managers behave, how they treat and respond to others and how they help contribute to
organisational effectiveness through the four managerial functions; planning, leading,
organising and controlling. The third chapter covers the theory of emotional intelligence and
focus is put on the importance of the emotions of managers and to what degree companies
recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus
technical qualifications. This chapter is mostly based on the theory of David McClelland and
Daniel Goleman.5
In modern management, many words have been written about the value of soft management
(focus on the personal aspects in working environment). It is therefore interesting to find out
3 McClelland (1973) 4 Meyer, et al. (2007) 5 McClelland (1973) and Goleman (1998)
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if this is something that is preached more than practiced, if managers today are really
following the theories that they claim to do and if this is really something that is being used as
a guideline when managers are recruited. Chapter four and five cover this matter with a
description of the research which was conducted in order to connect theory to practice and the
result of that research.
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1. Traditional Management
The world is changing more rapidly than ever before and managers and other employees
throughout an organisation need to perform at higher and higher levels. In the last twenty
years, competition between organisations, both nationally and internationally, has increased
dramatically. Managers need to learn and adapt to changes in the global environment in order
to achieve the goals of the organisations.6
Today, the term competencies is often used to refer to a specific set of skills, abilities and
experiences that gives a manager the ability to perform at a higher level. Developing such
competencies through education and training has become a major priority for managers and
the organisations they work for.
To understand better the role of managers it is necessary to define what management is.
Management is the organizational process that includes strategic planning, managing
resources, deploying the human and financial assets needed to achieve objectives, and
measuring results. Management also includes recording and storing facts and information for
later use or for others within the organization.
Management functions are not limited to managers and supervisors. Every member of the
organization has some management and reporting functions as part of their job. Jones, George
and Hill describe management as:
“Management is the planning, organising, leading and controlling of resources to
achieve organisational goals effectively and efficiently.”7
According to them there are a few key concepts; organisations, goals, resources and
managers. They explain organisations as collections of people who work together and
coordinate actions to be taken to achieve certain goals. These goals, which are to be achieved,
are what are desired in the future. Resources are the company‘s assets such as people,
machines, information, skills and financial capital. The role of the managers is to supervise
6 Meyer et al (2007) 7 Jones, George and Hill (2000)
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the use of the resources so the goals can be achieved.8 Figure one shows the four functions of
management:9
Planning is the process that managers use
to identify and select appropriate goals and
courses of action. There are three steps in
planning: 1) deciding what the goals of the
organisation are, 2) deciding what actions
need to be taken in order to achieve these
goals, and 3) deciding how to allocate
organisational resources to accomplish
them. Planning is a complex activity because normally the goals of an organisation are not
immediately clear. Managers take risks when they commit organisational resources to pursue
a particular strategy.
Organising is a process which managers use to establish a structure of working relationships
so that all members of the organisation interact and co-operate to achieve the goals.
Organising involves grouping people into departments according to the job-specific tasks they
perform. Managers lay out the lines of authority and responsibility between individuals and
groups and decide how organisational resources can be best utilised.
Leading is the process of articulating a clear vision for organisational members to follow. This
should enable the members to understand the role they play in achieving organisational goals.
An ideal outcome of good leadership is a high level of motivation and commitment of
organisational members.
Controlling is the ability to measure performance accurately and regulate organisational
efficiency and effectiveness. Managers evaluate how well an organisation is achieving its
goals and take action to maintain or improve performance. They monitor the performance of
individuals, departments and the organisation as a whole and if standards are not met they
need to take action in order to improve performance.10
8 Jones, George and Hill (2000) 9 Meyer et al. (2007) p. 6 10 Ibid,. p. 6-9
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Management is an organizational function but does not necessarily mean managing people; it
can also be the management of other resources like capital sales areas and marketing.
Management is like an investment. Managers have resources to invest; their time, talent and,
possibly, human resources. The goal (function) of management is to get the best return on
such resources by getting things done efficiently. This doesn't imply being mechanical or
narrowly controlling as some writers on management suggest. The manager's style is a
personal or situational matter and has evolved over time. With highly skilled and self-
motivated knowledge workers, the manager must be very empowering. Where the workforce
is less skilled or not very motivated, the manager may need to monitor output more closely.
Skilled managers know how to vary their style, coach and motivate diverse employees.
Getting things done through people is what they do. By saying that management is a function,
not a type of person or role, it is easier to account for self-managed work teams where no one
is in charge. In a self-managed team, management is a group effort with no one being the
designated manager.11
Improvements in management have taken place because the relevant stakeholders have found
that the current management styles are insufficient in dealing with the problems of the
future.12 The next chapter tells how management theory has developed over time from first
focusing on how to increase the effectiveness of machines to the importance of the human
mind in the organisational process.
1.1 Theoretical Scope of Management
As an area of academic study, management is essentially a product of the twentieth century.
However, the actual practice of management has been around for thousands of years. Tangible
examples can be found throughout history, for example the pyramids of Egypt stand as
evidence of the ancient world’s ability to manage. Even though Egyptian management
techniques were coarse by modern standards, many problems they faced are still around
today. 13 They, like today’s managers, had to make plans, obtain and mobilize human and
material resources, coordinate interdependent jobs, keep records, report their progress and
11 McCrimmon (2007) 12 Meyer et al (2007) 13 Kreitner (2001)
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take corrective action as needed.14 Since the buildings of the pyramids, entire civilizations
have come and gone and management has been practised in each of them. One modern
element has been missing though and that is a systematically record of management
knowledge. In early cultures management was something one learned by word of mouth and
trial and error. It was not something one studied in school or read about in textbooks. 15
The evolution of modern management began at the end of the nineteenth century, after the
industrial revolution had swept through Europe and America. As the economy was changing,
managers in all kinds of organisations, both public and private, were constantly trying to find
better ways to satisfy the needs of customers. Major economic, technical and cultural changes
took place at this time.16 Utilization of steam powered machines was made more efficient and
the development of new machinery and equipment changed the way goods were produced.
This especially applied in the clothing industry as small workshops run by skilled workers,
who produced hand-manufactured products, were being replaced by large factories where
machines were controlled by thousands of unskilled workers who made the products.
Managers and owners of the new factories faced problems as they were often engineers who
had the technical skills to support the machinery but often lacked the craft-specific expertise.
There were also other problems, for example social problems that occurred when people
worked together in large groups. Managers had to search for new techniques to manage their
organisations and soon they began to focus on ways to increase the efficiency of the worker-
task mix.17
Figure 2 The Evolution of Management Theory18
14 Kreitner (2001) 15 Ibid,. 16 Meyer et al. (2007) 17 Ibid,. 18 Ibid,. p. 34
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To begin with, the management theorists were interested in the subject of why the new
machine/factory systems were more efficient and produced greater quantities of goods than
older production operations. In the mid-eighteenth century, Adam Smith was one of the first
writers to investigate the advantages associated with producing in factories. He provided a
theoretical background to resource-allocation, production and pricing issues. Smith found out
that increasing the level of job-specialisation increased efficiency and led to higher
organisational performance.19 This inspired many managers and researchers to investigate
further how job-specialisation could be improved in order to increase performance. The focus
was on how managers should organise and control the work processes to maximise the
advantage of job-specialisation and the division of labour.20 Since that time many theories
have developed throughout the decades and in the next chapter some of these theories will be
discussed.
1.2 Management Theories To be able to study modern management it is necessary to provide a useful historical
perspective of management. It is safe to say that no single theory of management is
universally accepted today. There have been different approaches to management throughout
history and some of them are:
• The universal approach
• The operational approach
• The behavioural approach
• The systems approach
• The contingency approach
• The attributes of excellence approach.
Understanding these general approaches to the theory and practice of management is
necessary to see how management has evolved, where it is today and where it appears to be
headed.21
19 Smith (1982) 20 Meyer et al. (2007) 21 Kreitner (2001)
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1.2.1 The Universal Process Approach
The universal process approach is the oldest and the one of the most popular approaches to
management thoughts. According to this approach, the administration of all organizations
requires the same rational process. One core management process remains the same across all
organisations even though the purpose of the organisations varies. Therefore, successful
managers are equivalent among organisations of different purposes. The universal approach
can also be reduced to a set of separate functions and related principles.22
In 1916, Henry Fayol published his book Administration Industrielle et Générale. Fayol was
first an engineer and later a successful administrator in a large French mining company. He
was a manager who tried to translate his broad administrative experience into practical
guidelines for the successful management of all types of organisations. It was Fayol’s belief
that a manager’s job could be divided into five managerial functions which all were essential
to being a successful manager; planning, organising, command, coordination and control.23
These five elements were Fayol's definition of management roles and actions:24
1. To plan. (Forecast & Plan). Examining the future and drawing up a plan of action. The elements of
strategy.
2. To organize. Build up the structure, both material and human, of the undertaking.
3. To command. Maintain the activity among the personnel.
4. To coordinate. Binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort.
5. To control. Seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed command.
His fourteen universal principles of management (see table 1) were intended to show
managers how to carry out their functional duties.25 Fayol’s elements and principles have
withstood the test of time because of their widespread applicability. These functions can still
be found in almost all management texts, as Carroll and Gillen put it:
“The classical functions still represent the most useful way of conceptualising the
manager’s job, especially for management education, and perhaps this is why it is still
the most favoured description of managerial work in current management textbooks. The
22 Kreitner (2001) 23 Ibid,. 24 Marino (2008) 25 Kreitner (2001)
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classical functions provide clear and discrete methods of classifying the thousands of
different activities that managers carry out and the techniques they use in terms of the
functions they perform for the achievement of organisational goals.26”
Table 1. The 14 Management Principles from Henri Fayol (1841-1925)27:
1. Division of Work. Specialization allows the individual to build up experience, and to continuously improve his skills. Thereby he can be more productive.
2. Authority. The right to issue commands, along with which must go the balanced responsibility for its function. 3. Discipline. Employees must obey, but this is two-sided: employees will only obey orders if management play their part by
providing good leadership. 4. Unity of Command. Each worker should have only one boss with no other conflicting lines of command. 5. Unity of Direction. People engaged in the same kind of activities must have the same objectives in a single plan. This is essential
to ensure unity and coordination in the enterprise. Unity of command does not exist without unity of direction but does not necessarily flow from it.
6. Subordination of individual interest (to the general interest). Management must see that the goals of the firm are always paramount.
7. Remuneration. Payment is an important motivator although by analyzing a number of possibilities, Fayol points out that there is no such thing as a perfect system.
8. Centralization (or Decentralization). This is a matter of degree depending on the condition of the business and the quality of its personnel.
9. Scalar chain (Line of Authority). A hierarchy is necessary for unity of direction. But lateral communication is also fundamental, as long as superiors know that such communication is taking place. Scalar chain refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy from the ultimate authority to the lowest level in the organization. It should not be over-stretched and consist of too-many levels.
10. Order. Both material order and social order are necessary. The former minimizes lost time and useless handling of materials. The latter is achieved through organization and selection.
11. Equity. In running a business a ‘combination of kindliness and justice’ is needed. Treating employees well is important to achieve equity.
12. Stability of Tenure of Personnel. Employees work better if job security and career progress are assured to them. An insecure tenure and a high rate of employee turnover will affect the organization adversely.
13. Initiative. Allowing all personnel to show their initiative in some way is a source of strength for the organization. Even though it may well involve a sacrifice of ‘personal vanity’ on the part of many managers.
14. Esprit de Corps. Management must foster the morale of its employees. Fayol further suggests that: “real talent is needed to coordinate effort, encourage keenness, use each person’s abilities, and reward each one’s merit without arousing possible jealousies and disturbing harmonious relations.”
Fayol’s main contribution to management thought was to show how the complex process of
management can be separated into interdependent areas of responsibility. His idea was that
management is a continuous process beginning with planning and ending with controlling and
this remains popular today.
The functional approach is useful because it describes what managers should do. However, it
does not help explain why and how something should be done. For that purpose, other
approaches are needed.28 The basic concerns that motivated Fayol continue to motivate
managers today. The principles that he set forward have provided a clear and appropriate set
of guidelines that managers can use to create a work-setting that makes effective and efficient
use of organisational resources. The principles are a foundation for modern management
26 Carroll and Gillen (1987) p. 48 27 Marino (2008) 28 Kreitner (2001)
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theory and other researchers have developed them so that they fit in today. An examples of
this is Fayol‘s thoughts for equity and the links between performance and reward which today
are central themes in modern theories of motivation and leadership.29
1.2.2 The Operational Approach
The operational approach is a convenient description of the production-oriented area of
management dedicated to improving efficiency and cutting waste.30 This is a systematic study
of the relationships between people and tasks for the purpose of re-designing the work process
in order to increase efficiency. Throughout history this approach has been technically and
quantitatively oriented and it has been given many names, such as scientific management,
management science and operations management. The best known protagonist of the
operational approach is Frederick W. Taylor who is best known for defining a set of
principles which have become known as scientific management.31
Taylor was the epitome of the self-made man. In his early life he had problems with his eyes
which prevented him from going to Harvard University so instead he went to work as a
common labourer in a small machine shop. He later became a manufacturing manager and
eventually became a consultant and taught other managers how to use his techniques.
It was Taylor’s believe that the production process would become more efficient if the
amount of time and effort to produce a unit of output could be reduced by increasing job-
specialisation. Based on his findings, Taylor developed four principles to increase efficiency
in the workplace (the four principles are shown on next page).32
29 Meyer et al. (2007) 30 Kreitner (2001) 31 Meyer et al. (2007) 32 Ibid,. p. 36-37
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Table 2. The Four Principles of Taylor
Principle 1: Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge that workers
possess, and experiment with ways of improving how tasks are performed. Taylor studied and measured in great
deal the way different workers went about performing their tasks to discover the best method of completing a
task. One of the main tools he used was a time-and-motion study, which involves the careful timing and
recording of the actions taken to perform particular tasks. Once Taylor understood the existing methods of
performing a task, he made experiments in order to increase specialisation.
Principle 2: Codify the new methods of performing tasks into written rules and standard operating procedures.
Once the best method of performing a task was determined, Taylor specified that is should be recorded so that
the procedure could be taught to all workers performing the same task. By standardising and simplifying jobs
further, the efficiency would be increased throughout an organisation.
