February 2019 | RENSOL

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has been an important topic in business and organizational leadership for decades. It’s equally important in the health care business. Health care administrators can develop their own EQ skills, and they can also promote EQ in their organizations via employee training. These industry leaders will discover that EQ allows better relationships between colleagues and patients while also improving overall organizational performance.

emotional intelligence benefit to healthcare infographics

Why Emotional Intelligence is Crucial in Health Care

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Psychology professors John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey coined the term “emotional intelligence.” They defined the term as “the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotion; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions.”

In 1998, psychologist Daniel Goleman noted the connection between EQ and business leadership, specifically citing self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy for others, and social skills as the link’s key components. In 2013, Goleman used neuroscience research to demonstrate how leaders can build each element of EQ by learning better ways to focus their attention.

How Health Care Administrators Hire People with EQ

Health care administrators that seek high-EQ employees see it as a valuable piece along with education, certification, and technical skills. They’ll evaluate EQ by using behavioral event interviewing tactics to see how prospective employees handled challenging experiences in previous jobs. They’ll also contact the candidate’s references to obtain firsthand insight into their people interaction skills.

How EQ Benefits Health Care Professionals

EQ lowers stress and burnout of health care professionals in several ways. It improves communication, yielding better doctor-patient relationships. It provides understanding to a patient’s emotional reactions to a treatment, which leads to higher levels of patient satisfaction. Additionally, it leads to increased job satisfaction, and it also leads to improved leadership quality, which can result in better team effectiveness and motivation.

The Key Skills Administrators Need to Develop

How Administrators can Develop EQ to Become Better Leaders

EQ skills fall into two areas. The first area is personal competence, or the ability to understand and express oneself. This skill requires emotional self-awareness, respecting and accepting oneself, and a commitment to self-improvement. It also involves having an assertive self-expression of emotions, proper stress management, a capacity to stay optimistic, and being able to adapt behavior and emotions in unforeseen circumstances. Additionally, the skill is defined by an ability to control impulses.

The second area is social competence, which is the ability to manages relationships. This skill requires empathy, effective and compassionate communication, and social and organizational awareness. It also requires the capacity to manage conflicts, the ability to inspire and motivate through leadership, and being able to be a coach and mentor. Additionally, the skill is defined by having a sense of social responsibility.

Conclusion: How Technology Can Help

Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Statistics

The healthcare AI market is projected to rise from around $663.8 million in 2014 to around $6.66 billion in 2021. The U.S. health care economy will potentially save an annual amount of $150 billion because of the AI applications projected to be in healthcare by 2026.

These applications can serve a diverse number of purposes. From a security standpoint, AI can help with fraud detection and cybersecurity. AI can also be applied to help nurses and staff by reducing dosage error reduction, providing administrative workflow, and becoming virtual nursing assistants. They can also help out in advanced capacities such as robot-assisted surgery, providing automated image diagnosis, issuing preliminary diagnoses, and identifying clinical trial participants. AI units can all be connected with each other, which could provide cohesion.

EQ and AI: What’s the Difference?

EQ and AI are two wholly different concepts. AI is defined as a branch of computer science that focuses on allowing machines to solve problems and perform tasks associated with human intelligence. EQ, on the other hand, is a concept defined by the understanding of the emotions of the self and of others to foster personal and professional relationships.

The Potential of AI Technologies and Emotional Intelligence in Health Care

When combined, AI and EQ could advance healthcare in remarkable ways. It could make the assessment of a patient’s moods and feelings through speech cues, inflections, and gestures possible. It could also make it possible to detect depression and emotional wellness through vocal tone. Additionally, it could ease the stress of patient clinical trials by enabling real-time feedback. Overall, it could create a better customer experience by automating intake and discharge processes.

IBM’s Watson has provided a glimpse into this combination. The AI system can potentially match cancer patients with available clinical trials, medical therapies, surgeries, radiation, and supportive care. This could free up physicians, so they could spend more time providing care to patients.

The Importance of EQ

The relationship between EQ and leadership will continue to be a valuable asset for the success of health care organizations. Leaders and employees at all levels stand to benefit from adding EQ to their repertoire of professional skills.

Marc Ace Palaganas - Digital Marketer/ Senior Writer

Upon finishing a journalism degree with flying colors, he has discovered his niche as a freelance journalist in a health and lifestyle journal, a travel magazine, a science blog, multiple news websites, various advocacy blogs, and a social entrepreneurship network. His innate affair with writing eventually brought him to the business of recruitment and human resource. A writer and an advocate at heart, serving people through his capacity for words has been his passion.

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The Case for Soft Skills

Soft skills are in-demand in nearly every company and every industry. A Wall Street Journal survey of 900 executives found that 92% said soft skills were equally important or more important than technical skills. But 89% of those surveyed said they have a “very or somewhat difficult time finding people with the requisite attributes.” Likewise, LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Report discovered that the four most in-demand soft skills are leadership, communication, collaboration, and time management.

Are emotional intelligence a better predictor of success? According to one author, yes. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence at Work, found in his research of 500 executives that emotional intelligence was a better predictor of top performance than previous experience or IQ. CEOs at some of the world’s top companies (Amazon, Xerox, and Tesla, to name a few) lead with emotional intelligence have designed their entire corporate structure around soft skills.

And such skills aren’t just great for creating a fulfilling and pleasant work environment. The link between profit and leaders with high emotional intelligence is clear. In one study, CEOs whose employees rated them high in character had an average return of 9.35% over a two-year period, nearly five times as much as companies with CEOs who had low character ratings. The case for recruiting for soft skills is strong: but, there’s something to be said for balancing good leadership and communication with individuals who have honed their talent.

Don’t Ignore Hard Skills

Have some recruiters overcorrected in their search for candidates with high EQ? Maybe, says one expert.

Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, believes that to have a successful career, you must develop skills that make you an expert in something. There will always be a market for those with a depth of knowledge in one thing; certain fields will always demand new hires with niche skills and technical training. Newport argues that he more mastery you have in a skill or field, the more control and satisfaction it’ll give you in your career.

While it’s true that technical masters do become top CEOs – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates come to mind – other experts note that eventually, soft skills and emotional intelligence must be learned. Many programmers, for example, have some of the basic hard skills that it takes to run a company. However, they fall short on key EQ traits like listening. The best leaders can learn soft skills over time, but start as an expert in something.

How to Hire for Hard Skills and Emotional Intelligence

Unfortunately, soft skills can’t be found on a resume, which is what makes hiring for them so difficult.

Companies who hire successfully with low turnover have learned how to construct their interview process to cover hard and soft skills. These recruiters ask candidates to perform tests mimicking real-world scenarios to get the best prediction of their success in the company. These skills tests then get triangulated with psychometrics and attitude testing.

Plus, the advent of AI has made it possible to weigh soft skills vs. hard skills equally. Where in the past a candidate might wow a recruiter in the interview, but have no mastery over their field, an algorithm can’t be easily biased by a resume or stellar presentation. Smart companies have even begun to customize their interview process for certain soft skills that are applicable to each open position: so your extroverts become your top sales people, while your listeners join your HR team. There’s a place for both hard skills and soft skills in the workplace: it’s up to your hiring team to find the right combination for success.

ABOUT THE COMPANY: Rensol Recruitment and Consulting, Inc. is the fastest growing recruitment agency in The Philippines. A career consultant that aims to go above and beyond the level of expectations of both the aspirations of the candidates and the dream team standards of employers through providing exceptional opportunities and unparalleled quality-driven recruitment services.