Is Emotional Intelligence relevant to Engineers? 6

[PaulaK]

Having recently completed a psychology degree to balance my engineering education, I am trying to gain a better understanding of the whole 'soft skills' debate surrounding engineers. In recent years the concept of Emotional Intelligence has been sweeping through the HR scene and I'm wondering if anyone out there has had any exposure to it and indeed whether you think it has any relevance to engineers in the workplace at all?

(For those of you in the know about EI, I have to make the distinction though that I have a distinct preference for the ability-based Mayer-Salovey-Caruso approach to EI and not the popularised Daniel Goleman or the Bar-On EQi versions of EI.)

 

[gerhardl]

Answer is 'of course', as in most other working areas.

If you turn the question around, and define EI as 'the ability to communicate and interact with other people in a best possible way' you would , also within engineering, find areas or jobs where this is less important, or weighing far less in toto, than being able to communicate the technical aspects of the engineering job.

(You may want to take a look at my thread 'New trend? Missing technical descriptions!' below.)

Beeing a 'humanist inclined' engineer, I believe although that high technical knowledge generally should weigh much more in engineering than high EI, - but all depending on 'the right person for the job at hand'. A high grade of both does not hurt....

 

[rb1957]

it's all well and good talking technical terms with an engineer, but we also have to talk to non-technical people (the ones with the money) too ! I suspect that we, like most people, like to stay in our comfort zone (dealing with numbers and facts rather than feelings).

 

[monkeydog]

I sometimes feel purple, but don't know how to express it, so I do a flow calculation and I feel better.

 

[sms]

I recently took some Human Growth and Development classes and Emotional Intellegence was part of that.

Go read some of the threads in this section the other work related topics and you will see a lot of negativity by engineers toward engineering. I am starting to think that negativity is a part of standard engineering behavior, which certainly effects how engineers relate to each other and to non engineers...

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I assert that engineers actually possess a normal range of soft skills, but they may _appear_ emotionally underdeveloped,
... because their math and physics skills are stronger or more practiced, or
... because they may under- react to emotional stress because emotional reaction is not a productive use of time, and they have been trained to treat every situation as an exercise in efficient use of resources, or
... because they choose to amuse themselves by jerking around the psych majors who show up to 'measure' them.


Their _political_ skills may be in fact be underdeveloped, because they find political processes abhorrent, and because they have other things to do.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[kontiki99]

I subscribe to the idea that ultimately no human does anything until they feel emotionally right about it.

There are no logical people. It's not an original idea, I don't know who is credited with recording it first.

One of the things training, education and experience gives you is a process to execute that gets you to a point where you feel OK about doing something.

Ever had a project you just didn't feel right about releasing until you checked it one more time.

There is no way to avoid emotion in human affairs. Hence the value of the Red Hat in Six Thinking Hats.

That's how I understand why some of us are religious and some of us are not too. We are all illogical in different ways, engineer or not.

Many commercials work because they circumvent factual data to get you to an emotional place.

Welcome to the human race.

 

[JAE]

"There are no logical people"

kontiki99, are you being logical when you say this?

If you aren't being logical, then perhaps that isn't a logical statement at all.

If you are being logical, then you've just defeated your own statement.

Just askin'

 

[kontiki99]

No, I'm just as messed up as everyone else.

 

[opsops3]

nice to know that when you meet the HR - human resource for a promotion, recruitment or termination they will talk to you about

emotional intelligence, for the job,
cultural fit
team player skills
coomunication skills ( OOPS I made a spealing mistake!)

and all other highech language

I wonder if FORD when he setup his car making business was talking in the some terms?

 

[PaulaK]

Wow y'all, What a range of responses!
Many of you have hit some interesting issues but first I think it might help if I explain how I came to this subject.

As a female engineer I was encased for years in a web of feminist thinking to engineering i.e. there should be more women in engineering, we'd make a real difference to society, if only we had the chance to bring all the girls off to an island somewhere and inspire them to become engineers with construction kits blah blah etc... etc....
Sound familiar to anyone???
It was only as a lecturer that I became involved in the recruitment frontline and then reality started to kick in. When you are regularly faced with classes of over 100 girls and about 90% of them are looking at you with glazed eyes as you give your 'what I love about engineering speech', you start to wonder what is really going on.
It was only when I heard the term 'male brained female' that I shouted EUREKA!!! This comes from some work done by an English guy Simon Baron Cohen who proposes that Men on average are hardwired for systemising and Women on average are hardwired for empathy. While everyone has bits of both (as many of you have commented), its interesting to look at overlaps e.g. you can have a female brained male (male nurse) and a male brained female (female engineer).
This concept has really struck a chord with me and I think it really takes the wind out of the whole feminist approach to gender imbalance in engineering, when it was quite obvious to me that it is not the average girl who is attracted to engineering.
Needless to say, my recruitment days are numbered as political correctness based on misinterpretations about gender imbalance versus gender equality hold sway!