Principle 3: Carefully select workers who possess skills and abilities that match the needs of the task, and train
them to perform the task according to the established rules and procedures. Taylor believed that workers had to
understand the tasks that were required of them in order to increase specialisation. It was his believe that they
needed to be trained to perform a task at an optimum level. Workers who could not be trained to this level were
to be transferred to a job where they were able to reach the minimum required level.
Principle 4: Establish a fair or acceptable level of performance for a task, and then develop a pay system that
provides a reward for performance above the acceptable level. To encourage workers to perform at a higher
level of efficiency, Taylor wanted workers to benefit from any gains in performance. He provided them with an
incentive to reveal the most efficient techniques for performing a task. They should receive bonuses and some
percentage of the performance gains achieved through the more efficient work process.
By 1910, the system of scientific management had become nationally known in the United
States and was fully practised. Among the many that followed in Taylor’s footsteps, Frank
and Lillian Gilbreth and Henry L. Gantt stand out. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were really
inspired by Taylor’s time-and-motion studies. They turned motion studies into an exact
science. In doing so they pioneered the use of motion pictures for studying and streamlining
work motions. Henry L. Gantt contributed to scientific management by refining production
control and cost-control techniques. He also humanised Taylor’s differential piece-rate system
by combining a guaranteed day rate, or a minimum wage, with an above-standard bonus.
Gantt was ahead of his time in emphasising the importance of the human factor and in urging
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management to concentrate on service rather than profits.33 Here is where the researchers first
started to think of the importance of the human mind
1.2.3 The Behavioural Approach
The behavioural approach originates from American management theorists who began their
studies and research when Taylorist theories were at the height of their influence. Even
though the approach of these theorists differed, they all focused on behavioural management;
how managers should behave to motivate their employees and encourage them to perform at a
higher level so that the goals of organisations could be reached.34 The advocates of the
behavioural approach believed that people deserved to be the central focus of organised
activity. According to them, successful management depends on the manager’s ability to
understand and work with people who have a variety of backgrounds, needs and perception.
Mary Parker Follett was one of the theorists, in the beginning of the twentieth century, who
focused their work on the way managers should behave towards their employees. She
criticised Taylor’s approach because it didn’t take into account the difference between
individuals and ignored the human side of the organisation. It was her opinion that
management often overlooked the multitude of ways in which employees could contribute to
the organisations if their managers would allow them to participate and use their initiatives in
their every day work lives.35 What made the procedures of Follett and Taylor different was
that Taylor used time-and-motion experts to analyse the jobs of the workers while Follett
thought that the workers should be involved in the job analysis process. It was her opinion
that the workers were the most qualified to analyse their own jobs and therefore they should
participate in the process. The managers should behave as coaches or guides rather than
supervisors. Follett anticipated the emergence of self-managed teams and employee
empowerment which is so popular today. She also saw the importance of different
departments working together or, as it is called today, “cross-functioning”.36
33 Kreitner (2001) 34 Meyer et al. (2007) 35 Graham (1995) 36 Follett (1924)
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While acknowledging Fayol’s opinion of acknowledged expertise as an important source of a
managers’ authority, Follett went even further. Fayol argued that leaders emerged from
managers’ authority derived from their position in the hierarchy but Follett proposed that
knowledge and expertise should decide who would be the leader at any particular moment. It
was her belief that power is fluid and should flow to the person who could do the most for the
organisation and help it achieve set goals. She looked at the organisation horizontally instead
of Fayol’s hierarchical, bureaucratic view and believed that effective management came from
the way people interacted and reinforced each other. This approach was very radical at that
time but is well recognised today.37
As the socio-political climate changed, behavioural scientists from prestigious universities
began to conduct on-the-job behaviour studies. Instead of studying tools and techniques in the
scientific management tradition, they focused on people.38 One of these studies was
conducted from 1924 to 1932 at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company.
The Hawthorne studies were a small-scale scientific management study of the relationship
between light intensity and productivity. The performance of a selected group of employees
tended to improve no matter how the physical surroundings were manipulated. Even when the
lights were dimmed to moonlight intensity, productivity continued to grow. As scientists
could not figure out why this happened, a team of behavioural science researchers from
Harvard, headed by Elton Mayo, was asked to conduct a more thorough study. The
Hawthorne studies ended in 1932 and by then over twenty thousand employees had
participated in it. After extensive interviewing with the employees, it became clear that
productivity was much less affected by changes in the work environment than by the attitudes
of the workers themselves. The relationship between the worker and his supervisor and
between members of a group was found to be more significant. This finding influenced many
researchers to turn their attention to managerial behaviour and leadership. If managers could
be taught how to behave and how to motivate their employees then productivity could be
increased.39 From this view emerged the human relations movement, which advocated that
managers should be behaviourally trained to manage their employees in order to increase their
co-operation and as a consequence productivity would also increase.
37 Meyer et al. (2007) 38 Mayo (1933) 39 Kreitner (2001)
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One of the main assumptions of the Hawthorne studies was that the behaviour of managers
and workers in the work place is as important in explaining the level of performance as the
technical aspects of the task. It is very important for managers to understand how the informal
organisations works, i.e. the system of behavioural rules and norms that emerges in a group
when they try to change behaviour in an organisation. The Hawthorne studies demonstrated
the importance of understanding how feelings, thoughts and behaviour of group members and
managers affected performance. With these studies it was becoming clear to researchers that
understanding behaviour in organisations was critical so that performance could be
increased.40
The increasing interest in the management style known as organisational behaviour dates back
to these early studies. Organisational behaviour is a modern approach to management that
attempts to determine the causes of human work behaviour and translate the results into
effective management techniques. It has had a significant impact on modern management
thoughts by helping to explain why employees behave as they do. Above all else, the
behavioural approach has made it clear that people are the key to productivity. Technology,
work rules and standards do not guarantee good job performance; instead success depends on
motivated and skilled individuals who are committed to organisational goals.41
1.2.4 The Systems Approach
An important milestone in the history of management development occurred when researchers
went beyond the study of how managers could influence behaviour within organisations to
consider how managers control the organisation’s relationship with its external environment.
Universal process, scientific management and human relations theorists studied management
by taking things apart. They assumed that a whole was equal to the sum of its parts and could
be explained in terms of its parts. Systems theorists thought differently, they studied
management by putting things together and assumed that the whole was greater than the sum
of its parts. System thinking presented the field of management with a huge challenge which
was to identify all relevant parts of organised activity and to discover how they interacted.
According to Chester I. Barnard, willingness to serve, common purpose and communication
40 Carey (1967) 41 Kreitner (2001)
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are the principal elements in an organisation.42 His opinion was that organisations could not
function if these three elements did not exist interdependently. Barnard’s systems perspective
has encouraged management and theorists to study organisations as complex and dynamic
wholes instead of piece by piece. 43
One of the most influential views on how an organisation is affected by its external
environment was developed by three theorists, Katz, Kahn and Thompson in the 1960s. They
viewed the organisation as an open system; a system that takes resources from its external
environment and transforms them into products and services which are then sent back to the
environment and bought and consumed be customers.44 The system is said to be open because
the organisation draws from and interacts with the external environment to survive, i.e. the
organisation is open to its environment. A closed system, on the other hand, is a self-
contained system that is not affected by changes in the external environment.45 Due to the
systems approach, managers now understand the importance of seeing the whole picture.
Open-systems thinking does not permit the manager to become preoccupied with one aspect
of the organisation while ignoring other internal and external angles. Another positive point is
that the approach tries to integrate various management theories, for example both operations
management and organisational behaviour have been strongly influenced by systems
thinking.46
1.2.5 The Contingency Approach
The contingency theory was developed in the 1960s by several researchers both in United
Kingdom and the United States. This approach is an effort to determine, through research,
which managerial practises and techniques are appropriate in specific situations. The crucial
message of this theory is that there is no one best way to organise; managers choose the
organisational structure and the control systems which depend on characteristics of the
external environment in which the organisation operates.47 Contingency has become
synonymous with situational management. According to Shetty, a contingency theorist, the 42 Barnard (1938) 43 Kreitner (2001) 44 Katz and Kahn (1966) Thompson (1967) 45 Meyer et al.(2007) 46 Kreitner (2001) 47 Meyer et al. (2007)
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effectiveness of a given managerial pattern is contingent on numerous factors and how they
interact in certain situations.48 The appropriate use of a management concept or theory is thus
contingent or dependent on a set of variables that allows the user to fit the theory to the
situation and particular problems. It also allows for management theory to be applied to an
intercultural context where customs and culture must be taken into consideration.49
An important characteristic of the external environment which affects an organisation‘s ability
to obtain resources is the degree to which the environment is changing. These changes can be
for example technological, entry of new competitors or unstable economic conditions. The
more rapidly the environment changes the more important it is for managers to find new ways
to respond to these changes. The contingency theory was an extension of the systems
approach but it added more practical directions.
1.2.6 The Attributes of Excellence Approach
In 1982, Peters and Waterman wrote a book that took the management world by storm. In
their book, “In Search of Excellence” they attempted to explain what made the best-run
companies in America successful. Their approach to management was unconventional for
several reasons. They criticised conventional management theory for being too conservative,
analytical, inflexible and negative. They replaced conventional management terms with catch
phrases and they made their key points with stories and anecdotes rather than with quantified
data and facts. Their aim was to take a fresh look at management.50 Peters and Waterman
conducted a research where they isolated eight attributes of excellence after studying many of
the best-managed and most successful companies in America. The eight attributes where are
shown on the next page.51
48 Shetty (1974) 49 Kreitner (2001) 50 Ibid,. 51 Peters and Waterman (1982)
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Table 3. The Eight Attributes of Excellence
1. A bias for action: Small scale, easily managed experiments to build knowledge, interest and commitment.
2. Close to the customer: Learning from the people served by the business. 3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship: Fostering innovation and nurturing 'champions'. 4. Productivity through people: Individuals are treated with respect and dignity. 5. Hands-on, value-driven: Management philosophy that guides everyday practice - management showing
its commitment. 6. Stick to the knitting: Stay with the business that you know. 7. Simple form, lean staff: Authority is decentralised as much as possible. 8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties: Tight overall strategic and financial control is counterbalanced by
decentralised authority, autonomy and opportunities for creativity.
Peters and Waterman pointed out and reminded managers that they should pay closer
attention to the basics such as customers, employees and new ideas.
It is important to understand the evolution of management because management problems
remain mostly the same over time. While value systems and perspectives may have changed,
experts have gained a better understanding of what motivates employees. Peter Drucker, a
writer and management consultant, was under the impression that management had to do with
empowerment; he saw employees as resources rather than simply costs. He argued that
management had to move from the influence of Taylorism, where people are treated as cogs
in a machine, and start to treat them as if the employees had brain. Knowledge and education
was the single most important resource for any advanced society.52 During the twentieth
century managers received more respect and proved their importance. Practitioners of the
science of management also received a certain amount of prestige and that opened the way for
popularised systems of management ideas. At the end of the twentieth century, management
consisted of six separate branches; human resource management, operation management,
strategic management, marketing management, financial management and information
technology management. The role of the manager and his influence on employees was
becoming more and more important as Mary Parker Follett pointed out. Henry Fayol argued
that leaders emerged from managers’ authority derived from their position in the hierarchy
but Follett proposed that knowledge and expertise should decide who would be the leader at
any particular moment. In the next chapter the role of a leader will be discussed.
52 Drucker (1990)
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2. Leadership
There are almost as many definitions of what leadership is as there are commentators. Many
associate leadership with one person leading but four things stand out in this respect. First of
all, to lead involves influencing others; secondly where there are leaders there are followers.
Third, leaders seem to step forward when there is a crisis or special problem and fourthly,
leaders are people who have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and why. It can be said
that leaders are people who are able to think and act creatively in non-routine situations and
who set out to influence the actions, beliefs and feelings of others. In this sense, being a leader
is personal; it flows from an individual’s qualities and actions. However, it is also often linked
to some other role such as manager or expert but it is important to remember that not all
managers are leaders and not all leaders are managers.53 One of the four primary tasks of
managers is leading and leadership is a key ingredient in effective management. Effective
leaders make people highly motivated and committed but when they are ineffective it is likely
that their subordinates do not perform up to their capabilities and become dissatisfied.54 The
concept of leadership is about getting people to do things willingly and influencing others to
follow you. It can also be seen as a behavioural category. Leadership can be defined as:
“A process in which leader and follower interact in a way that enables the leader to
influence the actions of the follower in a non-coercive way, towards the achievements of
certain aims or objectives.55”
Definitions of leadership often suppose that leadership is a one-way process but other factors
should be considered. Being non-coercive means that it is possible to influence all members.
The nature of leadership should always be goal-directed so that the subordinates know what
they should achieve and they also have to approve of being influenced by the leader.56 The
personal leadership style of a manager, i.e. how he chooses to influence the employees,
shapes the way the manager approaches planning, organising and controlling. All managers
have their own leadership style that determine how they lead their employees and perform
their management tasks. Even though leading is one of the four principal tasks of managing, a
distinction is often made between managers and leaders. Managers are more likely to have
53 Doyle and Smith (2001) 54 Meyer et al. (2007) 55 Ibid,. p. 460 56 Ibid,.
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formal authority to direct their employees; this may be seen as a “top-down” approach. On the
other hand leaders have to earn their authority through influence and that is more a “bottom-
up” approach.57
There are many different leadership styles in traditional leadership and many ways of defining
a good leader. There are also different leadership styles across cultures, which suggests that
leadership styles do not only differ from person to person but also between countries and
cultures. Leaders in Europe are said to be more humanistic or people oriented than leaders in
America and Japan. American leaders are also thought to be short-term and focused on profits
while in Japan they are thinking of profits in a long term perspective.58
It is stated in classical leadership that the key to effective leadership is found in the power the
leader has to affect other people’s behaviour or getting them to act in a fixed manner.59 There
are several types of power a leader must have: legitimate, coercive, expert, reward and
referent power (see figure 3).60 Effective leaders should make sure that they have sufficient
levels of each type and that they use the power they have in a beneficial way.
Figure 3 Sources of Managerial Power
• Legitimate power is the authority that a manager has by virtue of his position in the
organisation and gives him the power to hire new employees, assign projects, monitor
their work and appraise their performance.
