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A study conducted among American employers shows that more than half of their employees lack motivation to continue their education and professional development. Four out of ten are not able to work in collaboration with colleagues, and only 19 percent of those applying for promising jobs show that they have sufficient internal discipline.
Increasingly more employers are complaining about lack of communication skills among new employees. Here is how a head of a large restaurant chain formulated these complaints: “Too many young people cannot stand the criticism - they take a defensive or hostile position when they are told that they should not behave like that. They respond to comments as if it were a personal attack.”
Such behavior is characteristic even of some seasoned leaders. In the 1960s and 1970s, people were successful by attending relevant schools and doing well. However, the world is full of men and women who once received excellent professional training, showed great promise, but did not survive a single career take-off... Or, much worse, they crashed due to fatal gaps in emotional intelligence.
Daniel Goleman, an EQ researcher, examined a report on a national study that was conducted among employers to examine what they expect from potential employees at the interview stage. The paper revealed that a specific technical qualification is currently less important than the ability to learn at the workplace. Besides, there’s something more. The list of requirements of employers looks like this:
• The ability to listen and the art of verbal communication;
• Adaptability and creative response to obstacles and failures;
• Personal ability to cope with work, confidence, motivation to achieve goals, the need to make a career and be proud of your success;
• Effectiveness of group and interpersonal interaction, mutual assistance and teamwork, ability to resolve differences through negotiations;
• Effectiveness of the organization, desire to contribute, potential of a leader.
Of the seven desirable qualities of potential employees, only one turned out to be related to education: the ability to read, write and count.
A study of the requirements that corporations make in the course of an interview with masters in the field of business administration gives a similar list. The three most requested abilities are initiative, communication skills and interpersonal relationship skills.
Based on “Working with Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman