We reward the kids that bring home good grades in their homework folders, we give the youth with the highest SAT scores admission to the most prestigious universities, and in time we watch these same young adults be employed by a company where they deliver mediocre results at best. So what has gone wrong? Why is it that the class valedictorian whose peers, parents, and professors saw massive potential within is seemingly underperforming in the workplace?
Well, the answer is actually quite simple. Society has instilled in us the value of a high IQ, and has failed to highlight the importance of EQ. Emotional intelligence is low across the board in workplace mediocrity and underachievement.
IQ is a measurement of factual and statistical retainment where EQ is the ability to connect and understand the environment and situations one is placed within.
Companies today are beginning to see that an investment in corporate emotional intelligence trainings in turn create success in better connecting with clients, building team, and handling challenges within the organization.
GallUp Figures on Employee Engagement report that employee disengagement is costing American corporations $450-$550 billion dollars every year. The logical answer is to employ EQ trainings within the workplace in which employee disengagement is resulting in these dramatic numbers of disadvantage.
However, if we are going to do the future of American corporate culture any favor, it is to address the youth. We must come to understand and implement EQ trainings and experiences within the household and within educational institutions.
To teach children and youth how to understand, interact, and connect with their peers will come with a skill set far more valuable than a 4.0 and a perfect SAT score when it comes time to employ them.
One setting this has taken place successfully within is that of Nova Southeastern University. At this South Florida private research-based university, an emotional intelligence based course called GPS for Life was implemented as a 3 credit open elective course within the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education. After two years of monitoring the students that had taken the class, the university saw less than a 3% drop out or transfer rate in their students compared to the costly 25% drop out or transfer rate the rest of the university was facing.
By offering emotional intelligence based experiences and trainings to youth, we are ultimately cutting costs long term, and in the case of Nova Southeastern University, short term. Corporations need to begin offering these trainings to their employees, but perhaps equally important, they need to begin to lobby for these same trainings to be offered to American youth today as a means of a long term investment in the quality of workers they may one day employ.