57 Meyer et al. (2007) 58 Calori and Dufour (1995) 59 Mintzberg (1983). 60 French and Raven (1960)
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• Reward power is the ability to withhold or give tangible (e.g. pay-rises and bonuses)
and intangible (e.g. verbal praise and respect) rewards. Being able to give or withhold
rewards based on performance is a major source of power that allows managers to
have a highly motivated workforce. Effective managers use their reward power to let
their employees know that their work is appreciated. Ineffective managers on the other
hand, use reward power in a more controlling manner.
• Coercive power is the ability to punish others. Punishments can range from verbal
reminders to reduction in pay or actual dismissal. Excessive use of coercive power
seldom results in high performance and is questionable ethically, but may at times be
useful.
• Expert power is based in some special skills or knowledge that the leader has. First-
level and middle managers often have technical expertise relevant to the tasks of their
employees. Their expert power gives them considerable influence. Effective leaders
take steps to make sure that they have an adequate amount of expert power to perform
their leadership roles. They can do that by obtaining additional training or education
and make sure that they are well informed about latest developments and changes in
technology. Expert power tends to be best used in a guiding or coaching manner rather
than in an arrogant way.
• Referent power is more informal than the other kinds of power; it is more a function
of the personal characteristics of a leader. It is a power that comes from subordinates’
and co-workers’ respect, admiration and loyalty. Here it is vital that the leader has the
charisma needed to motivate his employees. Leaders who are likable and whom
employees consider a role model are especially likely to possess referent power.61
More and more managers today are becoming aware of how important different leadership
styles are and are trying to incorporate them into their personal leadership style.
Empowerment, which is the process of giving employees at all levels in the organisation the
authority to make decisions and making them more responsible for their tasks, is very popular
today. This might seem to be the opposite of effective leadership because managers are
allowing their employees to take more active role in leading but actually, empowerment can
contribute to effective leadership for several reasons. Empowerment increases a manager’s
ability to get things done because he has the help of the employees who might have special 61 Meyer et al. (2007)
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knowledge needed to complete the tasks. Empowerment also increases motivation and
commitment of the employees and they are working toward organisational goals. It also gives
managers more time to concentrate on the tasks they need to complete because they don’t
have to spend all their time on day-to-day supervisory activities.62
2.1 Models of Leadership
Leading has become very important process in all kinds of organisations. Early approaches to
leadership were to determine what effective leaders were like as people and what they did that
made them so effective. In recent literature of leadership the focus has been on four main
theories of leadership; trait theory, behavioural theory, contingency theory and
transformational theory. The next sub-chapters go into more details about each theory.
2.1.1 The Trait Theory The Trait model of leadership focused on identifying the personal characteristics that cause
effective leadership. It was assumed that effective leaders must have certain personal
qualities, or traits, which made them different from ineffective leaders and from people who
never became leaders. This research started in the 1930s where hundreds of studies were
conducted. The results indicated that there were in fact some personal characteristics which
seemed to be associated with effective leadership. Some of those characteristics were related
to intelligence, knowledge, integrity and self-confidence of the leaders. However, these
characteristics are insufficient in explaining a do not alone explain leader’s effectiveness as
some effective leaders do not possess all of them and some leaders who do possess them are
not effective.63 Since there seemed to be a lack of consistency between the characteristics of
leaders and their effectiveness researchers needed a new focus. Rather than focusing on what
leaders are like, they began to look at what effective leaders actually do, i.e. their behaviour.
62 Meyer et al. (2007) 63 Ibid,.
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2.1.2 The Behaviour Theory The Behaviour model describes two kinds of behaviour that most leaders are supposedly
engaging in; consideration and initiating structure. Leaders engage in consideration when they
show their subordinates that they trust, respect and care about them. When leaders engage in
initiating structure they make sure that the work gets done and that the workers perform their
work acceptably and that the organisation is efficient and effective. Examples of initiating
structure are assigning tasks to workers, letting employees know what is expected of them,
deciding how the work should be done and motivating people to perform well.64 The
relationship between performance of consideration and initiating structure behaviour and
leaders effectiveness is not clear. Some leaders are ineffective when they perform both and
some are effective even though they do not perform consideration or initiating structure. Like
the Trait model, this behaviour model does not alone explain why some leaders are effective.
What was researched next and added to the picture were the situations in which leadership
occurs.
2.1.3 The Contingency Theory Managers lead in a wide variety of situations and have various kinds of employees performing
diverse tasks in many kinds of environmental context. The Contingency models of leadership
take into account the situation which leadership occurs in. According to these model, what
makes a manager effective is combined with what the manager is like as a person, what he
does and the situation in which the leadership takes place.65 The Contingency models cover
few different styles. One of them is the contingency model of Fred E. Fiedler which helps
explain why a manager may be an effective leader in one situation and ineffective in another.
According to Fiedler, all managers can be described as having either of two leadership styles;
relationship-oriented (managers want to develop a good relationship with employees and be
liked by them) or task-oriented (managers focus on task accomplishment and making sure that
each job gets done).66 Another contingency theory is House’s path-goal theory which
describes how leaders can motivate their subordinates by four different kinds of behaviour:
directive, supportive, participative and achievement - oriented.67 A directive leader sets goals,
assigns tasks and shows the employees how to complete tasks. A leader which is supportive
64 Meyer et al. (2007) 65 Ibid,. 66 Fiedler (1967) 67 Evans (1970)
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expresses his concern for subordinates and looks out for their interests. Those who show
participative behaviours give workers the opportunity to say what they think and be involved
in decision making. Achievement-oriented behaviours motivate employees to perform at the
highest level possible by e.g. setting goals, expecting that they will be met and believing in
the capabilities of the workers.
2.1.4 The Transformational Theory Transformational leadership is a leadership style where people follow the leader because they
are inspired by him, a leader with a vision and passion that can achieve great things.68
Transformational leadership starts with the development of a vision, a view of the future that
will excite and convert potential followers. This vision may be developed by the leader, by the
senior management team or may emerge from a broad series of discussions. The next step,
which in fact never stops, is to constantly sell the vision. The transformational leader thus
takes every opportunity and will use whatever method that works to convince others to climb
on board.69 In order to create followers, the transformational leader has to be very careful in
creating trust, and their personal integrity is a critical part. In effect, they are selling
themselves as well as the vision. The route forward may not be obvious, but with a clear
vision, the direction will always be known. Transformational leaders are always visible and
will stand up to be counted rather than hide behind their troops and they show by their
attitudes and actions how everyone else should behave. They also make a continuous effort to
motivate their followers, constantly listening, soothing and keeping up the enthusiasm. They
are people-oriented and believe that success comes first and last through deep and sustained
commitment. Transformational leaders are often charismatic, but are not as narcissistic as
pure charismatic leaders, who succeed by believing in themselves rather than believing in
others. One of the traps of transformational leadership is that passion and confidence can
easily be mistaken for truth and reality, they tend to see the big picture, but not the details,
which can be a problem if they don’t have people to take care of this level of information.
Working for a transformational leader can be great and very inspiring, they put passion and
energy into everything they care about and want you to succeed70.
68 Changing Minds (Year unknown) 69 Ibid,. 70 Ibid,.
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According to Bass, transformational leadership occurs when managers change their
subordinates in three ways:71
• Transformational managers make their employees aware of how important their jobs
are for the organisation and that it is very important that those jobs will be done in a
best way possible so that the organisational goals can be achieved.
• Transformational managers make sure that every need of their employees is met and
that they are aware of what their needs are themselves. Those needs can be personal
growth, development and accomplishment.
• Transformational managers motivate their employees to think of the organisations as a
whole, not just for their own personal gain or benefit.
When managers affect employees in these three ways, it is more likely that the employees
trust the manager and are highly motivated and that helps the organisations in achieving its
goals.72
Now both management and leadership have been defined, but what is it that differs between
them? The next chapter will focus on this difference.
2.2. Management vs. Leadership
An important question is how management differs from leadership. For some, there is no
difference. Due to increasing complexity there is even more need for specialization so it is
really necessary to recognize that leadership and management are two different functions.73
According to Mitch McCrimmon “...a clear way of differentiating the two is to say that
leadership promotes new directions while management executes existing directions as
efficiently as possible.74” The manager’s job is not just to make sure that tasks are completed
on a daily bases, it involves more complex projects. Often, management is mistakenly seen as
task-oriented, controlling and insensitive to people's needs. By contrast, leaders are portrayed
as emotionally engaging, visionary and inspiring. Separating leadership from management is
71 Bass (1985) 72 Meyer et al. (2007 73 McCrimmon (2007) 74 Ibid,.
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difficult as leading is one of the four functions of management.75 The best managers are very
strategic about themselves because they know that time and other resources are scarce and
that they have to work efficiently and effectively if the organisational goals are to be met.
Working efficiently is however not enough, it is essential to do the right things. Management
is primarily a decision-making role and managers are responsible for making a profit. This
requires them to make wise decisions.76 By contrast, leadership is strictly an informal
influence and what leaders do is to convince people of changing directions. The main
difference between managers and leaders is that “leadership is an occasional act;
management is an ongoing role.”77 Table four shows the main difference between managers
and leaders:78
Table 4. The Difference between Leaders and Managers
Subject Leader Manager
Essence Change Stability
Focus Leading people Managing work
Have Followers Subordinates
Horizon Long-term Short-term
Seeks Vision Objectives
Approach Sets direction Plans detail
Decision Facilitates Makes
Power Personal charisma Formal authority
Appeal to Heart Head
Energy Passion Control
Dynamic Proactive Reactive
Persuasion Sell Tell
Style Transformational Transactional
Concern What is right Being right
Like people everywhere, managers have their own personalities, values, ways of viewing
things and personal challenges and disappointments. In the next chapter the focus is on the
manager as a person with feelings.
75 Meyer et al. (2007) 76 McCrimmon (2007) 77 Ibid,. 78 Changing Minds (Year unknown)
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2.3. The Human Side of Managers
All people have certain characteristics that influence how they think, feel and behave. These
characteristics are personality traits which according to Meyer et al. are “...particular
tendencies to feel, think and act in certain ways that can be used to describe personality of
every individual.79” It is important to understand the personalities of managers because they
influence their behaviour and what approach they use to manage people and resources. Some
managers are demanding and difficult to get along with but others easy to get along with and
are likeable yet may be demanding as well. Both styles may turn out to be successful but the
way it affects employees is quite different. Research has been conducted and the results
indicate that the way people react to different conditions depends partly on personalities.80
There are several psychological theories that try to explain whether personalities are innate or
develop from socialisation. In these theories there is a distinction between the traits that
people hold (a predisposition towards an enduring behaviour that occurs over time) and the
type of personality they fit into (fits people into categories e.g. extrovert or neurotic). One of
the most influential type theories come from Carl Jung and was developed during the 1950s.81
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed from this approach. According to
Jung’s theory both types and traits are inborn to a degree but traits can be improved in a
similar way to skills. Types on the other hand evolve naturally over a lifetime.82 The MBTI
categories are four and are based on people’s preferences; extroversion/introversion,
sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving. People are given one of sixteen four
letter acronyms such as ESTJ or INFP. This indicates what their preferences are. For example
a person whose category is ENFP is open when dealing with other people as the categories are
extroversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving.83 The MBTI is used in many organisations and
for all kinds of reasons, e.g. the training of employees, personal development and recruitment.
In connection to this it is possible to think of an individual’s personality as being made of five
general traits (characteristics); extroversion, negative affectivity, agreeableness,
conscientiousness and openness to experience.84 Each of these traits can be viewed as a
continuum along which every individual falls. Managers may be at the high end, low end or in
the middle of the continuum. 79 Meyer et al. (2007) p. 68 80 Carpenter (2001) 81 Jung 82 Myers et al (1998) 83 Meyer et al. (2007) 84 Digman (1990)
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• Extroversion is the tendency to
experience positive emotions and feel good
about oneself and others. People who score
high on extroversion tend to be affectionate
and outgoing. Managers who have a job
which requires a lot of social interactions
benefit if they are high on extroversion.
• Negative affectivity is the tendency
to experience negative emotions and be
critical of oneself and other people. People
who score high on this trait are often angry
and dissatisfied.
• Agreeableness is the tendency to get along well with others. People who score high
on this trait are likely to be affectionate and care about other people. If a manager has
the responsibility of developing close relationships with others than he could benefit
from scoring high on this trait.
• Conscientiousness is the tendency to be careful and preserving. People who score
high on this trait are organised and self-disciplined.
• Openness to experience is the tendency to be original, have broad interests, be open
to a range of stimuli and take risks. People who score high on this trait may be very
likely to take risks and be innovative in their planning and decision making.85
Members of an organisation should understand these differences among managers because
they can explain why managers behave in certain ways. Managers should also be aware of
their own personality traits and of others.
In addition to this there are other traits which also describe people’s personalities. Some of
them are: locus of control, self-esteem and the need for achievement, affiliation and power.86
Locus of control is about how people differ in their view of how much control they have over
what happens to and around them. This can be put into to two categories, internal locus of
control (those who belief that they are responsible for their own fate) and external locus of
control (those who belief that outside factors are responsible for what happens to them). Self-
85 Meyer et at. (2007) p. 72 86 Ibid,.
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esteem is the degree to which individuals feel about themselves and their capabilities. The
need for achievement is how strongly an individual desires to perform challenging tasks well
and to meet personal standards for excellence. The need for affiliation is about how concerned
a person is about establishing and maintaining good interpersonal relations. The need for
power is how much a person desires to control or influence others.87 These three
characteristics suggest that managers need to be assertive and not only believe that their own
actions determine their own and their organisation’s fates but also believe in their own
capabilities.
Other things can be explored in order to try to explain how managers actually feel at work and
what they think about their jobs. Values, attitudes, moods and emotions capture how
managers and other employees experience their jobs as individuals. Values tend to be deeply
rooted in a person’s socialisation and learning but attitudes emerge through personal
development and social interaction. Values describe what managers are trying to achieve
through work and how they think they should behave, attitudes capture their thoughts and
feelings about their job, moods and emotions encompass how managers actually feel in their
job. These characteristics of a manager are very personal but they are very important for
understanding how managers behave, how they treat and respond to others and how they help
contribute to organisational effectiveness through the four managerial functions; planning,
leading, organising and controlling.88 As the topic of this paper is emotional intelligence, a
focus will be put on the importance of mood and emotions of managers and to what degree
companies recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics
versus technical qualifications.
87 Meyer et al. (2007) p. 74-5 88 Ibid,.
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3. Emotional Intelligence
In order to understand the effects of managers’ and all employees’ moods and emotions, it is
important to take into account their level of emotional intelligence. The concept of emotional
intelligence has its roots from the work of two American psychologists, John Mayer and Peter
Salovey. They defined emotional intelligence as a subset of social intelligence. Social
intelligence is the ability to understand and manage people, but might also be directed inwards
and therefore could be the ability to understand and manage oneself.89 According to them
emotional intelligence is the ability to know, understand and have influence over one‘s own
emotions, “...the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to
discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. “90
It does not include the general sense of self and appraisal of others, rather it is more about the
recognition and use of one‘s own and others emotional states to solve problems and regulate
behaviour.
When people approach tasks in life with emotional intelligence they should be at an
advantage to solving problems. The kind of problems that people identify and the way they
handle them will probably be more related to internal emotional experience. Such individuals
are more likely to choose a career that will make them happy instead of thinking how much
they will earn and they are also more likely to be more creative and flexible in arriving at
possible alternatives to problems. Individuals who have developed skills related to emotional
intelligence understand and express their own emotions, recognise the emotions of others and
they also use moods and emotions to motivate adaptive behaviour.91
A person with emotional intelligence can be thought of as having attained at least some form
of positive mental health. These individuals are aware of their own feelings and those of
others, are open to positive and negative aspects of internal experience and are able to
communicate them when appropriate. This leads to the fact that an emotionally intelligent
person is often a pleasure to be around, has good influence and makes others feel better. This
person however does not mindlessly seek pleasure, but rather attends to emotions which lead
to growth. Salovey and Mayer say that:
89 Salovey and Mayer (1990) 90 Ibid,. p. 189 91 Ibid,.
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“...emotional intelligence involves self-regulation appreciative of the fact that temporarily
hurt feelings or emotional restraint is often necessary in the service to greater
objective....thus emotionally intelligent individuals accurately perceive their emotions and
use integrated, sophisticated approaches to regulate them as they proceed toward
important goals. ”92
Mayer and Salovey published their theory in 1990 but at that time it did not receive much
attention from the public or scholars. This however did catch the attention of a psychologist
named Daniel Goleman. He took the concept further and published two books about the
concept which became very popular.
Goleman defines emotional intelligence as the ability to understand and manage one’s own
moods and emotions, and the moods and emotions of other people:
“...abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations;
to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress
from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and hope.”93
People are being judged by new yardsticks and it is not how smart they are or what kind of
education they have or expertise, more focus is on how people handle themselves and others.
This yardstick is becoming more important and is increasingly applied when choosing whom
to hire. This new measurement focuses on personal qualities but takes for granted peoples
intellectual abilities and technical skills.94 Emotional intelligence is even more crucial today,
according to Goleman, because organisations are shrinking and the people who remain are
more accountable and visible, as Goleman puts it:
“Where earlier a midlevel employee might easily hide a hot temper or shyness, now
competencies such as managing one’s emotions, handling encounters well, teamwork,
and leadership show, and count, more than ever.”95
The corporate world is changing and no one is guaranteed a job anymore. For many older
workers who were taught that education and technical skills were a permanent ticket to
success this new landscape is quite shocking. People are beginning to realise that to be
successful another type of skills are necessary to survive as Goleman puts it: “Internal
qualities such as resilience, initiative, optimism and adaptability are taking on a new 92 Salovey and Mayer (1990) p. 201 93 Goleman (1995) p. 36 94 Goleman (1999) 95 Ibid,. p. 9
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valuation.96” All too often, in the context of reviewing competences of leaders or managers
for development purposes, they are told that they need to improve their “people skills”. That
means that these persons are having difficulties in the interpersonal aspects of their
relationships with supervisors, peers and their employees. The problem may be that the
managers are not communicating enough to maintain effective work relationship or there may
be problems at the emotional level, i.e. not connecting emotionally with others.97
According to Goleman, emotional intelligence is more important than traditional intelligence
tests. Goleman pointed out that results of intelligence tests would not predict completely how
well people would do in school, in a job or in life in general. It is his opinion that emotional
intelligence can predict better how well people will actually do, rather than their intelligence
quotient (IQ). Intelligence tests are not a good yardstick on how well people communicate. A
simple job where a person has to be agreeable and be able to communicate well with others
but where understanding, reasoning and judgement is not as important, could be an example
of where emotional intelligence would predict better than their IQ how well a person would
perform on the job.98
3.1 Theoretical Scope of Emotional Intelligence
In the 1930s there was no published research on methods of developing a leader’s
interpersonal skill and very few empirical studies were done prior to 1950 that dealt with any
sort of leadership or managerial development.99 In 1973 David McClelland wrote an article
called “Testing for Competences rather than for Intelligence”. In exploring the ingredients of
a superb job performance, McClelland was joining an enterprise that got its first scientific
footing at the beginning of the twentieth century with the work of Frederick Taylor. Taylorist
efficiency experts analysed the most mechanically efficient moves a worker´s body could
make, the measure of human work was the machine. The next step was another standard of
evaluation, the intelligence quotient (IQ) test and the thought was that the correct measure of
excellence was the capacities of the human mind. By the 1960s personality tests and
typologies were a part of the standard measures of work potential. The tests were used to
96 Goleman (1999) p. 11 97 Riggio and Lee (2007) 98 Goleman (1995) 99 Riggio and Lee (2007)
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indicate whether an individual was outgoing or introverted or a “feeling” or “thinking” type.
The problem with these kinds of measurements was that they did not predict how well people
actually performed on the job. People with a high IQ often performed poorly at work while
those with a moderate IQ did extremely well.100
McClelland shifted the terms of the debate. He argued that traditional academic talents and
grades did not predict how well people would perform on the job or whether they would
succeed in life. McClelland proposed that a set of specific competencies including empathy,
self-discipline and initiative distinguished the most successful from those who were merely
good enough to keep their jobs.101 With his paper, he came forward with an entirely new
approach to the measure of excellence, one that assesses people’s competencies in terms of
the specific job they are doing. The competences he refers to are the personal traits or set of
habits that lead to more effective or superior job performance; the ability that adds economic
value to the efforts of a person on the job.102 McClelland questions intelligence tests and the
power they have over who is considered to be more qualified than the other, as he puts it: “Its
tests have tremendous power over the lives of young people by stamping some of them
“qualified” and others “less qualified” for college work”.103 He also wonders in his articles
how valid grades are as predictors. Researchers have had great difficulties showing that the
grades which people get in school are related to any other behaviour on importance other than
doing well on e.g. intelligence tests. Despite that, the general public seems to look at
intelligence tests as a way of saying how talented people actually are, that those who do well
in school must do better in life than others.104 McClelland tested this himself with the class he
taught in college. He took the top eight students in his class in the late 1940s who all were top
level students and compared what they were doing in 1960s to eight really poor students from
his class, those who barely passed their exams. To his surprise he could not distinguish the
two lists of men fifteen to eighteen years later. There were doctors, lawyers, research
scientists and college teachers in both groups. The only difference that he noted was that those
with better grades got into better law or medical schools but despite of that they did not have
notably more successful careers than the poorer students who were only capable of going to
100 Goleman (1999) 101 McClelland (1973) 102 Goleman (1999) 103 McClelland (1973), p. 1 104 Ibid,.
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mediocre medical or law schools.105 The findings of McClelland are thus that neither the
amount of education nor grades are related to how successful people become in their jobs.
The main points of McClelland’s article can be summarized into five major themes; a) grades
in school did not predict occupational success, b) intelligence tests and aptitude tests did not
predict occupational success or other important life outcomes, c) tests and academic
performance only predicted job performance because of an underlying relationship with social
status, d) such tests were unfair to minorities and e) personal competencies would be better
able to predict important behaviours that would more traditional tests.106 It was his belief that
intelligence tests would be replaced by competency-based testing as intelligence tests have
been correlated with each other and with grades in school but not with other life outcomes.
Barrett and Depinet (1991) questioned the findings of McClelland that top level students
could not be distinguished from barely passing students in later occupational success. They
pointed out that McClelland findings differed greatly from the result of a study done by
Nicholson in 1915.107 Nicholson study showed that academically exceptional students were
much more likely to achieve distinction in later life. According to Barrett and Depinet the
fundamental problem with McClelland’s research was his failure to define the concept of
competency. They’re opinion was that the evidence which McClelland put forward did not
show that competencies can surpass cognitive ability tests in predicting any important
occupational behaviour.
Decades of leadership research suggest that “people skills” are crucial for leader
effectiveness. Over the last years there has been an explosion of interest in emotional
intelligence and emotions in the workplace.108 There are a number of leader and manager
development programs that focus on improving the interpersonal skills but there seem to be
no agreed-upon models that focus on emotional skills and general communication abilities of
managers and leaders.109 According to Riggio and Lee (2007) there are many leadership
development programs, offered by independent consulting groups, which involve developing
emotional and interpersonal competences of leaders. They point out that theoretical models
and research basis for developing these kinds of leader competences are very recent as the
105 McClelland (1973), p. 2 106 Barrett and Depinet (1991) 107 Ibid,. 108 Riggio and Lee (2007) 109 Ibid,.
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term “emotional intelligence” only entered the research literature when Salovey and Mayer
published their article “Emotional Intelligence” in 1990.
Programs intended to develop interpersonal skills date back to Dale Carnegie guidebooks for
people, as he published his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in 1936.110
Like many of the programs intended to develop managerial and leader interpersonal
competences, the program of Carnegie was mostly based on methods that relied on the
experience and insights of the trainers. This is because in the 1930s there was no published
research on methods of how interpersonal skills of mangers or leaders could be developed and
research as shown that only one empirical study was made prior to 1950 that dealt with any
sort of managerial development.111 Models in clinical and social psychology literatures
influence the construction of models for guiding the development of interpersonal skills of
leaders and managers. Even though these models are rarely mentioned by leadership trainers
or in leadership development literature, they have had an indirect impact on how many
leadership programs develop social skills. Despite the popularity of interpersonal training for
managers and leaders, there has been almost no systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of
these programs.112 One exception from this is a research done by Hunt and Baruch in 2003,
who evaluated an intensive, five day interpersonal skill training program for 252 managers
and leaders. The evaluation of the training was based on pre- and post-training assessments.
Skills trained included such things as motivation, coaching, giving direction and providing
positive and negative feedback. Participants were evaluated by their direct reports who rated
their leader’s interpersonal skills. The training proved to be successful in some parts but not
in others. Gains were greatest in skills which were specifically targeted with direct exercises
or step-by-step instructions, such as providing feedback. 113
As mentioned earlier there are very few models which have been constructed for development
of how managers and leaders could improve their interpersonal skills or emotional
intelligence and that has only happened within the recent years. In the next chapters these
models will be addressed.
110 Dale Carnegie (Year unknown) 111 Avolio et al (2005) 112 Riggio and Lee (2007) 113 Hunt and Baruch (2003)
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3.2 Models of Emotional Intelligence There is no doubt that the popularity of the new construct of emotional intelligence has had
great influence when it comes to development in leader emotional competencies.114 Despite
the popularity there are still only two types of theories which guide research on emotional
intelligence. The first type was presented by Salovey and Mayer in 1997 and is referred to as
the abilities model. This model views emotional intelligence as an actual domain of
intelligence which is made of specific emotional and mental abilities. The abilities model is
the original version of the emotional intelligence which is based on people’s ability to sense,
analyse and utilise emotions. This model is more theoretical as the followers of this model
want to be able to use measurements in order to verify the definition. The second type of
model is referred to as the mixed model and was presented by Goleman in 1998. The
definition of the mixed model is wider than the definition of the abilities model. The mixed
model takes into consideration feelings and mixes it together with social capabilities and
personal characteristics. Table five shows the comparison of these two models.115 Table 5. Comparison of the two theories of emotional intelligence Salovey and Mayer’s ability model of EI Goleman’s mixed model of EI Perceiving Emotion – The capacity to accurately identify one’s own and other’s emotions and feelings, as well as the ability to express them.
Self-awareness – The ability to identify and recognize one’s emotional state and to understand the link between emotions and performance.
Utilizing Emotions – The capacity to enhance the thinking process by using emotions.
Relationship Management – The ability to utilize social skills to build interpersonal relationships.
Understanding Emotions – The capacity to comprehend complex emotions and how they operate in the social world.
Social-awareness – The capacity to read, be sensitive to other people’s emotions, in order to achieve results in service and organisational contexts.
Managing Emotions – The capacity to manage and control one’s emotions
Self-management – The capacity to manage emotions, to control one’s emotions or to shift negative emotions to more positive emotions.
If the four parts of Salovey and Mayer’s model are compared to Goleman’s model there are
basically two parts of Goleman’s model, self-awareness and self-management, which cover
the four parts of the abilities model. The last two parts of the mixed model, relationship
management and social-awareness, cover more aspects than the abilities model does but there
is though something in common. Being able to sense the feelings of others is covered in
Salovey and Mayer’s model but not the part about being able to utilise this in order to achieve
result in an organisational context.
114 Riggio and Lee (2007) 115 Ibid,.
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The model of Daniel Goleman has received substantial criticism and among the critics are
Salovey and Mayer. According to them, Goleman mixes together the original meaning of
emotional intelligence (the ability to know and have influence over one’s own emotions) and
other personality aspects (the will to succeed and the ability to acknowledge other people’s
feelings) as well as the having good people skills. Other critique has been that Goleman’s
model is not something new; rather that he has put old concepts together into a model.
Goleman has also been criticised for not testing his theories properly.116
The next two subchapters will be cover the abilities model and the mixed model but more
emphasis will be put on Goleman’s mixed model as the focus in this paper is on the practical
side i.e. emotional intelligence in organisations and the model of Goleman emphasis more on
how important emotional intelligence is for organisations.
3.2.1 The Abilities Model The model of Salovey and Meyer focuses on four core abilities which are identifying, using,
understanding and managing emotions. Some of these abilities are considered necessary for
the development of the other abilities e.g. an individual cannot effectively use emotions
unless having first learned the skills involved in identifying them. Each of the four core
abilities are discussed here below:117
Identifying emotions is the ability to identify one’s own and others’ emotions and feelings
but it is also the ability to express them. This identification is composed of specific skills
including emotional awareness (the individual is able to distinguish different emotions),
expression of emotions (the individual is able to communicate his feelings properly), reading
other people’s emotions (being able to read facial expressions and other behavioural cues),
and reading between the lines (being able to identify when a person expresses one emotion
but is feeling another).
