Why EQ Trumps Technical Skills in the Age of AI

[00:00:20] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Can You Hear Me?. I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of the Harbinger Group, a marketing and strategy firm. And I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications. Today, we are talking about a trend that's been building for a while, but hit a tipping point in a recent Forbes article titled Why Emotional Intelligence Matters More Than Technical Skills in the AI Age.

[00:00:44] It's a great read, and honestly, it really does hit at the core of what we talk about every week because, you know, we seem like we talk about AI every week now. For years, the narrative was learn to code, master the stack, get the hard technical credentials. But as AI systems digest data, draft code, and handle complex analytics in just seconds, the pendulum is swinging hard back toward the human side of the ledger, and I know that we're very happy about that. Yes, we are. That's right, because only humans can do so many things, right?

[00:01:14] So right now, talking more about that feels just, it feels good to me. I agree. Let's champion the human. So the article that you mentioned, Rob, it points out something really profound that I think we should start the conversation with. Sure. As artificial intelligence takes over routine and even the highly technical tasks, those kinds of tasks, the technical skills, they're just becoming commoditized.

[00:01:37] So the real differentiator now is emotional intelligence, also known as EQ to most people listening. The article cites research showing that required technical skills in AI exposed roles are changing at double speed, but tasks requiring empathy, judgment, and conflict resolution are growing two and a half times faster. So are we surprised by this?

[00:02:02] I think the only thing that's surprising is when you first say, oh, it's the AI exposed roles are changing at double speed. That's not a surprise. But understanding that the value that's being placed in the human skills is advancing even more quickly. I guess that did surprise me a little bit, even though we know their important skills, even though we know that people that have them are going to have a place in whatever business they're in. I guess it's a little surprising. What do you think?

[00:02:29] I agree with you because the narrative for the last several years has been one of gloom and doom. Everyone's going to lose their jobs. Humans will have no meaning. The years that those conversations were taking place, it was really hard for me to get my head around believing that, really, that's how we're going to go down? So I'm happy to see.

[00:02:52] And I guess I'm not surprised, but maybe relieved to see that the uniquely human skills that only we possess are being noticed as that's the competitive edge. When you have the ability to think critically, exercise good judgment, bring context, ethical decision making. I mean, we could go on and on. Resolving conflicts, building trust. Those are things that machines can do. They can't do any of those things.

[00:03:21] And what organization can run without those things? I ask you. Yeah, no, that's a great point because really what happens here is AI delivers information and humans build alignment. And so all, to your point, all of those things we talked about early on about, well, this is, you know, the humans won't be needed, is that was a little premature.

[00:03:42] The Forbes piece highlights the fact that AI can simulate polite conversation or it can run predictive sentiment models, but it lacks authentic empathy, moral judgment, and relational trust. So you just can't prompt your way into true human connection. You can't just throw it in your favorite AI machine and have it, you know, make that human connection. So a key takeaway is that technical competence opens the door. I think we would all agree with that.

[00:04:09] And I just know that so many younger people who feel like their technical competence is going to win the day, they're wrong because EQ accounts for nearly 58% of performance success across job types and up to 90% of elite leadership traits. So all of a sudden, what gets you in the door? Technical expertise and competence. But if you don't have the EQ, you don't have the emotional intelligence, what are you doing? Right. You're not going to stay there.

[00:04:34] You might get in the door, but you're probably going to be kicked out the door at some point without them, I think is really what it comes down to. So while we've been racing to learn how to utilize AI to its fullest inside our organizations, if we've been neglecting the uniquely human things, in particular, the emotional intelligence side, then this is a good wake-up call, don't you think?

[00:04:57] It's time to pay attention again and realize we have to keep that emotional intelligence, muscle strength building, and probably even more so right now, bring it to the forefront, largely because AI also has brought a lot of stress into the workplace.

[00:05:13] People feel this expectation of producing more in less time, and people have been reporting the difficulty of keeping up with all of these different assignments, and that pace of work feel has been accelerating even more as a consequence. So bringing in the EQ, emotional intelligence components into how you lead your team would help quite a bit with that, don't you think? Yeah, I do agree.

[00:05:38] And I just think that whether you're competing with AI or not, I think having that EQ at your disposal and being able to understand how to use it, I just think it makes a lot of sense. I want to point out one more thing that your previous, when you mentioned the EQ accounts for up to 50% of elite leadership traits, I remembered something from the Center for Creative Leadership.

[00:06:08] They have an entire white paper on empathy in the workplace and how to lead teams with empathy that's pretty widely cited, but it's recent. It's from last year. We'll put this in the show notes. But the part of that report that I'm going to bring up right now that I find fascinating is that leadership is positively related to job performance in their report.

