Part IV: Using the Results
EQ-i 2.0 Case Studies
Case Study 2
Submitted by: Marcia Hughes
Client Background
Gladys is a 57-year-old attorney with a successful track record of building relationships that have resulted in collaborative decisions for resolving community challenges. She has served as a community organizer and has been recognized for her leadership through many awards. Gladys is a positive and upbeat person, someone others come to for support and to renew their energy. She is married, actively volunteers, and is regularly seen at economic development forums, shepherding seniors to special lunches and taking family members to events. Gladys is reliable. As a result of her optimism and overall zeal, it has come to be expected that Gladys is overtly affirming of those she encounters and will openly and enthusiastically greet those she is in connection with, from business colleagues to friends. She grew up in a tough neighbourhood and attributes her skills to good parenting¸ having excellent role models who emphasized the necessity to give back to the community, and an excellent education that empowered her to change her world.
According to Gladys, much of her life is great, but there are circumstances that prove challenging to her and test her EI skill development. For example, Gladys has identified challenges with a cousin who has a difficult personality and needs an unusually high level of support, coupled with her own challenges of a recent marriage to a husband who works a great deal. Both of these circumstances were identified by Gladys as valuable areas to explore in our EQ-i 2.0 debriefing.
Summary of EQ-i 2.0 Results
The results of the EQ-i 2.0 indicate that Gladys has excellent overall EI skills. Her profile indicates a wide range of abilities, with scores ranging from 109 in Assertiveness to 130 in Social Responsibility. Her positive impression and negative impression scores were acceptable, while her response style was consistent. Gladys indicated she answered questions openly and honestly. With such high scale scores and strong validity, the place to find opportunities to work with her strengths and challenges would be found in her specific item responses. Overall, there is good balance between her skills, although the difference between her lowest, Assertiveness (109), and her strongest, Social Responsibility (130), is large enough to warrant attention. Most of the time Gladys responded to the EQ-i 2.0 using a 1 or 5, suggesting all-or-nothing responding or absolute thinking. Thus, when she answered with a lower score, it helped in finding the specific areas that challenge her.
Coaching Approach & Development Strategies
Gladys wanted to discuss some concerns with individuals, such as her cousin and the relationship with her husband, in connection with her lowest score, which was Assertiveness. She exclaimed she just couldn’t imagine being more assertive as she is quite outspoken; yet she admitted that she’s received feedback that it would behoove her to increase her assertiveness. We explored the apparent contradiction—is she assertive or not? Gladys is quite happy (120), highly empathic (123), and is inclined to take care of others. We found that one low score in Emotional Expression (“When I’m sad, I talk to people about it”) and another in Assertiveness (“I say ‘no’ when I need to”) combine to demonstrate her challenge with Assertiveness. Although Gladys does speak up frequently, enthusiastically and effectively, when she needs to suggest a correction or disagree with someone and knows that it will be hard on the other person, she often softens her message, rescuing the other person from the discomfort. Her own message loses power! Gladys does not tell people when she is sad as they expect her to be the upbeat person who lifts them up. Keeping up the positive face all of the time can be exhausting.
Providing difficult assertive messages is not in accord with the uplifting role Gladys is thoroughly identified with. However, through coaching Gladys realized that she does not want to give her power away and that it can be considerate to tell the truth—provided the truth is said with regard—even if the message is not welcomed at first. Gladys developed an acronym to guide her behavioral change process: AS – Ask, Stop. Ask, allows her to make a request while permitting the recipient an opportunity to respond and work through it. She intends to make the request without softening it to the point of losing her own message. Stopping is even more of a new strategy for her. Gladys is committed to no longer rescuing the listener from the discomfort of the message. She will stop and allow silence, whether for a minute or two in a conversation or for days if the matter requires more time. As a continuous learner, she is eager to start applying her new skills.
In summary, the key steps we took as a part of this coaching process were:
- Identify current life situations that are problematic. This step is critical to keeping the discussion practical and sufficiently concrete to invite lasting behavioral change.
- Tying change to challenges and strengths as identified by the EQ-i 2.0 results is important to remember. Strengths as they appear are often a person’s greatest point of leverage. While discussing key responses in the report, such as her difficulty in saying no and the difficulty in telling others about her challenging emotions, we began tying those answers to her identified problem scenarios. From this specific discussion, we expanded our conversation to a more global discussion of how these behaviors can cause unfavorable results.
- Brainstorm together about ways to make changes. Here, through a trial and error discussion of possible actions, Gladys exuberantly developed her AS strategy. Because she developed it, she is more likely to employ it and make real changes.
Finally, we discussed specifics about applying the change in her responses. She will use the new process as needed, while also taking time at the end of the day to review her responses and notice how well her responses worked for her. - Building the process of reflective self-awareness is tremendously valuable. We talked about her learning as she reflects on this change and then continuing to build her reflective skills as she considers her interactions more broadly. Gladys intends to keep using this AS strategy so it won’t stop after her initial excitement with the strategy.