Using emotions is the ability to improve the thinking process by using emotions to inform
decisions. The specific skills needed include paying attention (emotions used to facilitate
decision making, planning and problem solving), taking another’s perspective (understanding
116 Orri Smárason (2006) 117 Riggio and Lee (2007), Salovey and Mayer (1997)
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other’s opinions), thinking differently and using emotions to solve problems (using feelings to
change the thinking process like being able to motivate oneself to solve a dilemma)
Understanding emotions is the ability to understand complex emotions and how they
operate in society. A foundation of understanding emotions involves possessing an accurate
vocabulary of emotions and being able to distinguish among them. It also includes the
knowledge that different emotions can occur at the same time and the ability to differentiate
them and also being able to understand the progression of emotions over time.
Managing emotions is the self-awareness of the emotions one is experiencing. It is also the
ability to control the emotions so that they don’t overwhelm the individual and being able to
integrate feelings and actions.
3.2.2 The Mixed Model The model of Goleman, the mixed model of emotional intelligence, includes emotional
abilities, but also a number of elements that are best described as personality dimensions, as
well as some aspects that may have little to do with emotions or personality (e.g. recognising
the need for change, challenging the status quo and choosing team members based on
expertise). According to Goleman an emotional competence is a learned capability based on
emotional intelligence. There are two abilities in this model; personal skills, which
determines how individuals manage themselves and social skills, which determine how
individuals handle relationships.118 The emotional intelligence of a person determines the
potential for learning the practical skills that are based on five elements: self-awareness,
motivation, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. Goleman says that “simply being high
in emotional intelligence does not guarantee a person will have learned the emotional
competencies that matter for work; it means only that they have excellent potential to learn
them.”119 Emotional competencies cluster into groups and each competence is based on
underlying emotional intelligence capacity. These capacities are necessary for people if they
want to learn the competencies in order to perform better at their job.
118 Goleman (1998) 119 Ibid,. p. 25
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In order to try to understand Goleman’s mixed model better it is necessary to look at it in
more detail. In the personal competence part of the model there are three dimensions. Self-
awareness is the ability to know one’s internal state, preferences, resources and intuitions. It
is the ability to recognise one’s own feelings and how they influence performance, awareness
of one’s abilities and limitations and self-confidence and efficacy. Self-regulation allows
people to manage their internal states, impulses and resources. It is the ability to control one’s
negative emotions, being trustworthy and conscientious, adaptable, taking initiative and
having a drive to achieve. Motivation is the emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate
individuals in reaching their goals. It is the ability to improve or meet standards of excellence,
aligning with the goals of the organisations, readiness to act on opportunities and the
persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles.
On the social competence side of the model there are two dimensions. Empathy is the
awareness of others’ feelings, needs and concerns. It is the ability to see the other perspective,
developing the needs of others, anticipating and meeting customer’s needs, cultivating
opportunities through different kinds of people and being able to read a group’s emotional
currents and power relationships. A social skill (relationship management) is the adeptness at
inducing desirable responses in others. It consists of levels of social skills such as general
communication, the ability to influence others, manage conflict, inspire others, recognise
change, collaborate with others and promote teamwork. 120 To be successful at a workplace
requires that individuals have strengths in a given number of these competencies, at least six,
and that the strengths are spread across all five dimensions of emotional intelligence, or as
Goleman puts it: “none of us is perfect on this scale; we inevitably have a profile of strengths
and limits” and he keeps on saying that therefore “there are many paths to excellence.”121
The same competences can make people excel in different jobs. The competencies an
individual needs for success may change as he rises up the hierarchy e.g. in most large
organisations, senior executives need a greater degree of political awareness than middle
managers. Certain positions also require specific competencies. Goleman takes as examples
nurses, bankers and school principals. In order to succeed a nurse needs a sense of humour, a
banker needs to respect customer confidentiality and school principals need to be good at
finding ways to get feedback from teachers and parents.122 Furthermore, key competences
120 Goleman (1998) p. 26-27 121 Ibid,. p. 25 122 Ibid,.
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match a given organisation’s reality and each company and industry has its own emotional
ecology. Goleman says that even though emotional competences are necessary for e.g.
salespeople, as they have to deal with other people every day, it is also necessary for scientists
as Goleman puts it:
“Brilliance alone will not propel a scientist to the top unless she also has the ability to
influence and persuade others, and the inner discipline to strive for challenging goals. A
lazy or reticent genius may have all the answers in his head, but they amount to little if no
one knows or cares!”123
In his book about emotional intelligence in a workplace, Goleman talks about an
analysis which he conducted. He had access to a competence model for 181 different
positions drawn from 121 organisations worldwide. This competence model consists
of two levels of threshold competencies which people need in order to get a job done.
One level is about the minimal skills needed to carry out assignments with a given
position and the other level is distinguishing competencies, the capabilities that set
star performers apart from average ones. These are the competencies people need in
order to perform superbly.124 Goleman gives an example of a person working in
information technology. A high level of technical expertise is necessary simply to get
the job done which is an example of a threshold competence. The two competencies
that carry most weight in making the person outstanding in that field are the drive to
improve and being able to persuade and influence others. These can be classified as
emotional competencies. In the analysis which Goleman conducted, the model
showed what management in each organisation agreed captured the particular profile
of excellence for a given job. In the best of the competence model, average
performers are compared with those who rank in the top of their field. The pool of top
performers is usually chosen on the basis of sales or other hard criteria of excellence,
or on the basis of 360 degree ratings, where bosses, peers, employees and customers
all rate the performance of a given person. 125 What Goleman did was to compare
which competences listed as essential for a given job could be classed as purely
cognitive or technical skills and which were emotional competences. The findings
were that 67 percent, or two out of three of the abilities deemed essential for effective
123 Goleman (1998) p. 29 124 Ibid,. p. 319 125 Ibid,. p. 335
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performance, were emotional competencies. Compared to IQ and expertise, emotional
competencies mattered twice as much. This was the case across all categories of jobs
and in all kinds of organisations.126
Emotional competence is particularly central to leadership. Interpersonal disability in
leaders has an effect on everyone’s performance; it wastes time and destroys
motivation. The next chapter delves deeper into this.
3.3 Emotional Intelligence and Its Effect on Leadership Managers and leaders have to be able to handle emotional situations, they have to be
able to establish trust and rapport quickly, to listen well and to persuade and sell a
recommendation. Capacities like self-awareness, perspective and a sense of presence
are important and employees have to be able to rely on the manager. The higher the
level of the job, the less important are technical and cognitive abilities and emotional
competences become more important. 127 Goleman gives an example of a company
where the CEO was stepping down and six top managers had the possibility to be
promoted. A consultant was hired to sort out the strengths and weaknesses of the six
managers and help the top management decide which one to choose. There were three
who were the strongest candidates:
• Manager #1 had the most experience and was the smartest and he probably
would have been the choice by traditional standards. However, he had a big
fault which was that he was known to lack the personal and social qualities of
emotional intelligence.
• Manager #2 looked like a strong candidate, fairly high in experience and
emotional intelligence and was very bright too.
• Manager #3 was highest in emotional intelligence but slightly behind the other
two leading candidates in IQ and experience.
Manager #3 got the promotion. The key reason was that one chief task of the new CEO was to
head the management team and make it work again, a job that demanded a high degree of
126 Goleman (1998), p. 31 127 Ibid,.
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interpersonal effectiveness. At the higher levels of job complexity, in executive or managerial
ranks or among scientists, IQ and expertise do not predict who will be the standout performers
but in the lower reaches of job complexity there is a more or less direct ratio between a
person’s cognitive ability and performance, a smarter clerk or machine operator will do better
than the one who is not so bright.128
Emotional intelligence is thought to lie beneath various aspects of workplace performance and
success not accounted for by traditional intelligence measures or personality. Numerous
studies highlight that traditional forms of intelligence only account for twenty percent of
overall success at work.129 That leaves eighty percent unaccounted for. Personality and
motivation measures contribute about ten percent to the puzzle, but there still seems too much
that is not known about what makes some individuals perform better or why some people are
always a step ahead. Measuring emotional intelligence may give important information that
differentiates between who will be an effective leader or distinguishes high from low
performers across differing work roles.130 When managers are hired it can be useful for
companies to have some tools to help them evaluate which candidates are more emotional
intelligent than the others and are, according to Goleman’s mixed model, therefore more
likely to be successful. The next chapter is about the part of emotional intelligence in the
recruitment process.
3.4. Emotional Intelligence and the Recruitment Process The importance of ensuring the selection of the right people to join the workforce has become
increasingly apparent as the emphasis on people as the prime source of competitive advantage
has grown. The recruitment and selection process is concerned with identifying, attracting and
choosing suitable people in order to meet an organisation’s human resource requirements.131
There are two main types of recruiting, external and internal. When managers recruit
externally to fill positions, they look outside the organisation for people who have not worked
for it previously. External recruiting has both advantages and disadvantages for managers.
The advantages include having access to a large pool of applicants, being able to attract
people who have the skills, knowledge and abilities which the organisation needs to achieve
128 Goleman (1998), p. 35-36 129 Goleman (1995) 130 Lixivium Consulting (Year unknown) 131 Beardwell, Holden &Claydon (2004)
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its goals, and being able to bring in newcomers who may have a fresh approach to problems
and who are up-to-date on the latest technology. These advantages have to be weighed against
the disadvantages, chief of which is the relatively high costs of external recruitment. Another
disadvantage is that the newly hired are lacking in knowledge about the inner workings of the
organisation and may need extra training. Finally, when employees are recruited externally,
there is always uncertainty concerning whether they will actually perform well.132 When
recruiting internally, managers turn to employees within the company to fill positions.
Internal recruiting has several advantages. The applicants are already known the organisation
and its goals, structure, culture, rules and norms. The managers already know the candidates
and they have information about their skills and abilities and actual behaviour on the job.
3.4.1. The Selection Process
Once managers develop a pool of applicants they need to find out whether each candidate is
qualified for the position and likely to be a good performer. Often there are several candidates
who meet the criteria and managers must further determine who is likely to be a better
performer than the others. In order to do so, they can use selection tools e.g. background
information (biographical data), interviews, personality tests, physical tests, work sample test,
performance tests and references.133 There are many ways to select and recruit the right
person. The key issue in the recruitment process is to use the best method possible which will
help to find the individual who is most likely to meet all the criteria and perform well on the
job. It is therefore very important to choose wisely because if the wrong candidate is hired it
will be very expensive for the organisation. Right people in the right positions will result in
less employee turnover, which leads to more employee satisfaction and happier customers and
ultimately an increase in the bottom line.134 Appendix eight shows an example of a
recruitment process which Capacent, a consultancy company in Iceland, uses.135 This
recruitment process is also in accordance with how Milkovich and Boudreau put it forward in
their book Human Resource Management.136 In order for organisations to find out if the
candidates for a mangers position are emotionally intelligent they can make them take a
personality test. There are many personality tests available today which measure emotional
132 Meyer et al (2007) 133 Ibid,. 134 Beardwell, Holden and Claydon (2004) 135 Capacent.is 136 Milkovich and Boudreau (1997)
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intelligence. The personality tests are usually used at a later stage of the recruitment process
when perhaps only two or three candidates are left in the pool.
Capacent in Iceland is a leading company in the field of consulting, research, and recruitment
and their mission is to help their customers improve their business.137 Capacent uses
internationally acknowledged personality tests from an international consultant company
called SHL. SHL is a company which specialises in making personality tests which are used
in recruitment processes. These tests are supposed to help with the decision making process
involved with the hiring the right person for the job. The SHL tests are not meant to evaluate
ability and knowledge, but are meant to be used as self-assessment tools with no right or
wrong answers. The point of these tests is to predict the likely behaviour of an individual at
the work and if he will be able to work under certain conditions.138 One of the tests which
Capacent uses is QPQ32 (Occupational Personality Questionnaire 32). This kind of test is
used to evaluate thirty two characteristics of the job and is suitable for evaluating managers
and professionals. It is a rich and powerful development application which helps people to see
how well they understand their own feelings and emotions, as well as those of others, and
how well they manage their relationships with others.139 This test is in accordance with
Goleman´s mixed model of emotional intelligence and its empahsis is on:
Managing Feelings: the competencies which have to do with how individuals manage their
thoughts, emotions and feelings. There are two competency scores:
• Feelings and Emotions: describes how well they tend to handle their feelings about
themselves and others.
• Personal Insight: describes how well they understand relationships and patterns in
their own thoughts, feelings and actions.
Managing Relationships: The competencies which have to do with how individuals manage
their relationships with other people. There are two competency scores:
• Empathy: describes how well they appreciate the perspectives of other people and the
way others may feel about things and events.
137 Capacent.is 138 Shl.com (2008) 139 Ibid,.
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• Social Ease: describes how well they are able to adapt their approach and style to
different work and social situations.
As can be seen the personality test which is used in reality is really in accordance with the
theory of emotional intelligence. Goleman‘s mixed model emphasizes the same
competencies, personal (the ablity to manage and know ones owen emotions) and social
competencies (the ability to handle relationship with others).
Now as few theories of emotional intelligence have been covered it is interesting to compare
them to what is actually being done in reality. Daniel Goleman covers this matter in his book
about working with emotional intelligence. His opinion is that there seems to be a certain
misunderstanding about what emotional intelligence is all about. First of all people tend to
think that this concept is all about being nice but that is not the case. Secondly, people often
think that it means giving free rein to feelings or letting it all hang out. In fact it means being
able to manage feelings so that they can be expressed in a good way and enables people to
work together towards a certain goal. Finally emotional intelligence is not fixed genetically,
nor is it something that people only learns in early childhood. Unlike IQ, which changes little
after the teen years, emotional intelligence continues to develop as life goes by and experience
is a good teacher.140
4. Emotional Intelligence in Reality
In modern management, many words have been written about the value of soft management
(focus on the personal aspects in working environment). As emotional intelligence focuses on
the human aspect in management it can be called a feature of soft management. It is therefore
interesting to find out if this is something that is preached more than practiced, if managers
today are really following the theory of emotional intelligent, as many of them claim to do,
and if this is really something that is being used as a guideline when managers are recruited.
The idea of this paper is to get an insight into the importance of emotional intelligence versus
technical skills for managers in the recruitment process.
