We all know that we need some degree of smarts to be a successful marketer.
The measure of this “smarts” is IQ, or intelligence quotient. IQ is the ratio of your mental age to your chronological age. You are born with your IQ, and it stays relatively the same throughout life. So it is pretty hard to become an Einstein if you were born with an average IQ.
People often associate someone's IQ with his or her ability to be successful. And while important to your success, IQ becomes less important as you grow in your career.
Sure, for your initial job, being an expert in e-metrics or a highly creative marketing copywriter is important. But that value wanes as you start to manage people, build relationships and advance up the proverbial corporate ladder.
You can be a member of MENSA, but success may still elude you. There are other ingredients that are essential to ensuring your success.
That is where EQ comes in.
According to Daniel Goleman, whose book Emotional Intelligence launched the concept, "non-cognitive factors account for about 80% of adult success." And key among those non-cognitive factors is emotional intelligence, or EQ. Emotional intelligence is defined by Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf in their book, Executive EQ, as "the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection and influence."
Your EQ is really about soft skills. It means being able to relate to others and make things happen. It means getting product marketing and the ad agency to agree on the direction of a TV ad or motivating a multidisciplinary team to successfully launch a new product or inspiring the entire organization to participate in a new customer-focus campaign.
Susan Dunn (“The EQ Coach”) says, “The higher up you go in your career, the more EQ matters.”
Jeffrey Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management, concurs. He learned from his extensive research with senior leaders that “communications skills are among the most important things for a corporate leader to have.”
According to Dunn, communications skills are one of the critical EQ competencies. She says, “Eventually you'll find yourself on a playing field where everyone has technical skills and expertise as good as yours, and then what makes you stand out?
“It's how you handle yourself and others, your leadership and communication skills, integrity, authenticity, intentionality, change-proficiency and other Emotional Intelligence competencies.”
The great news about EQ is that you can improve it. Unlike IQ, you can work on different EQ competencies so that you can increase your EQ score.
Understanding your current EQ score and putting a professional development plan in place to build on weak areas will help you tremendously as you progress in your career. Dunn says, “We're finding more and more that ‘soft' skills bring ‘hard' results in the business world.”
