PART 1: What are low EQ (emotionally intelligent) leaders costing your organization? $$$ ?

How much money do you think low emotionally intelligent leaders are costing your organization on average? According to a study done by Harrison Psychological Associates in the USA, did a study on 9000 federal employees. Indicating that 42 percent of female and 15 percent of male employees reported being mistreated by a leader within a two-year period, resulting in a cost of more than $180 million in lost time and productivity.
‘Mistreat’, is a nice encompassing word for low emotional intelligence.

1. The Sum

If you divide the $180 million by the 9 000 employees it would equal $20 000 over a two year span, meaning $10 000 per year per employee if you averaged it out.

The company I worked for still has the culture of nurturing low EQ leaders. On the second floor of the head office building alone, there are no less than four low EQ leaders. To be nice, let’s say there are two low emotionally intelligent per floor in each of their buildings. Times the average of six floors per building times the ten buildings they have in Johannesburg alone times the $10 000 per employee per year (I am not going to even attempt the amount in Rand! Just FYI, it was around x8 this morning), is an astounding $120 000 per year per building they have. Then calculate the staff turnover with that. Two years is the average time your other employees stay in their positions before leaving that leader. I am in full agreement with John C. Maxwell when he says; ‘People leave people – not organizations.’

We are talking about an organization that has business interests in 38 countries in the world and close to 40 000 employees on their payroll. (I’m sure you are more clever than I am and don’t need a calculator to do the sum for that one.) Really? That’s just not smart business.

2. The Summation

Funny enough, organizations like the one I worked for have the value of ‘Winning with People’ written up in their official values declaration. But the statistics reveal that 85% of the top and middle leadership in these organizations never get trained or corrected on how they deal with or treat their people! That is SHOCKING! But if you really feel like having the people that are costing you millions each year hang around and do that… Well, then I just don’t know…

It is vital these days to have a business where all your employees are happy. Happy employees are productive employees. I know from experience how hard it is to leave a highly emotionally intelligent leader. You simply don’t want to. The reason why you have to do this is – your best staff are leaving you. And you are left with the low EQ… You know, the stuff that makes a business work…

3. The Solution

Training. If you can get everybody to adhere to the same basic code of honor (this is not a set of rules and regulations, they are principals), you have won 50% of the battle. What battle? Regaining your profits. Once you have it in place, the people that want to stay will stay. The ones that leave, are the ones you want to leave.

This will naturally constitute a cultural change, but more on that in part two.

I would love to hear your opinion or simply your thoughts on the matter. You can leave your comments below or you can mail me directly at suzy.wilson@magnetostrat.com

As always..

Grow & Prosper!

Suzy Wilson