140 Goleman (1998)
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4.1 Business Research Methods The design of a study starts with the selection of a topic and a research methodology. There
are different approaches available and two of them are widely recognized; qualitative research
and quantitative research.
Quantitative research can be constructed as a strategy that emphasises quantification in the
collection and analysis of data. This kind of research generates statistics through the use of
large-scale survey research, using methods such as questionnaires or structured interviews. It
reaches many people, but the contact with those people is much shallower than it is in
qualitative research. It can be said that this kind of study embodies a view of social reality as
an external, objective reality. There are three general types of quantitative methods: 1)
experiments which are characterised by random assignments of subjects, 2) quasi-
experimental studies which are almost the same as experiments except that they involve non-
randomised assignments of subjects and 3) surveys where questionnaires or interviews for
data collection with the intent of estimating characteristics of a large population.141
Qualitative research, on the other hand, emphasises words rather than quantification in the
collection and analysis of data. This kind of study explores attitudes, behaviour and
experiences through such methods as interviews or focus groups. It attempts to get an in-depth
opinion from participants. As it is attitudes, behaviour and experiences which are important,
fewer people take part in the research, but the contact with these people tends to last longer.
Under the umbrella of qualitative research there are many different methodologies. The
methods of qualitative research reject the practises and norms of the scientific models.142
There are three general types of qualitative methods: 1) case study where the researcher
explores a single entity bounded by time and activity and gathers detailed information through
a variety of data over a certain period of time, 2) ethnographic studies where the researcher
studies an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a period of time and 3)
phenomenological studies where human experiences are examined through a detailed
description of the company or people being studied. 143
141 University of Nevada 142 Bryman and Bell (2007) 143 University of Nevada
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Over the years there has been a large amount of complex discussion and argument
surrounding the topic of research methodology and the theory of how inquiry should proceed.
Much of this debate has centred on the issue of qualitative versus quantitative inquiry – which
might be the best and which is more ‘scientific’. Different methodologies become popular at
different social, political, historical and cultural times in our developments. When choosing
which research methods to use it should be based on problems of interest, resources available
and also the skills and training of the researcher.144
4.2 The Research Method In this report the study was based on a qualitative method using interviews, which are
probably the most widely employed method in qualitative research. The method of interviews
is an attractive option for the collection of data. Qualitative interviewing is different from
quantitative interviewing in a number of ways. It tends to be less structured and there is much
more emphasis on the point of view of the respondent. Qualitative interviewing tends to be
flexible, responding to the direction in which the respondent takes the interview and this kind
of interview generates answers which can be processed quickly.145
There can also be some problems with this method. One of the criticisms with interviews and
other kinds of qualitative research methods is that it is too subjective and relies too much on
the view of the researcher of what is significant and important. This kind of study can be
difficult to replicate as it is often unstructured and has hardly any standard procedures. The
researcher is the main instrument of data collection and what is observed and how the data is
interpreted depends on what the researcher favours and decides to focus on. There can also be
problems with generalization.146 When observation of participants is used or when interviews
are conducted with a small number of individuals, it can be very difficult to generalise the
findings to other settings.
There are two major types of interviewing, unstructured and semi-structured. In the
unstructured interview there may be just a single question and the respondent is allowed to
answer freely. The interviewer can then respond to points that seem worthy of being followed 144 Bryman and Bell (2007) 145 Ibid,. 146 Ibid,.
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up on. This kind of interviewing tends to be similar to a conversation. In the semi-structured
interview the researcher has a list of questions on specific topics to be covered, often referred
to as an interview guide. Questions that are not included in the guide are sometimes asked as
the interviewer picks up on things which seem relevant during the interview.147 In both case
the interview process is flexible and it is important that the emphasis is put on how the
respondent understands the topic. The interviews conducted for this paper were semi-
structured.
There are often some issues which have to be dealt with when managers are interviewed.
Gaining access to this group can be extremely difficult and arranging a mutually convenient
time in which to conduct the interviews can be troublesome. It is very important to ask for an
interview in a way which is most likely to lead to a favourable response. The request for an
interview can be made either by mail or telephone. In the request it may be appropriate to
state the purpose of the project and an indication of how the findings might be useful to the
respondent.148
The idea of an interview guide is to have a brief list of memory prompts of areas to be
covered during the interview. This kind of a guide often comprises written words but can also
be visual prompts which are related to the subject. Some basic elements in the making of an
interview guideline could be to create a certain amount of order on the topic areas so that the
flow of the questions is good. It is also important to formulate questions which will help
answering the research question and to use language which is easy to understand and not too
theoretical. It is also good to keep in mind e.g. the job title of the person being interviewed or
how many years of employment he/she has.149 These elements were kept in mind during the
development of the questions to be asked in the interviews conducted for this paper.
Ten questions were formulated, based on the theory of emotional intelligence and the
recruitment process which has been covered previously in this paper. The questions and the
interviews are shown in appendices one to seven at the end of the paper. Question one is
based on the theory of Milkovich and Boudreau and covers the recruitment process.150 The
idea was to find out if the companies were using a standard process when recruiting new 147 Bryman and Bell (2007) 148 Ibid,. 149 Ibid,. 150 Milkovich and Boudreau (1997)
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employees. Questions two and three were based on the theory of David McClelland about if
grades indicate how qualified and emotionally intelligent a person is.151 According to Daniel
Goleman personality tests are important when emotional intelligent is measured and they
were the basis for questions four and five. Goleman’s mixed model of emotional intelligence
was the basis for questions six to ten.152
4.3 The Process of the Interviews
4.3.1 Participants Ten companies in Iceland were chosen at random from a list of companies which have a
hundred employees or more. The reason for conducting interviews with Icelandic companies
was that the researcher is familiar with the Icelandic market and also to avoid language
barriers during the interviews. First, an email was sent to the HR managers of these
companies asking if they would be willing to participate in this study. The HR managers are
all responsible for the recruitment process in their companies. The questions were also sent to
them so they could have a look at what the interview would be about. In order to make sure
that the HR managers would understand the concept of emotional intelligence as the theory
explains it, the concept was explained in the email. They were given three days to prepare for
the interviews. Six out of those ten companies replied and were willing to participate. Below
is a description of the six companies which will remain nameless and will therefore be
referred to as company A-F.153
• Company A is one of the world's leaders in the development, manufacture, and sale of
first-class generic pharmaceuticals and was founded in 1956. About two hundred and
fifty employees work for this company.
• Company B is a bank offering integrated financial services to companies, institutional
investors and individuals. These services include corporate and retail banking,
investment banking, capital markets services, treasury services, asset management and
comprehensive wealth management for private banking clients.
151 McClelland (1973) 152 Goleman (1998) 153 Information about the companies was taken from their webpages.
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• Company C is a leading Icelandic financial institution. It offers full range financial
services and is the market leader in all major segments of the Icelandic financial
centres of Europe, as well as North American representation in New York, Halifax and
Winnipeg.
• Company D has been providing the business community with office furniture since
1932 and has decades of experience and liaisons with the largest international
suppliers. It has a wide selection of household brands in office furniture, has designed
its own lines of furniture in Iceland and offers tailor-made solutions as well.
• Company E offers full insurance coverage for organisations and individuals and is one
the leading companies in the insurance market in Iceland.
• Company F was founded in the summer of 1997 with the goal of becoming a leading
massively multiplayer game company. It is dedicated to the development of cutting
edge massively multiplayer games. With the launch of a popular online computer
game, the company has established itself as one of the leading companies in the field,
winning numerous awards and receiving critical acclaim worldwide.
4.3.2 The Interviews Three days after the emails were sent the interviews took place. As the researcher was in
Denmark at that time the interviews were conducted over telephone. Telephone interviewing
is quite common in market research but less common in business research. The opinion of
telephone interviews has changed in recent years from the perception that face-to-face
interviews are more representative towards thinking that telephone interviews are either more
or at least as representative as face-to-face interviews.154 There are several advantages to
telephone interviews over personal interviews. They are cheaper and quicker to conduct as
less time and money has to be spent in travelling. This factor will be even more important
when the respondents are geographically dispersed. The telephone interview is easier to
supervise than the personal interview. This especially applies when the interviewers are many
as it is easier to check on the transgression of the interviewers. Telephone interviewing has an
advantage which has to do with the fact that during personal interviews the respondent’s
answers are often affected by the characteristics of the interviewer.155 There are also some
limitations when it comes to telephone interviewing. Telephone interviewers are not able to
154 Bryman and Bell (2007) 155 Ibid,.
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engage in observation i.e. they are not in a position to respond to signs of puzzlement on the
faces of respondents when they ask the questions. The telephone interviewer is also not able
to use visual prompts during the interview.156
First of all the researcher asked if the respondents had read through the questions and if they
were sure of what the concept of emotional intelligence is all about. Not all of them had read
through the questions so an introduction to the subject was necessary in some cases. When
asked if they were familiar with the concept they all said they were. Some managers were
quite busy and were only willing to participate if the interview took a short time. Therefore
each interview lasted about ten to fifteen minutes. The interviews were not recorded due to
the lack of technology but notes were taken during the interviews. There are some
disadvantages with the procedure of taking notes as it is easy to lose the phrases and language
used.157 Therefore, in order to try to prevent that, these notes were put into text right after
each interview in order to get all the answers as accurately as possible from the respondents.
Reliability and validity are important criteria in establishing and assessing the quality of
research for the quantitative researchers. However, there has been some discussion among
qualitative researchers concerning their relevance for qualitative research.158 Qualitative
research often entails a study of a small group or of individuals sharing certain characteristics
or as the individuals in the study of this paper, sharing the same type of job position in their
companies. Reliability is the extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure
yields the same result on repeated trials. If the results are the same from all the respondents
then the reliability is high. Validity on the other hand, refers to the degree to which a study
accurately reflects or assesses the specific concept that the researcher is attempting to
measure. While reliability is concerned with the accuracy of the actual measuring instrument
or procedure, validity is concerned with the study's success at measuring what the researchers
set out to measure.159 This was kept in mind while conducting the research.
156 Bryman and Bell (2007) 157 Ibid,. 158 Ibid,. 159 Ibid,.
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4.2 Findings of the Interviews
In question one the HR managers were asked how the recruitment process was when
managers are hired and if they took care of it themselves or if the process was outsourced.
Five companies said that they did both and that it depended on the position. Company B said
that they took care of the process themselves in Iceland and that it was done through the HR
department in each subsidiary but in a bigger market like in the UK the recruitment process
was always outsourced.160 Company C was the only company which answered differently
than the others; they always take care of this process themselves and never outsource it.161
In question two the HR managers were asked if the school grades of applicants were checked
out during the recruitment process. Most of the companies answered that it was usually not
done or very seldom but companies B and C answered quite differently. They said that they
always checked grades as the grades matter, especially if a person does not have much
experience.162
Question three also covered grades and now the question was if a person with mediocre
grades would be less likely to be successful than a person with top grades. Most of the
companies answered that a mediocre graded person would be able to as successful as a person
with top grades. Some of them mentioned though that grades could indicate how well a
person works, how ambitious and motivated the person was. There was one company which
answered quite differently than the others and that was company F. For them grades do not
matter at all as many of their best employees never finished school and were self-educated. 163
The use of personality tests is the subject in questions four and five. All of the companies
use interviews and background checks i.e. check references. Some of them have standardised
questionnaires which are used during the interviews. Few of the companies mentioned that for
top positions they always used personality tests. Company A said that they use behavioural
type questions with real past experience and dilemma situations and solutions to determine the
personality of a person.164 Here again companies B and C differ in their answers from the
160 See appendix 2 161 See appendix 3 162 See appendices 2 and 3 163 See appendix 6 164 See appendix 1
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other participants. They never use personality tests on the Icelandic market but might do it in
other subsidiaries where the market is bigger. The HR manager of company C said that the
Icelandic market was too small; it was easy to find out the personality of a person because you
always know someone who knows someone etc.165
In question six the problem formulation of this paper was used as a question: to what degree
do the companies recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus
technical skills. Most of the HR managers said that it was about equally important, but that it
was perhaps more important to be emotionally intelligent as technical skills could easily be
trained most of the time. Company C kept mentioning the grades and said that even though
emotional intelligence was perhaps most important, there has to be a good combination of
emotional intelligence, grades and technical skills.166 Company F answered quite differently
as most of their managers are hired on the basis of the technical skills but they are starting to
separate this and have one technical manager and another people manager.167
In question seven the respondents were asked to keep emotional intelligence in mind and say
if managers were hired on basis of their personal competences or their social competences and
if the same applied for middle as well as top managers. According to all of them, both
competencies were equally important as managers have to be able to motivate themselves as
well as others. There were though two companies (companies C and D) which mentioned that
they considered social skills to be more important for managers.168
Question eight is about if they thought that a person could succeed as a manager without
being emotionally intelligent. Most of them agreed that it would not be possible, at least very
difficult. One said that at one point something would break, either the manager, the
department or the company (depends on the position the manager is in).169 The HR manager
of company F said that he personally did not think it was possible but they did however have
managers within the company which have been successful without having good people skills
but they were given all the support they needed in their relation with their employees.170
Company C also said that they had the experience of having promoted employees to become 165 See appendix 3 166 Ibid,. 167 See appendix 6 168 See appendices 3 and 4 169 See appendix 1 170 See appendix 6
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managers who were highly technically skilled but after the promotion it became obvious that
they were having problems in relations with their employees. These managers then had two
options, either to be downgraded, becoming a professional again, or receive help and be
trained in developing people skills. They do have examples of managers who were able to
learn and develop emotional intelligence but in order to succeed in that the managers had to
be willing to learn new procedures.171
Question nine is about which one the HR managers considered to be more important; having
good people skills or technical skills. All of them agreed that people skills were more
important but two of them mentioned that a combination of both was the best solution.172
In question ten the HR managers were asked about if they thought that a very technically
competent person could learn to be emotionally intelligent and also the other way around if
they thought that the technical skills could be achieved. They all agreed that both skills could
be learned but that emotional intelligence was much more difficult to learn. One HR manager
said that he actually believed that good people skills were something that a person is born
with but could be learned to some degree. He also said that it is something which is difficult
to teach.173 Another HR manager said that people could learn any kind of skills. It just
depended on the personality; how far people would be willing to reach with the people
skills.174 The HR managers did agree that even though it is possible to learn emotional
intelligence it is very difficult and the individual has to be willing and open-minded to be able
to learn it.
