The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Tech

If you’ve read the EI books then I’m probably preaching to the choir. If you haven’t, then I’d like to recommend that you do! Many tech people are much better at problem solving and working with numbers than working with people.

Business Applications - All about People

People implement systems! Rightly, we put a great deal of emphasis on the technology but we really must guard against neglecting the people. The most significant factor in implementing business systems, is how well you engage with the business owners and deeply understand their needs and issues. Its important to have a structured and rigorous methodology but more important are the way the people operate. How well do they listen and understand.

How good are the people ate listening and digging deeply to get to the requirements. How good are they at recognizing and challenging legacy thinking? (thinking constrained by the legacy system and the "way we have always done it"). How good are the implementation team at navigating the people they have to work with? The guy with all the answers wrote the system that we are replacing and a good consultant will see that and treat him with tact and respect, getting him bought into the process.

Good implementation people will manage their own teams and business stakeholders. They do that with great communication skills and the ability to influence others.

Systems Are About Change and Change is About People

No system can be implemented without change! Changes to technology and changes to business process. The system changes are usually much easier to manage than the changes to the people. Its extremely frustrating to deliver a system change only to find that no-one has used it in the first few weeks its been available. Worse, they started to use it and gave up because it was too hard. Of course there can be many reasons but it really is common to deliver a great piece of functionality only to find its not being used. Its the people!

Delivering a good system that is poorly used, for me is heartbreaking. It can take real effort to train a second and a third time, to work out how to police the system use, to work out how to convince and who to convince and who to educate. You can deliver a Ferrari, but without the right education and proficiency of execution, it wont be driven well.

Developing teams

I believe that all too often we focus on developing and optimizing methodologies without enough focus on developing our teams. This is classic "techie" behavior! As technical people, we have grown up solving problems, building or changing systems to “fix” things so this is our natural way of thinking. There is great merit in getting processes right... but it’s never enough.

We really should develop the EI, communication skills, self awareness and self control of our teams, something that we can’t do that unless we understand it ourselves. As technology leaders, I believe we can really make a fantastic difference with our teams, if we model and coach emotional intelligence.

There may be technology professionals with great levels of EI, but I believe that “our people” (tech people) are typically more technically competent then average but less developed in terms of EI. We operate in a High IQ, low EQ environment. Generally, tech people are learners! We love to read and we love to challenge our brains. If we are made aware of the wonders of Emotional Intelligence, we are very capable of learning and developing in that area.

This is an opportunity for us to positively impact our teams performance, by improving a skill that will not only make them more effective professionals but it will make them happier and more whole human beings!