Emotional Intelligence Development Efforts: Assessing Effectiveness

In the mid 90's, with the advent of Daniel Goleman's best-selling book, the concept of Emotional Intelligence gained prominence. Emotional Intelligence presented a new way to understand and improve people's performance because it could be applied to a broad range of organizational development areas. While many organizations followed the approach of assessing their people's Emotional Intelligence, this did not ensure the development of skill level. In addition, without a method to evaluate effectiveness, it was difficult to prove the value of a training or development program focused on enhancing skill.

While improvements from soft skill interventions, such as Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Competence, are more difficult to evaluate, they can be measured by using a variety of methods. When taken together, the results of those methods should indicate a trend toward improvement to verify value for the individual and the business. And that value should be demonstrated beyond how participants felt and could they perform during the training (level 1 and 2 evaluations). The focus should be on level 3 and 4 evaluations (use on the job and impact on the company or return on investment). Explained below are a few steps for obtaining level 3 and 4 evaluations for EI skill-building interventions.

- Set goals or objectives for the intervention. Set both individual and organizational goals. These goals will serve as a gauge against which results can be evaluated.

- Determine pre and post methods of measurement. Measures might include the use of any of the EI assessment instruments available as well as other organizational measures such as climate surveys, organizational assessment surveys, or change effectiveness surveys. Remember that EI 360 degree assessments offer information that provides insight from managers, peers and subordinates, while an individual, subjective tool will likely not offer as broad a view.

- Based on the organizational goals, you might include pre and post organizational internal measures such as health care claims, absenteeism, customer or patient satisfaction scores, and employee engagement/satisfaction scores. Check with the organization to determine if there are any additional internal measures that might be appropriate.

- As a part of the program, include a coaching component. Even though information acquired during the coaching sessions is confidential, you will be able to generalize overall improvements for the group

- Conduct impact interviews with participants a few weeks after the end of the training. Focus on the objectives established at the beginning of the program. Ask participants for specific examples of improvements in goal areas (i.e., increased productivity, improved conflict resolution, less stress and worry, increased work/life balance, etc.). Some of these improvements can be easily translated into dollar ROI. For example a participant may indicate increased sales as a result of the training. Or she might indicate some other initiative that saved man-hours. When identifying the dollar value of improvements, be sure to make a conservative estimate.

- The last step is to share the results with your customer and the participants through an informal or formal report. When improvements are shared with participants, this reinforces the use of the techniques learned during the training and ensures continued benefit and value for the business and the individual.

Together, the above steps will result in information that can be used to determine the value of the program. Even if it is not realistic to apply all the steps, be sure to identify at least two or three ways of assessing your soft skills program. You'll have both qualitative and quantitative data from which to identify trends, draw conclusions and make recommendations.

About the Author
Specializing in the area of Emotional Intelligence, Byron Stock is dedicated to making work a place where people flourish and productivity improves. Typical improvements in personal goals range from 30% to 50%. Visit his website to learn about Byron's quick, simple, proven techniques to harness the power of your EI.