EQ, known as Emotional Intelligence can play a big role in your success at work and your time away from work.  CEOs need EQ more than ever. Today, it’s routine for CEOs to manage rapidly changing technology, outside economic forces, restrictive regulations, a more mobile staff, diverse workforces, locations, and skill sets. Of course, CEOs are not the only people with busy lives, it’s the norm for everyone.

We all experience stress from the demands on our time. The demands from our boss on projects we need to complete yesterday! The demands from our families not only add stress, but sometimes guilt. I should call Aunt Martha, I could have visited cousin Fred while he was in the hospital, and poor second cousin twice removed, Mary living all alone. Of course, Mary probably likes it that way, but you still store the guilt, just in case. During the holidays, demands are compounded due to increasing our social activities, trying to meet year-end deadlines, getting projects ready for launch for the new year, and people who expect to be included in our scope of attention. If ever we need to call on our EQ, it’s during the holidays.

People make up teams. Every person on your team has different skills and every team member’s skill set brings something to the table. Team members also possess different behavioral styles, motivators, and different competencies. In addition, every team member has various levels of business acumen, and of course diverse levels of EQ. Is EQ more important than skill sets? Can an entire team have an EQ score?

Back in the old days when everyone was working in the office, there may have been conflict, a need for empathy, and a call for understanding. However, we may have had it too easy in terms of having the ability to anticipate, observe, and solve issues. Current times have taken much of the ability for these out of our hands. But wait, we’re all in this together! So, shouldn’t we have an even greater ability to anticipate, observe, and solve issues?

Business is serious. The success of business affects stakeholders both inside and outside any organization. We use general terms when describing these stakeholders like, the Board, the community, the employees, the customers, the vendors, the management, (the insert yours here) __________. Yet, each of these collective nouns consist of individual people with individual characteristics, talents, attributes, skills, needs, wants, and goals. Without these individuals, in their collective noun categories, we have no business and consequently no stakeholders. Which has more impact on business, the skill of these individuals or their EQ?

Management fads come and go and even the most “credentialed” management gurus latch onto some of them. One of those fads is the idea of having a “bossless” workplace. There are companies that tout that as their modus operandi. For example, the online retailer Zappos, the gaming company Valve, and Elon Musk’s little car company Tesla. Does the bossless model really work?