4.3 Analysis of Findings Question 1: The findings in the first question about the recruitment process of the companies
are that this is pretty much in accordance with theory. Five out of six companies often
outsource the recruitment process to consultant companies that use standard procedures
during this process. There is a difference when the companies take care of the process
171 See appendix 3 172 See appendices 3 and 6 173 See appendix 6 174 See appendix 1
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themselves as then they often do not go through all the steps in the recruitment process as
shown in appendix eight.
Question 2 and 3: There is a difference between theory and practise in the second and third
question. In question two, two out of six companies say that grades do matter and that they
check the grades of the applicants during the recruitment process. This is quite the opposite of
what David McClelland says in his theory. He argued that traditional academic talents and
grades do not matter and do not indicate how bright and emotionally intelligent a person
really is and how likely it is that this person will become a good employee175. He even
conducted an experiment showing that mediocre graded students had all the potential to be as
successful as high graded students. In question three some of the HR managers mention that
grades could be an indicator of the performance of a potential employee.
Question 4 and 5: Not all the companies use personality tests to determine how emotionally
intelligent a person is. All of them use interviews and background checks i.e. check
references. Those who outsource the recruitment process use personality tests as they are
usually a part of the standardised process of consultant companies. There is quite a difference
between what Capacent uses to evaluate how emotional intelligent a person is and what some
of the companies do. Two companies out of six said that they never used personality tests in
Iceland as they considered the market to be too small yet the consultant company uses this
kind of test on the same market. Goleman’s opinion in regards to this is that it is necessary to
measure in order to find out if a person is emotionally intelligent.176
Question 6 - 10: According to Daniel Goleman it is difficult for one person to be good in all
areas of the mixed model of emotional intelligence but being good in some areas more than
others is fine. One person can be better in some parts and another one in other parts. All the
HR managers of the companies said that a good manager would have to be equally competent
in both personal and social skills but perhaps the social part was more important. This is in
accordance with Goleman’s model as a mix of both parts is the best solution.
There is a difference between theory and practise when it comes to one of the companies as
they recruit managers on the basis of technical skills rather than people skills. This contradicts
175 McClelland (1973) 176 Goleman (1998)
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the theory of Goleman because according to him a person is not capable of succeeding as a
manager without being emotionally intelligent. Goleman also says in his book “Working with
Emotional Intelligence” that the higher the position the more important emotional intelligence
is. It is fine to be technically qualified and work as a professional and not having to be
responsible for other people but as this person reaches higher in the ladder then it becomes
more important to have people skills. This is exactly the kind of problem which one of the
respondents described as a recurrent theme in his company. They have promoted employees
to a management position on the basis of their technical qualifications but some of them did
not succeed as they lacked the social skills.
Most of the companies did not believe that a person could become successful without being
emotionally competent but that it could be learned. That is in accordance with Goleman’s
theory; it can in fact be learned. Every individual should be able to add the skills of emotional
intelligence to their tool kit for survival as Goleman puts it:
“The good news is that emotional intelligence can be learned. Individually, we can add
these skills to our tool kit for survival at a time when job stability seems like quaint
oxymoron. For businesses of all kinds, the fact emotional competencies can be assessed
and improved suggests another area in which performance – and so competitiveness –
can be upgraded.”177
Most of the HR managers did agree that even though it is possible to learn emotional
intelligence it is very difficult and that the individual has to be willing and open-minded to be
able to learn it. That is why most of the companies try to hire managers who have good people
skills as they all consider technical skills to be easier to learn.
177 Goleman (1998) p. 315
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5. Discussion of Findings
In today´s rapidly changing organisational environment the only certainty is the uncertainty.
Employees do not stay as long in their jobs as was the norm about twenty years ago. The
competition for each position is growing and now it is more important than ever for people to
get a good education if they want to get good positions. The importance of management
abilities is even greater nowadays. Newer theories in management have taken over traditional
management theories and now, if a person is going to succeed as a manager, it is necessary
that he/she possesses good people skills, i.e. is emotionally intelligent.178 As has been
discussed in this paper this is what many theorists have been preaching and according to the
findings of the research in this paper, HR managers are aware of this and emphasis are put on
recruiting managers which have good people skills.
The findings of this study, which indicate that managers are rather recruited on the basis of
their emotional intelligence than their technical skills, support the theories of McClelland and
Goleman. The HR managers say that they are well aware of how important emotional
intelligence of managers is and that it is easier to learn technical skills than the skills of
emotional intelligence. However, the findings of the study in this paper leave several gaps
between theories and practise. What in advance was considered to be in accordance with
theory turned out to be the opposite. Both David McClelland and Daniel Goleman emphasis
that IQ and good academic grades do not indicate how well a person is likely to perform in
the work place. However, two companies out of six recruit employees, among other things, on
the basis of their grades in school. There are other researchers who have criticised the theory
of McClelland. Barrett and Depinet questioned the findings of McClelland by saying that he
did not put forward strong enough evidence to support his theory.179 They pointed out that a
study conducted in 1915 indicated that top graded students were more likely to succeed in
reality. If this point of view is compared to the findings of questions two and three in the
study then grades do matter and companies should take them into consideration during the
recruitment process.
The ability to measure emotional intelligence is unclear and some of the respondents in the
research say they never use personality tests in order to find the best qualified person for the 178 Goleman (1998) 179 Barrett and Depinet (1991)
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job. However, consultant companies like Capacent are using personality tests in their
recruitment process to ensure that standardised methods are used.180 Personality tests are not
the only, or necessarily the best way, to measure emotional intelligence of people. There are
number of tools on the market which can be used as well as the one which Capacent uses and
was covered in this paper. In principle, the tools are similar as they measure how intelligent
an individual is and often provide useful information to help the person to improve.181
Emotional intelligence has benefits beyond the fields of management and leadership. It also
has a useful purpose for positions where a high degree of interpersonal effectiveness is
required, such as in customer service and sales roles. Emotional intelligence assessment is one
of the techniques which can be used to differentiate between candidates in the recruitment
process.182 Given the limitations of purely using intelligence or ability testing, a recruitment
process which incorporates both cognitive and emotional intelligence assessments is likely to
be a stronger predictor of successful occupational performance. It is therefore a more reliable
way in which to select the most appropriate and highest performing personnel.183 The bottom
line is that there are many tools to find out how emotionally intelligent a person is and
therefore the use of one method (whether it is a personality test or other techniques) is not
better or worse than the use of others.
When the answers of the respondents are compared there is not a great difference between
which methods the companies are using in their recruitment process. All of them are using
some kind of technique whether they outsource the whole process or take care of it
themselves. The HR managers all agreed that emotional intelligence is something that can be
learned even though it can be difficult. Researchers have either said that leaders or managers
are born with the ability to lead and others have said that this ability is made.184 Five of the six
HR managers said that when recruiting managers, emphasis was put on both emotional
competences and technical skills but more on the emotional part. This is understandable given
that the recruitment process is expensive as well as the training of the new employee and
having to fire a person shortly after he/she is hired is not attractive for companies. Researches
also indicate a relationship between the emotional intelligence of managers and job
180 Capacent.is 181 Palethorpe (2006) 182 Ibid,. 183 Ibid,. 184 Ibid,.
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satisfaction and performance. A study was conducted by researchers Sy, Tram and O’Hara in
2005 to examine the relationship among employees’ and manager’s emotional intelligence,
employee job satisfaction and job performance. The results were that manager’s emotional
intelligence had a more positive correlation with job satisfaction for employees with low
emotional intelligence than for those with high emotional intelligence.185 With this in mind it
is even more important to recruit the right person for the job.
5.1 Evaluation of Methods and Findings The choice of the research method was based on the problem of interest and the availability of
resources. As the researcher is familiar with the Icelandic market and there were no language
barriers this was an obvious choice, interviewing HR managers in Iceland. Beforehand
conducting telephone interviews was not considered to be a problem. However, when the
interviews were actually taken, there were some technical problems as it was not possible to
record the interviews. This is an obvious weakness of the study because even though notes
were taken during the interviews and they put into a text right after each interview, some
phrases were missing and the interviews were not as precise as if they had been taken face-to-
face. Another weakness of this method was that it was not possible to read the respondents
facial expression and gestures. Therefore, the interviews were more standardised than face-to-
face interviews as the researches was not able to evaluate if the respondents actually
understood what was being asked even though they said they did. Due to the short time which
each interview took the answers became too similar as the researcher did not have enough
time to ask questions which could have been possible in face-to-face interviews.
To be able to answer the research question more precisely, more depth would have been good
in the questions e.g. that second part of the questions (questions 6-10) which focus more on
emotional intelligence and the mixed model of Goleman. What could have been done
differently was to use the model better and ask more detailed questions to find out which
characteristics of emotional intelligence are the most important when managers are hired.
185 Sy, Tram and O‘Hara (2005)
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6. Conclusion
The assignment set up for this paper was to find out what emotional intelligence is all about
and to answer the question put forward “to what degree are managers recruited and selected
on the basis of emotional characteristics versus technical qualification?” First the evolution
of management was discussed to find out when the human mind became important in the
process of managing organisations. That was in the beginning of the twentieth century when
Mary Parker Follett came forward with her behavioural theory. Next the focus was put on
theories in leadership and what characterises good leaders and managers. Many models have
been developed in leadership and one of them is the trait model of leadership which focuses
on identifying the personal characteristics that cause effective leadership. It was assumed that
effective leaders must have certain personal qualities, or traits, which made them different
from ineffective leaders and from people who never became leaders. Some of those
characteristics were related to intelligence, knowledge, integrity and self-confidence of the
leaders. Thereafter the focus was put on these characteristics with the emphasis on theories of
emotional intelligence and how important it is for managers to be emotionally intelligent in
the workplace. Managers and leaders, in particular, need high emotional intelligence because
they represent the organization to the public, they interact with a number of people within and
outside the organization and they set the tone for employee morale. Leaders with empathy are
able to understand their employees’ needs and provide them with constructive feedback.
Different jobs also call for different types of emotional intelligences.186 For example, success
in sales requires the empathic ability to estimate the moods of the customers. By comparison,
success in painting or professional tennis requires a more individual form of self-discipline
and motivation.
In order to connect theories of emotional intelligence with reality interviews were conducted
with six HR managers of different companies in Iceland. They were all asked the same ten
questions and the findings indicate that managers are being recruited on the basis of their
emotional intelligence characteristics rather than technical qualifications but that the best
combination would be good people skills as well as good technical qualifications. Two of the
companies mentioned good grades also. The research was not big enough to show some real
results, the findings rather give some hints as to what is being done in reality. The method of
186 Goleman (1998)
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how the interviews were conducted can be criticised and perhaps by conducting telephone
interviews the researcher doesn‘t get deep enough answers.
The results of the study could though be looked at in other context e.g. by digging deeper into
the Icelandic market and investigate if that small market is any different from other bigger
markets, if the importance of emotional intelligence is as important elsewhere and what
foreign companies do and what kind of tools are being used during the recruitment process to
evaluate the emotional intelligence of potential managers. Other things which could be
interesting to research are if the same methods apply within the same industries. Two of the
six companies are banks and their answers were quite similar to each other and a bit different
than what the other companies are doing. As a further study it could therefore be quite
interesting to find out what other banks and financial institutes are doing in this field.
