SHRM26 Debrief · Strategic HR, Organizational Design & Change Management · #2848
Emotional Intelligence Is a System Skill That Makes Work Work
with Bethany Adams
"Fix your system, and then you will have amazing heroes that rise up because the system nudges them in that way."
What it was about
Individual emotional intelligence training fails when leaders are placed back into broken organizational systems; HR should focus on fixing the signals, structures, and habits of the system itself so that emotionally intelligent leadership can actually take hold.
By the numbers
50% turnover
air traffic controllers leaving DCA within their first year
85 near-collisions
in the three years before the DCA plane crash
67 people
lives lost in the DCA midair collision
Key notes
- Audit your last 10 promotions or recognitions to see whether you are rewarding results alone or also collaboration, development of others, and how results were achieved.
- Identify and fix one concrete friction point in your team's workload, schedule, or process rather than trying to overhaul the entire system at once.
- Ask your team directly what could be taken off their plate or what is broken for them, then act on the answer.
The contrarian takeTraining individual leaders to be more emotionally intelligent is largely wasted effort, and can even be counterproductive, if you don't fix the surrounding broken system first. The leader isn't the problem to solve: the system is.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
Ask your team what's broken or could be taken off their plate this week, then actually act on one answer.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
Sending leaders to EQ training doesn't work if we send them back into the same broken system. We need to fix the system, not just the leader.
Watch out for
- Sending leaders to emotional intelligence training while leaving them in the same broken system, expecting the training alone to fix behavior.
- Displaying corporate values on a wall at onboarding and only referencing them again when investors visit, instead of reinforcing them continuously.
- Treating every problem as a five-alarm fire because issues are not surfaced or addressed early.
Fun fact · Bethany Adams
Before becoming a Villanova professor, Bethany Adams got her HR start in the restaurant and retail industries.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperHR Service Delivery and Culture Transformation: A Lean Six Sigma Diagnostic and RoadmapSix Sigma gives HR mapping tools to redesign the broken system itself.⇄ The counterpointBe Bold: Unlocking Your Leadership Power and Influence as an HR LeaderIndividual boldness and voice still matter, even inside an unfixed system.✦ The unexpected oneLeading By Example: Aligning HR, Leadership, And Employees for Responsible AI AdoptionAI succeeds the same way EQ does: as embedded system, not solo tool.