So us male-brained-engineering types have obvious talents for systemising- which is the drive to analyse, explore and construct a system, our IF I DO THIS THEN THAT WILL HAPPEN approach. This is our comfort zone (thanks rb1857)but it is at the expense to a greater or lesser degree of our empathy skills (sorry to contradict you Mike). Empathy then has links to Emotional Intelligence.
(by the way, at the extreme point of systemising you get people-blind Autistics,think Rain Man)

Going back to the engineer, no one is denying that we are emotional (right with ya there Kontiki99) and indeed we don't really know the half of how our emotions are unconsciously filtering our decision making technical and otherwise (see Damasio's Descartes Error, emotion reason and the human brain) but I think we are in the throes of the humanist guru dominating general thinking (sorry Gerhardl) and this influences how engineers are perceived and at HR level how we are interviewed/assessed/promoted.

What engineers like to do most is engineer. We are focused on thinking practically and if we make/design something for what we think is for the good of humanity then we think they should be grateful for the advantages it provides (e.g. communication/travel/health benefits) and get a realistic grip on the disadvantages (e.g. moneywise, fumeswise,astheticswise etc). We don't come across as all socially motivated and socially caring because I don't think its our primary motivation. We do what is in tune with our wiring and thats just how it is
e.g we went to the moon just because we could, spent all those billions, and brought back the teflon frying pan!

So when we get employed by an engineer firm to supposedly do what we do best we can be targeted by the humanist training of 'talking' ourselves into better people skills. None of you mentioned being exposed to MSCEIT but as an ability test, I think it is a more logical (sorry Kontiki99) approach to TEST someone on their skills rather than relying on them to fill out a questionnaire and accept when they SAY they are good at it. I think there are EI skills that can be taught to suit the engineering mindset e.g. recognising the patterns of faces rather than spending afternoons rolling around the floor getting in touch with our inner child.

Anyway,once you have gone to a couple of training sessions and talked the talk, your technical skills can all too soon become undervalued by the singular approach to promotion of engineers followed by the majority of companies i.e. towards people management...team leaders, the next engineering manager etc. So 'Pat' might well be a great engineer but put him managing people and you can have all hell breaking loose under the stress of end of quarter (despite all the training). But on the outside, he's an engineer who's climbing the corporate ladder. Is this how I am to define the most successful engineer to engineering students?
Am I to tell them that they cannot get ahead without gaining a good comptetence in practical EI skills?
Probably. Perhaps I will use my reseach to actually get some real data together on this as I really wonder about that elusive engineering animal out there; the highly technical engineer with the high EI skills.

Does this give a negative view of our emotional intelligence SMS? I think we are all so surrounded by the happy clapping guru crowd that a bit of realism and wanting some real data on a subject makes us sound like party poopers!

 

[gerhardl]

Hello PaulaK!

1. I'm giving you a star for your lenghty, but thoughtprovoking note!

2. Beeing an engineer and male, I can't resist trying to summarize and 'solve' some of the questions raised, this beeing my nature..;-)

a) Everyone having experienced rising both boys and girls know there is a gender difference in approach and response to the world. I, personally, do not believe that this difference, even read as a male/female orientated brain, ought to exclude or include job satisfaction or ability to 'be an engineer' on a general basis.

b) Your definition of 'engineering' is possibly leaning towards the 'constructing' or 'problem solving' role. Engineering does not necessarily limit itself to this aspect, but will always have to include a basis of technical understanding and analytic, possibly also strategic thought process.

c) It would be very interesting to have a case study of 'successful engineers' male and female, taking a general and broad aptitude test and look at similarities and differences between sexes and compared to society in general and other job areas. I am especially thinking of Gallup's test where you sort out the 'five best' of about 35 recognizable aptitude areas. (Others ?)

d) Promotion and career male/female? This will, as for every other type of education and job, be coloured by the present status existing in the country/society/company/group you are a member of. I see no differences between engineering and other jobs though.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Engineers can't climb the corporate ladder; they have to become something else, usually by abandoning their soul.