No evaluation measure gives perfect results. Self-evaluations are vulnerable to skews from
people wanting to look good. Therefore, when it comes to assessing emotional competencies,
there is always the danger that a person with low self-esteem does not evaluate accurately his
or her own strengths and weaknesses. Even though self-evaluations can be helpful, if people
really trust that the results will be used for their own good, they can be less reliable without
this trust. Having emotionally intelligent managers does not guarantee that the company gains
more market share or a better bottom line but research throughout the years have indicated
how important the human mind is for the growth of organisations and therefore soft
management like emotional intelligence has gained increased popularity, as Daniel Goleman
puts it:
“... it’s all done with people and if the human ingredient is ignored, then nothing else will
work as well as it might. In the years to come, companies in which people collaborate
best will have a competitive edge, and so to that extent emotional intelligence will be
more vital.”187
187 Goleman (1998) p. 315
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Bibliography
Avolio, B. et al. (2005) Executive Summary: 100 Years Review of Leadership Intervention Research. Retrieved 26. May 2008 at 23.30 from http://www.leadershipreview.org/2005winter/AvolioArticle.pdf Barnard, C.I. The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press. Barrett, R. (2003) Vocational Business: Training, Developing and Motivating People Business & Economics - Page 51. Barrett, G.V. and Depinet R.L. (1991) “A Reconsideration of Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence.” American Psychologist, Vol. 46 no. 10, 1012-1024 Bass, B.M. (1985) Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press Beardwell, I., Holden, L and Claydon,T. (2004) Human Resource Management, a Contemporary Approach. Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Limited. Bryman, A and Bell, E. (2007) Business Research Methods (2nd ed.) Oxford University Press. Calori, R. And Dufour, B. (1995) “Management European Style”, Academy of Management Executive 9 (3) Capacent in Iceland (2008). Retrieved 25. June 2008 at 14:22 from http://capacent.is/pages/35 Carey, A. (1967) “The Hawthorne Studies: A Radical Criticism”, American Sociological Review 33, 403-416 Carpenter, S. (2001) “Different Dispositions, Different Brains”, Monitor on Psychology, 66-68 Carroll, S. J. and Gillen, D. J.(1987) “ Are the Classical Management Functions Useful in Describing Managerial work?” Academy of Management Review, 12: 48 Changing Minds (Year unknown) Leadership vs. Management. Retrieved 11. April 2008 at 12:31 from http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/articles/manager_leader.htm Dale Carnegie.(Year unknown). Retrieved 26. May 2008 at 23.15 from http://www.dalecarnegie.com/about_us/history.jsp Digman, M. (1990) “Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model” Annual Review of Psychology 41, 417-40 Doyle, M. E. and Smith, M. K. (2001) “Classical Leadership” the Encyclopedia of Informal Education. Retrieved 10. April 2008 at 10:50 from http://www.infed.org/leadership/traditional_leadership.htm
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Drucker, P.F. (1990) Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices. New York: Harper & Row. Evans, M.G. (1970) “The Effects of Supervisory Behaviour on the Path-Goal Relationship” Organizational and Behavior and Human Performance 5, 277-98 Fiedler, F. E. A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill. Follett, M.P.(1924) Creative Experience. London: Longmans. French, R.P. and Raven, B. (1960) “The Bases of Social Power” in D. Cartwright and A.F. Zander, eds., Group Dynamics. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 607-23 Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence New York: Bantam Books. Goleman, D. (1999) Working with Emotional Intelligence London: Bloomsbury Publishing Graham P. (1995) M.P. Follett – Prophet of Management: A Celebration of Writings from the 1920s. Boston : Harvard Business School Press. Hunt, J.W. and Baruch, Y. (2003). “Developing Top Managers: The impact of Interpersonal Skills Training.” The Journal of Management Development, 22, 729-752. Jung, C.G (Year unknown) Psychological Types (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, 6) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Katz, D. and Kahn, R.L. (1966). The Social Psychology of Organisations. New York: Wiley. Kreitner, R. (2001) Management Eight edition. Houghton Mifflin Company Lixivium Consulting. (Year unknown) Emotional Intelligence and Leadership: Why the “Soft Skills” Matter. Retrieved 4. June 2008 at 11.55 from http://www.lixivium.com.au/articles/ei%20article.doc Marino, V. (12manage - E-learning community on management. V10.0) The general management principles as summarized by Fayol. Explanation of 14 Principles of Management of Henri Fayol. (1916) Retrieved 26. March 2008 at 14:33 from http://www.12manage.com/methods_fayol_14_principles_of_management.html Mayo, E.(1933) The Human Problems of Industrial Civilization. New York: Macmilla. McClelland, D. (1973) “Testing for Competences Rather than for Intelligence” American Psychologist, 28. McCrimmon, M. (2007) “What is Management” Retrieved 11. April 2008 at 11:50 from http://businessmanagement.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_is_management_ Meyer, E., Ashleigh, M., George, J.M., Jones, G.R. (2007) Contemporary Management, European edition. McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
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Milkovich, G.T. and Boudreau, J.W. (1997) Human Resource Management (8th ed). Chicago: Times Mirror Higher Education Group, Inc. Mintzberg, H. (1983) Power in and Around Organisations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Myers, I.B., McCaulley, M.H., Quenk, N.L. and Hammer, A.L. MBTI Manual (A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), 3rd ed. Mountain View, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Orri Smárason (2006) Hvað er tilfinningagreind? Er hún mikilvæg? Vísindavefurinn. Retrieved 20.April 2008 at 13:50 from http://www.visindavefur.hi.is/svar.asp?id=5550 Palethorpe, M. (2006) “Are You Emotional but Intelligent...or are you Emotionally Intelligent?” IEE Engineering Management, February/March 2006, 11-13 Peters. T.J. and Waterman, R.H. (1982) In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row. Riggio, R.E. and Lee, J. (2007) Emotional and Interpersonal Competences and Leader Development. Human Resource Management Review 17, 418-426 Rollinson, D., Broadfield, A., and Edwards, D. (1998) Organisational Analysis and Behaviour: An Intergrated Approach. Harlow: Addison-Wesley. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional Intelligence. Baywood Publishing Co., Inc. Salovey, P. and Meyer, J.D. (1997). “What is Emotional Intelligence?” In P. Salovey and D. Sluyter (Eds.) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for educators (p. 3-31). New York: Basic Books Sanches, A. (2006) “The Difference between Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” Retrieved 7. July 2008 at 22:17 from http://e-articles.info/e/a/title/THE-DIFFERENCE-BETWEEN-QUALITATIVE-AND-QUANTITATIVE-RESEARCH/ Shetty, Y.K. (1974) “Contingency Management: Current Perspective for Managing Organisations”, Management International Review, 14, no 6:27. SHL Group Limited (2008). Retrieved 25. June 2008 at 14:34 from http://www.shl.com/shl/en-int Smith, Adam (1982). The Wealth of Nations. London, Penguin Sy, T., Tram, S and O’Hara, L.A.(2005) “Relation of Employee and Manager Emotional Intelligence to Job Satisfaction and Performance.” Journal of Vocational Behaviour 68(2006) 461-473. Thompson, J.D. (1967) Organisations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill. University of Nevada, Reno (Year unknown) “Quantitative and Qualitative Research” Retrieved 7.July 2008 at 21:30 from http://www.unr.edu/bench/chap04.pdf
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Appendix 1
Company A Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - It depends of the position and the market. Sometimes it is advertised inside the company when we are sure we have a person in-house that is eligible. Otherwise it is advertised in newspapers sometimes with assistant from agency and sometimes we screen and interview ourselves.
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - We do usually not check the grades especially. We look at experience and education.
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades? - Can be either way if we are thinking of the managers role per se. Being good with managing people does not necessarily mean high grades from school
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? - We use behavioural type of questions with real past experience also dilemma situation and solutions and sometimes a special test or questionnaire
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
- Very rarely do except when we are hiring externally and in a big position
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus technical skills? - We usually do not separate these skills totally but technical skills are easier to learn than emotional skills, in that sense we take a stronger look at the emotional intelligence.
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7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social
competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - A bit of both, it cannot separate one from the other if you are looking for a good manager.
b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? - Basically yes, for top managers we would look more into the experience.
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional
intelligence (good people skills)? - No I do not think so. By one point something will break, the person itself, the department or the company, it depends on the position.
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having
good technical skills OR having good people skills? - Having good people skills
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved (and vice versa) - A person can learn any kind of skills but it depends on the personality how far you reach with the people skills.
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Appendix 2
Company B Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - First of all we review our application database and transfer requests from current employees. If there aren´t any candidates in the database nor internally then we look externally. That is either through an advertisement that we post on our website and in the paper, or we go through a hiring agency. Most of the recruitments are through the HR departments in each subsidiary. Hiring agency is used in some instances. Our subsidiary in the UK outsources all recruitments.
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - Yes we do and we find it more important when the person is less experienced.
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades? - Good grades give a certain indication about a person, as far as personal competence (ambition, motivation etc.).Grades should not be a sole indicator whether a person is right for a position or not. Other factors need to be taken into consideration as well, i.e. communication skills, integrity etc. Grades have less to due with social competence.
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? In Iceland we do not have our candidates take personality tests. Questions are asked during the interview process that are supposed to be indicating people skills. These questions are open questions where people give an example of
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behaviour both regarding personal competences and social competences based on their personal experience.
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
- This differs between our subsidiaries. Candidates in Denmark do have to take a personality test. In Iceland when candidates go through a hiring agency they might have to go through a personality test. Since the hiring is outsourced in the UK it is used.
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional
intelligence versus technical skills? - The essence of the job plays a certain role. If a job is highly technical then the focus might be higher on technical skills and then it might be 50/50. For a position that is more general, emotional intelligence is more important. We believe that great communication skills are highly important when it comes down to managing people. Technical skills are easier to train.
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - Both competencies are highly important. A manager needs to have the ability to react in the proper manner when managing a group of people; just as important is his ability to manage himself (anger, frustration, disappointment).
b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? – Same goes for both.
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional
intelligence (good people skills)? - Someone that doesn´t have good people skills is less likely to succeed.
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having
good technical skills OR having good people skills? - This again depends on the position and the essence of the job. But in most cases good people skills are most important.
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved
(and vice versa) - Technical skills are easier to train than people skills and therefore having good or great people skills is important.
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Appendix 3
Company C Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - The company takes care of it
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - Yes grades matter
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades? - No not necessarily
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? - By using interviews, checking references and check what people have been doing in the past
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
- No never. The Icelandic market is so small and you always know someone who knows someone etc. And it is therefore easy to find out how what kind of personality a person has.
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional
intelligence versus technical skills? - Both are very important but being emotionally intelligent is even more important and when recruiting managers we check out the people skills of the person, but there has to be a combination of people skills, good grades and technical skills
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their
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a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social
competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - They are more hired on the basis of their social skills.
b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? Yes
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional intelligence (good people skills)? - It is possible but it is difficult. We have many examples of persons who had really good technical skills and were promoted to be a manager but did not succeed as they lacked the social skills. These persons then either had to be downgraded and take care of other projects but having no human recourses or they had to leave the company.
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having
good technical skills OR having good people skills? - It is more important to having good social skills because the technical skills can be learned but our managers of course have to have good education and good grades and the ability to learn the technical parts of the job. The best managers are those who have good social skills and are able to recruit people with a better technical knowledge without feeling intimidated by them.
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved
(and vice versa). - We do believe that people skills can be learned. Once a year we evaluate our managers (the employees, peers and supervisors answer some questionnaires) and bring in an outside consultancy company to take care of that. When we get the result we can see which managers are not meeting standards when it comes to people skills. We then send them to training courses so that can improve what is lacking. This often works and we have many examples of managers who have really improved their social skills but the manager has to be open to acquiring new knowledge.
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Appendix 4
Company D Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - Most of the time managers are hired in co-operation with recruitment companies. We usually advertise open positions, the recruitment company takes the first interviews and then the HR manager or other managers from our company take the next interview. When it is time to choose who will be hired two - three applicants take a personality test and we take the conclusion from them into consideration when the most qualified person is hired. This mostly applies when middle managers are hired but when we are looking for top managers then we often use “headhunting”.
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - Usually not
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades? - No not necessarily
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? - We try to evaluate it in an interview. We use rather standardised questions in the interview, we use among other things AHA question technique and with this we try to get a glimps of the personality of the applicants, we evaluate his reaction to the questions and can see his behaviour. References and background checks are also useful and we check for references from two – three referees where we ask standardised questions and also questions about things which have caught our attention during the interviews. When we hire middle and top managers we mostly use QPQ personality tests before the final decision is made.
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5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
- We use QPQ
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus technical skills? - Personality is the basis for hiring in most positions, but if the applicant has the appropriate background which matches our requirements then we consider his personality to be more important than technical skills which can be learned.
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their
a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social
competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - It is difficult to choose one over the other as both abilities are important. I can’t see that a person who doesn’t have the ability to control own emotions is capable of controlling others. But it is very important that it is easy for managers to communicate with others.
b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? - Yes but often we expect middle managers to have more technical skills than the top manager while it is most important for top managers to have good people skills.
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional
intelligence (good people skills)? - No
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having good technical skills OR having good people skills? - Good people skills
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved
(and vice versa) - I don’t know if I should answer this but I think that it is more difficult to learn people skills than technical skills but it can be learned though to some degree at least.
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Appendix 5
Company E Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - We do both
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - Not necessarily, we of course look at the grades if the applicants put them on the application, but mostly we check grades and subject of final papers (BSc./BA or MSc./MA degrees)
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful
than a person with top grades? - No not necessarily. Grades can though give some idea of how a person works and how ambitious the person is. Other things have to be taken into consideration e.g. if a person was also working while studying etc.
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? - We use interviews and various employees in the company participate in them to help us evaluate the applicant. We also sometimes use personality tests.
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
- Yes
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus technical skills? - We try really hard to find the right person with the right personality i.e. a personality which we would like to see in our employees.
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People skills are very important for our managers as we want them to be leaders of their group and are able to motivate and encourage their employees.
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their
a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social
competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - Both b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? - Yes but
it is even more important for them.
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional intelligence (good people skills)? - It is possible. We all know managers who are not really emotionally intelligent but have still managed to succeed. I think though that employees today make more demands to their managers and expect that they show compassion, dedication and personal interest when it comes to their employees.
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having good technical skills OR having good people skills? - I would have to say people skills.
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved
(and vice versa). - Yes I think it can be learned.
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Appendix 6
Company F Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced) - Both.
2. Do you check the grades of the person? - Very seldom.
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades? - No, some of the best people we have, have never finished school.
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has
good people skills? - We use set of similar or same questions asked again and again. Different people are asked to ask certain questions to determine different skills.
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is -
No
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus technical skills? - We don’t. Most of our managers are highly technical, but we’re starting to focus more and more on hiring one technical manager and another people manager. We need a recruiting model that could help us determine emotional intelligence, especially for that group.
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their
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a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? - More focus on their ability to handle relationship with others.
b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers? - Yes
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional
intelligence (good people skills)? – I personally don’t, but we have cases like that. We know about them and in those cases, we support the manager as much as we can.
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having
good technical skills OR having good people skills? – A mix of both is needed, and since that is not always possible we’re going the path, I mention before; one technical part and another managerial path. There is a good book on this matter, written by somebody from Microsoft, I think.
10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved
(and vice versa) – People skills can certainly be achieved, it’s going to take some time, training etc. But E.I. is hard to learn, I believe it’s something you’re born with. It’s also, somewhat difficult to teach.
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Appendix 7
Questions for Human resource departments concerning recruitment process, with emphasis on emotional intelligence. To what degree does the company recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence characteristics versus technical qualifications. This applies for the process when managers (both middle managers and top managers) are hired. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one‘s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. The emotional Competence Framework: Personal competence Social Competence Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions) Empathy (Awareness of others’ feelings and needs Self-regulation (managing one’s internal state Social skills (Ability to induce desirable responses in others) Motivation (ability to meet standard of excellence)
Questions:
1. How is the recruitment process when managers are hired? (The company itself or outsourced)
2. Do you check the grades of the person?
3. Do you think that a person with mediocre grades is less likely to be successful than a person with top grades?
4. How is the character of a person evaluated, how do you evaluate if a person has good
people skills?
5. Do you use personality tests to find out e.g. how emotional intelligent a person is?
6. To what degree do you recruit and select managers on the basis of emotional intelligence versus technical skills?
7. Having emotional intelligence in mind, are managers hired on the basis of their a) Personal competencies (their ability to manage themselves) or their social
competencies (their ability to handle relationship with others)? b) Does the same apply for middle managers as well as top managers?
8. Do you think that a person can succeed as a manager without emotional intelligence
(good people skills)?
9. What do you consider to be more important for a manger to succeed: having good technical skills OR having good people skills?
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10. If you say technical skills, do you then think that people skills can be achieved (and
vice versa)
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Appendix 8
The Recruitment Process
All the applicants receive an email/letter regarding that the position has been filled
A company needs an employee
Analyses of abilities required for the job
Advertising of the job position
Inquiries regarding the position answered
Search in databases
Consultant checks out the applicants
Headhunt
Consultant interviews applicants
References checked out
A person is recruited
Consultants display the applications to the
company
Personality test and/or ability test
Recommended