[00:06:31] They've studied like 4,000 people using 360-degree feedback reports and found that if you were reported to have the characteristics of emotional intelligence, listening, trust building, conflict resolution, all those kinds of things,

[00:06:46] if the people who you manage indicate that you have those characteristics, traits, and if the people who manage you, maybe mid-level manager, see you exhibiting those characteristics and traits to the people whom you manage, in both directions, your job performance ratings go up. So that's the keeping you in the door bit, right? Yeah. Because when you get there, you want to stay there. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:15] Especially right now, because it is getting really, really hard to get a job right now, we hear. So that's a pretty interesting thing, I thought, from the Center for Creative Leadership. I think we've talked about them a few times before on the show, but they're a great resource for this kind of information. They also have lots of workshops and tons of webinars for how to improve in all these skill areas. So we'll put that in the show notes. No, no. It's very important.

[00:07:41] And what's exciting here is we take this Forbes article and it's sort of our basis for doing this podcast, but then there are other bits and pieces of information that are outside it that also kind of drive home those points, the salient points that we want to make. Totally. There was another thing that I read from them about that I thought was crazy. Well, not crazy, but let's just say it's related to this. It was just interesting how it coincided with the topic.

[00:08:06] The Center for Creative Leadership also noted that there are five things that derail a career, that they've really boiled it down to there are five things. And I'll tell you what they all are, but I'm going to highlight two. So the first is if you can't adapt to change and gosh, what's happening right now, but change every single day, every single minute, right? So your career can be very easily derailed if you are unable to adapt, if you have difficulty adapting anyway to change.

[00:08:32] The second one, and this is one that relates to us and what we talk about on Can You Hear Me? That is the difficulty building and leading a team. And we know very, very well that communication is almost the most important core component of team leadership. So that relates to us here on Can You Hear Me? As I said, the third is the failure to deliver business results. It's kind of a duh. I mean, who gets to keep their job if they can't deliver their business results, right?

[00:08:59] The fourth is lacking a broad strategic orientation. And then the fifth is problems with interpersonal relationships at work. And that's what emotional intelligence is really about, fostering and strengthening and building those interpersonal relationships. I think you're completely right. And all of this research just backs it up because I felt like for so long it was breathless. Like, oh my gosh, we're on the way out.

[00:09:27] And oh, it's going to learn all these things really quickly. And then you're really going to be out of work. And I think what we've learned is it is revolutionary. We all agree AI is revolutionary whether you like it or not. But the human piece continues to show up again and again and again. And that's the key point, I think. Yeah, I agree. 100%. Okay. So more great information from Forbes article, which of course we'll put in the show notes. What does this actually look like on the ground?

[00:09:55] Well, Forbes outlined four main pillars for leaders navigating this transition. Number one, active listening and reading cues. So going beyond what people say to understand what are they feeling, especially during big changes, big rollouts of your AI capability, for example, is a good one. The next is creating psychological safety, which we've talked about a million times on the show, but we can't reinforce it enough.

[00:10:23] Because your people, your teams, need to feel safe when expressing uncertainty or red flags. Being able to do so without fear is just crucial to everything, but particularly effective communication. The next is radical vulnerability. This phrase always makes me laugh. I'm like, let's define radical. Radical. Radical vulnerability. Am I vulnerable enough? I'll never know.

[00:10:49] But what they mean in the article is leaders admitting that they don't, what it is that they don't know rather than hiding behind data, buzzwords, anything that shields them from exhibiting weakness, if you will. And then the last one is parallel track training. So pairing every new AI deployment with that human skills coaching so that we're not losing such things like critical thinking along the way.

[00:11:16] Can you imagine if we lost critical thinking and we're just pumping out whatever the machines create? Well, we all know that that would be a terrible outcome. So making sure that as you're rolling these things out, that you're also pairing the human skills coaching. And the Center for Creative Leadership is a great resource for that as well. And by the way, they are not a sponsor. I just wanted to say that. I was going to say three mentions in. Thank you, Center for Creative Leadership. Thank you. They're grateful. They're grateful. I'm sure.

[00:11:44] I just think all of these things, they're not obvious, but they're all commonsensical. Meaning like you bring up all four of those or yeah. And you're like, well, of course, of course they need to be able to have psychological safety or have the radical, you know, the vulnerability. And, you know, we've had conversations about vulnerability too. And in my book, I talk about it's cool to be vulnerable if it's authentic to you.

[00:12:11] I mean, she still have to, so we've danced around that tree before, but it's pretty interesting. And then, of course, the human skills coaching cannot be, you cannot overstate how important that is, I think, you know. So I'm just glad that, you know, for this particular episode to have that article sort of be a jumping off point for the things that we're talking about now,

[00:12:34] I think is really interesting because as we say all the time, we're like, it feels like every two out of three or at least half of the episodes deal with something related to AI because it's so prevalent in our world. And there's so much uncertainty and there's so many, you know, shifting values on it, right? Yeah, for sure. Okay. Of these four, if you had to pick one that you think is the most important, again, they were active listening and reading cues, creating psychological safety, radical vulnerability, and parallel track training.

