Death and EQ

Now I know the title of this blog might alarm some of you and that is not the intended effect — instead, I wanted to share some personal use of EQ in a very personal recent experience. One of my great friends recently lost his mother. She was in her mid 80s and not of best health and so it was not entirely a surprise. My friend Rick was very close to his mother and delivered her Eulogy. In the weeks preceding her death, he found himself in a kind of funk – contemplating topics and people in a way he had not before.

EQ and Writing

On this President’s Day, I was thrilled to listen to a piece on Bloomberg radio about Abraham Lincoln and writing. Our new President, Barack Obama, is notably a fan of President Lincoln and even took the same train route to his recent momentous inauguration as Lincoln did. Last week, President Obama gave a speech specifically hailing President Lincoln’s sense of integrity and decision-making…especially in doing the right thing. On the radio piece this morning, I was surprised to hear that President Lincoln was an avid writer and not necessary because he loved to write, but because he found writing to be a deeply profound thinking tool.

Performance EQ

Last week, I spoke with a collegiate golf team about Emotional Intelligence. My work with them is based on the work I have done with a successful PGA Tour player and two articles I published in Golf Fitness Magazine within the past few months. Essentially, consider that in competitive golf it takes 4 ½ hours (on average) to play a round, but the actual amount of time spent hitting a shot is less than 5 minutes. Thus, the overwhelming majority of a competitive golfer’s time is really spent … with him or herself. In a non-reactionary sport like golf, the singular most important aspect of competitive advantage is the golfer’s ability to manage his or her emotions, especially after a bad shot.

Emotional Intelligence – The ROI

Recently I was at a conference organized and attended by folks in the human capital field. One of the presentations covered return on investment for human capital interventions. The cost of attrition is always used – and studies do indicate that the cost of unplanned attrition can be severe to companies. Both the amount of intellectual capital and social knowledge that leaves from someone who is a high performer and has been there for a while can be terribly long and difficult to substitute or replace. It may take as long as a year before someone can fill those shoes. And that is a one-year loss of productivity that the company is not always aware of from a quantifiable perspective.