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The New EQ-i 2.0 Experience

The new EQ-i 2.0 provides the best, most scientifically proven assessment tool in the industry. MHS (the publishers of the EQi2)  prefer to talk about the EQ-i 2.0 in terms of providing a new experience rather than a new product.

Why a new experience? It’s an experience because the EQ-i 2.0 provides users with an array of services and offerings, all delivered through an easy-to-access online portal. This new experience provides both, a newly updated emotional intelligence assessment as well as the additional services that increases the user’s ability to maximise the numerous ways EI can can be applied.

Like any good development process, MHS didn’t come up with this overnight. In order to really understand what this experience should look like, they needed to get their information straight from the source – emotional intelligence advocates and users of the EQi all over the world. This was their process.

They listened

They spoke to over 700 consultants and trainers, who told them what the ideal emotional intelligence assessment experience would look like. They communicated with them through online surveys, interactive webcasts and one-on-one feedback. They then compiled these findings so that we could generate a whole host of preferred service offerings and features.

They created

They created a revolutionary new experience that leverages the scientific rigor and predictive capability of the current EQ-i assessment and combined this with everything the market demanded. An easy-to-use assessment with updated norms and cross-cultural application? They created: help with marketing the benefits of emotional intelligence to end customers. They provide:  a platform to connect with like-minded emotional intelligence professionals.

They delivered

With the EQ-i 2.0 experience, users gain access to all of these benefits and become more accessible, more insightful, more connected and ultimately more confident in the eyes of their customers.

They integrated each and every significant customer request into our new EQ-i 2.0 experience.

MHS say they truly believe in the end result, and know that the EQ-i 2.0 can benefit the emotional intelligence assessment industry in ways that will change it forever.

In an age when success in business means exploring possibilities rather than following a set of rules, how can leaders encourage creativity and collaboration in their teams?

The key is to understand what drives human behaviour. Leading international brain researcher Evian Gordon asserts that the fundamental organising principle of the brain is to minimise threat and maximise reward.

Evian Gordon

When we feel threatened, the limbic (flight or fight) part of our brain takes over and it’s almost impossible to be efficient, productive, creative and insightful. We literally can’t think properly, and instead become stressed, cautious and disengaged.

Successful leaders focus on creating environments where their people are moving toward reward, are working together and are ‘in the flow’. They understand the principles of engagement…

Founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems David Rock says there are five qualities that enable us to move toward a reward response, or ‘engagement’. He calls this the SCARF model:

David Rock

1. Status — where you feel you are in the pecking order
2. Certainty — how well you can predict the future
3. Autonomy — having choices
4. Relatedness — feeling safe with people
5. Fairness — having fair exchanges with others.

Status is important for the creative process — or being in the flow, as influential humanistic psychologist Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi calls it — because in this state there is a loss of ego (status) and feedback is fluid. Understanding the role of status can help leaders avoid organisational practices that stir counterproductive threat responses among their people.  It can be as simple as asking a team member to give feedback on their own work, rather than giving them your feedback.

Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi

Meanwhile, uncertainty registers in our brains as an error or alarm – something that needs to be corrected before we can feel comfortable again. So encouraging creativity and collaboration is about reducing uncertainty, and therefore minimising threat, such as by setting clear goals with your team. Going with the flow, after all, is not about losing direction or control.

Smart leaders also give their people autonomy – encouraging them to make decisions and be self-sufficient . One of the problems with micromanaging is that it creates a threat response, and this inhibits collaboration and ‘flow’ or creativity.

Quality social connections, or relatedness, also enable our brains to move toward reward. When we experience interconnectedness – striving toward the same goals, being on the same ‘wavelength’ – oxytocins (the pleasure chemical) and dopamine (the reward chemical) are released in our brain. It’s the neurochemistry of safe connectivity.

Fairness is also vital, because the perception of unfair treatment can lead to people sabotaging each other – not communicating vital information, making decisions without involving others, not being cooperative, and certainly not collaborating. And that will stop the creative process dead in its tracks!

Encouraging creativity and collaboration in your team could be as easy as choosing your SCARF…

We’ve been developing our particular style of facilitation and learning for many years. Recently we’ve been discussing the elements of andragogy, noting the importance of the ‘hands on’ approach in adult learning. We know our work has to be grounded in theory, it has to mean something to the people with whom we’re working and it has to be applicable and useful. What makes it truly exciting and memorable for people is the diverse nature of the experiential forms we use.

We just love the fact that ‘hands on’ works. It transforms, involves and engages people. And we know this is a must if we’re going to be able to influence any sort of meaningful and lasting change.

With a recent study showing that up to 97% of Australians aged 16-17 use at least one social networking site, should we be worried? Increasingly children are raised in front of television and computer screens. What are the effects that this can have on brain development? Do websites like Twitter and Facebook contribute to a culture of short term attentiveness?

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a neuroscientist at Oxford University and argues that we should be increasingly wary of how the changing technological environment is affecting the minds of the young. – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Greenfield is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. On February 1, 2006, she was installed as Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Dan Barber gives a wonderfully inspiring presentation on the love of fish and the future of food when grown by farmers who are experts in relationships. Ultimately this talk is about recognising the whole system and what can happen when a business is built with the whole system in mind.