I tried the parallel ladder, but it didn't really go anywhere.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[opsops3]

very interesting

from my experience the fast track line to promotion is usually for:

marketing people
finance/accounting people

and usually well ahead of engineers.

also I believe that the IE does not really applies to business owner or entreprenuer ( engineer)

 

[PaulaK]

Thanks for the star Gerhardl,
Forgive me but I'm new to this forum style of communicating and got carried away a bit!
I think we have identified an Essential Difference in our outlook though (which is the title of SB Cohens book). I don't believe that just anyone can be a true engineer. I believe that we have a distinct pattern of thinking and when we fine tune into it over the years, we become our best and most content.
So for the most technically minded engineer, the prospect of abandoning their 'soul' to try and play the corporate game is an anathema and is the parallel road to nowhere (I hear ya Mike)
(Opsops3, I'm not so sure about your fast tracker observations though as the accountants get as much bad EI press as we do!)
In my opinion, it is the more middle ground engineers who have the capacity to make it best to the top. The ones who have a good technical competence and have good EI skills, in brain terms, these are the middle brainers. Swings and roundabouts people.
My point being that it is very difficult to make a highly systemising person into a less systemising one with EI. It has to be worked into their decision making approach(e.g. 6Hats is one approach where at least it gets mentioned)


Here's an interesting test for y'all to while away a few minutes though. Apparently we have a physical indication of our level of male/female/middle brainness in the ratio of our 2nd (index) to our 4th (ring) finger. The longer your 4th is to your index the more male brained you are i.e. more systemising.
(Specific instructions for this test are part of the wider brain sex ID at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml)

Have fun!

 

[WGJ]

Emotional Intelligence:

Having the sense to resist the emotion of wanting to strangle the HR person that wants to give the job to the MSc that can't cross the road alone, versus the 45-year-old that knows how to do it without help.

Bill

 

[oldfieldguy]

At the risk of sounding chauvinist, I see the topic of "Emotional Intelligence" as yet another tool developed by "Human Resources" professionals to further establish themselves as an arcane priesthood within the corporate structure.

By building a new parameter to be measured, they gain a tool to solidify the necessity of their positions. If it's something that the rest of us haven't acknowledged and they can establish its importance to their superiors, then they have gained a control over the "hard knowledge" folks, i.e., us.

Comparison? Compare the answer to a formula like a simple question on Ohm's law to a question on one of the "personality assessment" tests so fondly regarded by the HR professional: "I sometimes place personal goals over the goals of my team: yes/no.

With the first question, the answer is either right or wrong with no latitude for personal interpretation or opinion. With the second, interpretation requires the skills of the priesthood of the HR department. Attempts to argue the answer of the second with an HR professional will be met with tender smiles and pats on the head as you find out that he, not you, has been trained in the privy knowledge of the Inner Circle of HR.

Continuing on with my HR rant, a further factor cementing the HR position, at least here in America, is that SOMEBODY needs to devote a huge amount of time understanding and applying volumes of Federal, state and local regulations laid upon businesses by another useless group, politicians. Failure to provide such a Priest of Arcania on one's staff leaves one open to horrendous penalty in the form of legal actions, fines and lawsuits.

Okay, I'm finished...

old field guy

 

[Maui]

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire." - Aristotle

Maui

 

[SomptingGuy]

PaulaK,

I just took that test. When I scored a 12/12 on the last spatial reasoning test it said something like "Are you an engineer?". At last, recognition after all these years.

Nice link though, thanks.

 

[PaulaK]

Congratulations SomptingGuy!
WGJ, you have picked up a point that has become very relevant here recently in the way academic institutions seem to want everyone from computer scientists to plumbers to have PhD's in order to 'be qualified'!
OlFieldGuy, put 'How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the world' on your reading list! I certainly agree with you about the high priest/ess/ness and believe me it caused me a lot of bother doing the psychology degree! I don't give much credit to the psychometric tools that just ask for your self report and unfortunately an awful lot of them do. I look to the brain data for support and once you delve into this you gain an understanding of the unconscious feedback loops going on between the emotional centre of the brain Amygdala and the frontal lobes where our decision making is centred (The Emotional Brain - LeDoux). It certainly takes more than silly yes/no questions to get to the root of this which is why I like the ability measure approach (you have to analyse situations etc). When I did this test, I hadn't a clue how to cheat it and I still don't know what could have been the right answers to the questions!!
So don't worry, I don't take any notice of chauvinist overtones to the subject, like a good engineer I focus on good data!