The Need for Emotional Intelligence What happens, for instance, when brilliant CEO is alienating colleagues and driving away good employees? What happens when well-educated mid-level executive is good with bottom line, but low in leadership? What happens when high IQ Regional Sales Director’s temper gets best of him and he makes poor judgment calls? And what about heavily-credentialed professional who can't translate his hard-acquired and valuable knowledge to others because of his pedantic or abrasive communication style?

What happens is not good. What they need is to develop a set of competencies we call Emotional Intelligence, and it can be a hard sell.

Once you have someone actually in coaching for emotional intelligence, it sells itself. The individual (and their employer) see immediate positive results in every area of his or her life, and they don't go backward. Once you’ve learned creativity or resilience, you can’t forget it. Momentum builds on successes. But getting there requires some hard data, in most cases, and some hard-hitting examples.

So here I will provide you with one. Who can argue with Warren Buffet, second-richest man in world? What Made Dynamic Duo So Rich? Could it have been Emotional Intelligence? And what Dynamic Duo? William Gates, III, world’s richest man, and Warren Buffet, world’s second richest man, according to Forbes.

Clearly there’s plenty of brain power in these two gentleman, but that wasn’t all, nor was it academic education. Mr. Gates, after all, is a college dropout.

Actually he went on record in a speech at University of Indiana about this matter.

“I want to clarify one thing,” he said, “which is that I’m actually not a college dropout. I'm on leave from Harvard, and I could go back any time I want to and finish that French class that I didn't do, and they might even give me a degree.”

Want This Kind of PR?

PR that really does something positive about behaviors of those outside audiences that most affect your business, non-profit or association?

PR that uses its fundamental premise to deliver external stakeholder behavior change – kind that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives?

PR that persuades those important outside folks to your way of thinking, then moves them to take actions that help your department, division or subsidiary succeed?

Get organized and you could be looking at results like these: prospects starting to do business with you; membership applications on rise; customers starting to make repeat purchases; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; community leaders beginning to seek you out; welcome bounces in show room visits; higher employee retention rates, capital givers or specifying sources beginning to look your way, and even politicians and legislators starting to view you as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities.

And fundamental premise of public relations will show you way: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving- to-desired-action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

As a manager, if you’re serious about making your public relations dollars earn their keep, you had better take time to actually list those outside audiences of yours who behave in ways that help or hinder you in achieving your objectives. Then prioritize them by impact severity. Now, let’s work on target audience in first place on that list.

I’ll wager that you don’t have access to data that tells you how most members of that key outside audience perceive your organization. You would, however, have these data if you had been regularly sampling those perceptions.