Emotional intelligence competencies in engineer’s effectiveness and engagement

Abstract

Purpose Little research has explored the importance of interpersonal skills, and more specifically, emotional and social intelligence (ESI) competencies for an engineer’s effectiveness or engagement. Furthermore, to the knowledge, no studies have explored the explanatory power of ESI over and above general mental ability and personality for engineers. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach In this study the authors gathered multi-source data for 40 engineers in a multi-national manufacturing company. Findings The authors found that ESI as observed by their peers significantly predicted engineer effectiveness (ΔR2=0.313), while general mental ability (g) and personality did not. In the same study, an engineer’s engagement in their work was significantly predicted by the degree of shared vision within their teams, while g, personality and ESI did not predict engagement. Research limitations/implications The authors explore the implications of the findings for corporate training and development, undergraduate education, and graduate education of engineers. Originality/value The authors draw on 30 years of longitudinal studies showing ESI and quality of relationships can be significantly improved with the appropriate pedagogy emphasizing the building of one’s vision, developmental approaches to ESI, developing a shared vision with others, and inspirational coaching.

Stirring up Engineers’ Systems Intelligence: A Case Study of Life-Philosophical Pedagogy

“…Fortunately, emotional and social intelligence competences can be incorporated into engineering syllabi without disrupting the remainder of the programs [44]. This paper shared a pedagogical experiment from a university of technology that equips students with systemic capabilities.…”

“…Further, numerous studies support the predictive value of relational abilities in a leader in terms of career progress [25], subordinate achievement, and ultimately organizational outcomes [26]. Such impacts on organizational performance are impressive and relevant in the engineering context, as most engineers end up taking on managerial tasks at some point in their careers [27].…”

“…As subsequent novel yardsticks for judging and developing engineers' qualifications, recent studies have proposed that pedagogical attention be shifted to personal attributes, such as personality [7,8], socio-emotive competence [9,10,11] and systems intelligence [12]. Systemic capability refers to the ability to act intelligently as part of and in relation to the whole, even in the absence of knowledge of the whole [13].…”

The Power of EI Competencies over Intelligence and Individual Performance: A Task-Dependent Model

“…Rather it is a "uninformative label" created to designate all research on EI that does not use or adapt Ability EI's model . Consequently, recent research (Cherniss and Boyatzis, 2013;Amdurer et al, 2014;Boyatzis et al, 2017) proposes that Stream 3 be split further to allow distinguishing Trait EI (Stream 3), which assesses EI through self-reports of personality traits, attitudes and motivations (e.g., EQ-i; Bar-On, 1997a), from Behavioral EI (Stream 4), an approach that captures EI as is manifested in real contexts by collecting external informants' observations (as opposed to self-assessments) of an individual's behavior (ESCI; Boyatzis and Goleman, 2007). This distinction enables future meta-analyses to properly differentiate all existing EI approaches.…”

“…In what regards the relationship between EI and workplace performance, recent meta-analyses suggest that emotional intelligence positively affects several aspects of workplace performance (Joseph and Newman, 2010;O'Boyle et al, 2011), including company rank and pay increases (Lopes et al, 2006) and supervisor ratings (Côté and Miners, 2006). In particular, emotional and social competencies have been shown to positively affect sales leadership performance (Boyatzis et al, 2012), management (Ramo et al, 2009;Boyatzis et al, 2012), entrepreneurship performance (Camuffo et al, 2012) and engineers' effectiveness and engagement (Boyatzis et al, 2017). Other studies, however, find significant relationships between EI and workplace performance but do not take general mental ability into account (Bar-On, 2000; Law et al, 2004).…”