Innate intelligence is important for success, but it’s not enough. How people-smart you are makes the difference. Fortunately, Social and Emotional Intelligence can be learned and tends to develop with age.

Organizations with a Social and Emotional Intelligent workforce are most able to compete effectively in today’s marketplace. By blending hard skills and IQ with the priceless competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence, organizations are able to move to the next level of success.

Consider These Remarkable Results:

• Researchers estimate that success at work is comprised of 80%-90% Social and Emotional Intelligence, and only 10%-20% IQ.
• The higher an executive goes in an organization, the more important Social and Emotional Intelligence becomes. Some researchers believe that 90%-95% of success at the top is driven by Social and Emotional Intelligence.
• How long people stay with an organization and how productive they erewhile there are directly related to their relationship with their supervisor. People with “good” bosses (defined as having high Social and Emotional Intelligence) are 4 times less likely to leave than those with “poor” bosses.
• The Center for Creative Leadership research indicates that nearly half of all executives fail within 2 years because they lack Social and Emotional Intelligence skills, not technical competence or cognitive ability. They lack sensitivity, are unable to handle conflict constructively and have poor emotional awareness of others and possess inadequate interpersonal skills.
• The Center for Creative Leadership also found that Social and Emotional Intelligence, along with integrity, perspective and bravery, are essential leadership traits for midlevel managers and C-suite executives.

The skills of Social and Emotional Intelligence are key to resolving a host of challenges, including morale and retention problems, fostering synergy in teams, enhancing creativity, inspiring high-level performance in others and speeding meaningful productive information exchange through sophisticated people networks.

Across industries and professions, as reflected in multiple studies, people with high Social and Emotional Intelligence skills outperform their colleagues.

• Sheraton Hotels introduced Social and Emotional Intelligence training to associates in select markets and experienced a 24% increase in market share in those markets.
• U.S. Air Force retention rate for recruiters went from 50% to 96% after training incumbents in, and screening new recruiters for, Social and Emotional Intelligence skills. This resulted in an immediate savings of $3 million annually.
• L’Oreal sales agents selected for their Social and Emotional Intelligence competencies outsold their counterparts by $91,370, a net increase of $2,558,360 the first year the program was implemented. Those selected for their Social and Emotional Intelligence competencies also had 63% less turnover in their first year.
• Ameriprise Financial Services found that advisors with higher Social and Emotional Intelligence skills consistently used the skills of integrity, teamwork, service orientation, personal power and achievement drive and attained higher positive client returns than their counterparts. This finding accounted for 70% of the variation in portfolio performance between the two groups.
• PepsiCo implemented Social and Emotional Intelligence training programs with executives and managers during a time when there were high rates of turnover at the company. After the Social and Emotional Intelligence programs were introduced there was in 87% decrease in turnover, saving $4 million, a 10% increase of productivity with an ROI of 1000%.

(From the following sources: 6 Second White Paper, 2010; The Center for Creative Leadership, 2005,2012; Competency International, 2014; GAO report on Military recruiting 1998-2008; Goleman, 1995, 2000, 2007; Institute for Social + Emotional Intelligence 2014; McClelland, 2008; Stanford University, 2001)