[00:13:04] What do you think is the most important of those four? I'm curious. I would say, I'm all about active listening, as you know, since that was part of the book, but I would say for this particular exercise that you're talking about, creating the psychological safety is a big one because so much of AI is causing people psychological harm, potentially. That's a real thing.

[00:13:26] And so I would say of these four, it's not that it's the most important one, but as I look at the list, psychological safety is very important, making sure that they can express their uncertainty about it or they can raise red flags without fear of retribution. I think that would be very important in this exercise because of the obvious reasons. What about you? What do you think of these? Would you say, oh, I should, I would lean in on this one probably the most. It's funny.

[00:13:53] I think I was torn between, well, I guess it's a tie for me between the two that you cited, the active listening and being able to read cues. Right. I love that one. I love that one just in general. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. And then, so it's a tie between that and just this crucial element of psychological safety.

[00:14:10] Because at any point, if people see things are being, for example, maybe the AI strategy that you have is returning something that's dangerous, something that's factually inaccurate, that people know that's completely wrong. If you're not telling them to stop and think and creating an environment where they feel protected that you've got their backs when they say, hey, this is bad. It's going down the wrong way. We got to stop.

[00:14:40] Then you could be in so much trouble. So I think it's a tie for me between those two. Yeah. Those two really stand out to me. I mean, without question, because I mean, if you think about active listening, I mean, that's the one area where reading cues, active listening, where humans have a distinct advantage. Right? Yeah. And that's something that can be learned. You know, that's the best part.

[00:15:01] Even if you rank like pretty low or even, you know, mid-level when it comes to anything, you know, EQ related, the active listening in particular is a huge help. If you choose that as one to level up on your skills, you can quickly figure out how do I ask better questions? Well, there's a million resources for that. We'll put some more show notes too. But, you know, actively asking questions is probably your greatest skill.

[00:15:30] And I know we've talked about that on several shows even recently, that that's increasingly becoming like just a superpower. And so learning how to ask better questions and questions that lead you to the active listening is going to be a big jumpstart to helping yourself out if you're ranking, you know, lower on the EQ. I mentioned this a couple of times and I'm not trying to turn the conversation onto my book, but to over communicate, you must first listen, chapter two, and asking better questions.

[00:15:58] I've mentioned that on this program and elsewhere that that's the one area in my professional development that I felt like I was the most efficient. And because I wrote about it and because I interviewed somebody great like Rich Jernstedt, our dear friend from Chicago, about it, I feel like that's the one area where I'm really focused on. And not only does it help me professionally, but it helps human Rob, you know, hold off his AI competitors. For sure.

[00:16:27] I think those are important things to talk about. So I would just say from my standpoint, that's been something that's really been on my mind. It's something that I've really focused on and I feel like is so crucial. And it's not, I ask the questions I know the answers to because you hear people say that sometimes, right? Oh, I already know the answer to it. I'm just going to ask it anyway. It's like, no, no, no, no. You need to ask the questions you don't know the answer to. And frankly, if you're a boss, you shouldn't know the answer.

[00:16:53] The people that are touching customers and clients more frequently than you should have those answers and you should be listening. Right. I always say, ask the questions you're most afraid of the answers to. But you've heard other people say, oh, I only have questions that I already know the answer. And I'm like, that's the dumbest idea ever. So what are you doing active listening-wise recently that you found has worked especially well? Anything come to mind? I just think, you know, I'm such a problem solver.

[00:17:21] And so in so many meetings with clients and various other people I'm collaborating with, I'm always the guy that has the answer that's filling up, you know, a lot of the chat time with his content. And I'm not saying it still doesn't happen, but I'm really trying to draw out a thing, draw other things out of other people and have them contribute and listen to what their perspective is. Because we all have, you know, when we're working on a project or we're doing some client work, we all have different roles, right?

[00:17:47] So I think I'm just trying to go beyond the, oh, I'm going to go in and listen to what their needs are. I mean, that's the very basic premise. But it's just day in and day out. What can I glean from others listening to what they're saying that is going to help me do a better job on the thing that I'm part of for this project? That's how I would explain it. I don't know how you feel about it or if you take a different approach. No, that's great. I totally agree with you on that front.

[00:18:13] You just got me thinking about maybe we should do a show on the best questions to ask right now. That might be kind of an interesting thing because there's just been a lot of, I've read multiple articles recently and have listened to other podcasts and they're kind of dancing around it. And I feel like people could benefit from a list of these. Let's just try these 10.

