Before you lead others, before you can help others, you have to discover yourself,” former Royal Dutch Shell executive Joe Jaworski told interviewer Allen Webber. Evidently he’s not alone in that belief. Increasingly, companies are requiring their high-potential executives, the ones tabbed for stardom, to learn more about themselves. Dan Goleman, author of the highly-acclaimed Working with Emotional Intelligence, has identified 25 essential components of emotional quotient (EQ) which, he says, can account for up to 90 per cent of career success. Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf described 21 key personal qualities in their 1996 book, Executive EQ. Personnel Decisions Inc., the Minneapolis firm that publishes Profilor, one of the leading 360-degree managerial assessment tools, has built its instrument around nine essential skills that they say separate the winners from the also-rans in executive life.

Spot on

What is the common thread within these three different sources? Taking active steps to uncover your blind spots and skill gaps, and being willing to do something about them. A case in point is Ted, a smart, tough, “company man”. Ted demonstrated an inordinate supply of good ideas about how to make things run more efficiently when he was hired. A former Navy commander, he came early, stayed late, and thought incessantly about “plugging the leaks” wherever he found them.

And, boy, he was good at finding them. The only problem was he seemed to enjoy the fact that he had offended nearly everyone in the company in a few short months after coming on board. “I’m here to make these people get the lead out,” he said on more than one occasion. “What they think of me is irrelevant.”

The animosity Ted engendered in others soon meant that he couldn’t get all the information he needed to make decisions. No one was willing to collaborate or partner with him on important projects, morale and productivity in the organisation plummeted, and several of the high-potential colleagues who had to deal with him chose to leave, even though they were not particularly his targets.

Right push

As Ogilvy and Mather CEO, Shelley Lazarus, recently observed, “The name of the game is talent. You find ways to keep it and grow it, or you lose.” So, within a year Ted was history, left to wander off and look for another battleship to fix. It’s largely the Teds of organisational life that have made the need for training in emotional intelligence so essential to 21st century executives. Ted hadn’t a clue about his blind spots, of being incredibly self-absorbed, not knowing how to listen, failing to pick up on the cues of others, and being oblivious to his own emotional drivers.

Baby steps

Three factors — going global, the emergence of diversity as a business issue, and the need to keep both internal and external customers satisfied — have combined to create a business environment somewhat akin to walking on eggshells. Today, executives are dogged by the constant likelihood of misreading, disappointing or offending someone whose business is critical for them. In a world where leaders must be able to pick up easily on nuances of preferences and needs among colleagues and customers alike, flat-footed executives like Ted can do massive damage in a short time.

Discovering your weaknesses or blind spots can be an unnerving experience, especially if you think that your management style works pretty well. But if you want to make it to the next level, you need to work on all the skills that are important for top executives. Getting to know yourself will pay off immediately as well as down the road as your career progresses.