[00:18:36] Like I've been asking lately, so what is it about this, you know, this concept or this idea that you hate the most? Because that's the thing nobody wants to hear, right? Yeah. What's the scary thing? Okay, what don't you like about it? Like literally what is the thing that makes you go, oh, this is just not good. Get to the heart of it right away so that, you know, you can kind of knock it off the table and move on to the good stuff.

[00:18:59] But other good questions like that to help by asking good questions, I think that you become a better active listener as long as you're not dominating and interjecting at the wrong moments. I think you're absolutely right. Right. I'm not going to get into it in the interest of time, but I will tell you that there is an article in the Harvard Business Review, which I cite all the time as a great professional development tool for me that I used in research for the book.

[00:19:26] The Art of Asking Smarter Questions from May, June of 2024, written by four, written by three different authors. I think we did a show that involved that, I swear. We did. We did. Yeah. And so I would just say as a show note, you might add that to the list because now that we're going down this, even though we'd say, oh, well, we'll do another episode on it. But as it relates to that, I think it would be very valuable for people who are thinking about this. Yeah. So we'll include that one too. Cool. Good reminder.

[00:19:56] So if someone is listening to this in their car or they're on a walk, wherever they are, what are the immediate takeaways? So how do you pivot from your own career or leadership style that you have today? So here are three quick things that we want to share. Examine your metrics. That means are you promoting people solely on output and technical speed or are you promoting them on how they develop and influence others? Two, micro empathy. You need to practice it.

[00:20:23] And every high stakes conversation, you should be spending 70% of your time listening, observing, and not reacting. So that just drives home the thing that we just talked about, frankly. And the third thing that I think is really important is we think about action items. Be the bridge. You must frame technology, this whole AI revolution as an amplifier for human judgment. That's how you get ahead, not a replacement for it.

[00:20:48] It's not coming to replace it, but replace you when it comes to a human judgment standpoint. But if you're an order taker and all you're doing is saying, yes, I'll do this. No, I won't do that. Then you're in peril. But the human judgment portion, getting paid for your ideas, showing expertise, that's where you're going to thrive. Yeah. I liked examining your metrics in particular.

[00:21:09] So making sure, are you putting enough emphasis on emotional intelligence as you're being present, particularly amongst your mid-level managers and above? If rewarding that behavior is what will bring more of it into your culture, right? So be sure to pay more attention to that right about now. As we've noted, it's a critical time to be protecting those truly human behaviors and attributes in particular.

[00:21:38] So I really liked that one. And then if you're worried about, well, how do I know? Everybody thinks they listen more than they do. Go to your meeting transcripts and summaries, almost every AI tool. You've said this before. I love it. Exactly. And I started doing it after you did it. Did you? I love it. Did you? Okay, I'll say it again. For our listeners, I have to say what it is or they might not know what we're talking about. Right, right, right.

[00:22:00] So AI meeting transcripts and summaries often will show, here were the four participants in the meeting and what was discussed and all those good things. But they'll also show who talked the most. So if you are regularly the person dominating the conversation, be aware of that and realize,

[00:22:19] I should be asking more questions and sitting back and listening to what people are saying and letting them go with their ideas instead of just driving the truck right through the middle and saying, we're going in this direction and y'all are coming with me. I mean, unless you absolutely have to do that for some reason. Sometimes you have to do that. Totally. But when you brought this up on a recent episode, I was like, oh, I'm going to go because you use tactic. I use fathom. Everybody's got their own little meeting of, you know, note taker and that sort of thing.

[00:22:48] And it was very telling. And guess what? I'd been doing most of the time. I mean, not surprising. That's what we do. We get paid for talking. But it's eye-opening. It's eye-opening. And that's not to say, oh, I went from 70% of the time down to 20%. That's probably not going to happen in the world, I think, that you and I live in, Eileen. Yeah. But you could go down a little bit. What about 20%? You know, shooting for 20% more listening time? Yeah. That's not going to hurt anybody. That is not going to hurt you. And that's a great metric that you can set for yourself.

[00:23:18] Like, hey, in this last meeting, I only asked a few questions. I did the most declarative statement style talking. So in my next meeting in the future, I'm going to try for asking four to five questions and X minutes of listening time. Those are the kinds of things you could shoot for. It's very, like I said before, these are very learnable and teachable skills. But you have to pay attention. And that's a great metric to focus on. How many questions did I actually ask?

[00:23:46] And how many minutes did I actually spend listening? Touche. Touche. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. Well, I think we've given you some great takeaways. And that's going to do it for this episode. Thank you all for listening today. I'm Eileen Rochford. If you would like to comment on our podcast or suggest a topic, please contact us at our Can You Hear Me podcast page on LinkedIn or check out our newsletter, all of which you can find on our LinkedIn page. And of course, we always link that in the show notes. Yeah. And I'm Rob Johnson.

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