Abstract

In today's complex and rapidly evolving business landscape, organizational success is increasingly dependent on more than just strategic planning and operational efficiency. This article delves into the concept of Organizational Emotional Intelligence (OEI), exploring how it serves as a critical pathway to achieving sustainable success. By understanding and enhancing OEI, leaders can foster a more resilient, adaptive and high-performing organization.

This article examines the key components of OEI, its impact on organizational culture and the practical steps businesses can take to cultivate this essential capability. Through theoretical discussion, practical examples and expert insights, the article demonstrates that OEI is not just a buzzword, but a vital strategy for thriving in today's VUCA environment, meaning a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment

Introduction

For the past few decades, the study of organizations has witnessed significant strides, receiving increased attention from organizational psychologists, sociologists, HR researchers and management researchers. The fields of organizational consulting and organizational development have evolved and gained momentum. The idea of treating organizations as complex living entities, with their own minds, characters, values, norms, beliefs, feelings, wants and needs, much like organisms, is now well established. Organizations are known to have a life cycle and are also regarded as possessing their own intelligence, whether intellectual or otherwise.

In a VUCA environment, organizations are forced to operate efficiently amid these challenges. Resilience and agility are crucial for creating a healthy, welladjusted and ever-changing organization that can prevail and overcome adversity. With humans, resilience and strength are integral parts of being emotionally intelligent and surviving in a harsh environment. Similarly, organizations can be taught to cultivate high emotional intelligence.

Organizational Emotional Intelligence (OEI) is an intriguing area, which holds immense potential for further exploration. Its impact resonates across all facets of an organization, from its internal relationships and culture to its processes and overall performance.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has garnered significant attention in the field of psychology. Extending this concept to the organizational level opens up new avenues for understanding how emotional awareness and competence can shape workplace dynamics, decision-making processes and ultimately, organizational success. Despite its significance, the realm of OEI remains largely unexplored, requiring further research, deeper investigation and more robust methodologies to uncover its mechanisms and implications.

In this paper, I argue that Organizational Emotional Intelligence (OEI) is fundamentally different from Emotional Intelligence (EI) within organizations. I discuss how OEI serves as a catalyst for organizational change. I explore various methods for measuring OEI, review available measurement tools and present Organeiq’s approach for diagnosing OEI and its parameters for evaluation.

What is OEI?

OEI pertains to the emotional intelligence of an organization as a whole, as a unique and independent entity, in contrast to EI in organizations, which primarily refers to specific people, mainly in leadership and managerial positions, who possess emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) involves the ability to recognize, assess and manage emotions in oneself and others (Ioannidou & Konstantikaki, 2008 cited by Veshne & Munshi, 2020). It is also described as a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way people perceive and express themselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges and use emotional information effectively and meaningfully (Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 2004 cited by Issah, 2018). Issah (2018) highlighted the different perspectives of emotional intelligence and its five components: self-awareness, self-regulation, selfmotivation, empathy and social skills.

EI of organizational leaders is a well-researched field, and its well-established connections to successful organizational outcomes and to the results of organizational change are known. And for good reason: Issah (2018) stated that emotionally intelligent leaders create an environment of open communication, effectively facilitate change and manage the emotions involved in it. EI enables leaders to identify the talents needed to build a winning team and overcome resistance to change. Emotional intelligence has also been described as an important ingredient contributing to morale, cooperation, teamwork, motivation and a positive work environment (Foltin & Keller, 2012 cited by Issah, 2018).

OEI, on the other hand, does not refer to the sum or average of emotionally intelligent individuals within the organization. It refers to the emotional intelligence of the organization itself as a unique and independent entity. OEI is reflected in the organization’s core components, including its vision, mission and values, in its work processes and methods of operation and in its organizational culture markers.

OEI acknowledges the pivotal role emotions play in influencing workplace dynamics, organizational behavior, relationships and outcomes. It examines how emotional intelligence exists at the organizational level, through the organization’s core components, culture, communication, decision-making processes, employee engagement and loyalty, stakeholder relationships and overall functioning. OEI focuses on how an organization, as a whole, perceives, understands and manages emotions effectively.

An emotionally intelligent organization does not rely only on specific leaders and their EI. Instead, it builds a strong foundation for OEI through three key cornerstones, supported by checks and balances:

Core Components: Vision, mission or purpose and values form one central cornerstone of OEI. These core statements help define what the organization stands for, what it seeks to create and what principles guide its conduct. They are also the foundation for an organization’s ability to inspire, create meaning and emotionally connect with all its stakeholders. Ideally, these elements are clear, meaningful and aligned with one another.

Organizational Culture: A smart and aligned organizational culture fosters a supportive environment that encourages open communication, transparency, empathy, psychological safety, innovation, collaboration and more. Culture also includes behavioral norms, informal patterns, traditions, expectations and recurring ways of responding to people, pressure, uncertainty and change.

Processes and Methods of Operation: Clear policies, processes and work methods help promote healthy emotional conduct and translate organizational intentions into actual behavior. These may include generic organizational processes, such as recruitment, onboarding, decision-making, promotion, internal communication and development processes, as well as core operational processes that are unique to the organization’s field, activity, service model, product, regulatory environment and operational reality.

Checks and Balances: Organizations must develop mechanisms to ensure these policies, processes, skills and methods are consistently applied and remain effective over time. These mechanisms help ensure that emotionally intelligent conduct, emotional organizational knowledge and acquired capabilities are preserved, enforced and sustained, rather than depending on a specific leader, manager or temporary initiative.

Research into OEI

While EI of organizational leaders is a well-researched field, with wellestablished connections to successful organizational outcomes, OEI remains an elusive topic to explore. When searching for articles on EI in organizations, one can usually find those pertaining to leadership EI or employee EI, but those exploring the emotional intelligence of the organization itself, as an independent entity, are harder to come by, though not entirely absent.

The same can be said for EI measurement tools: while tools for measuring EI have been developed and used with relative ease, many of them being selfassessment instruments that yield results centered around the individual being evaluated, assessing OEI introduces an additional layer of complexity. The organizational level presents a layer of intricacy that significantly compounds the complexities of EI, making it notably more challenging to unravel.

OEI encompasses an organization's ability, as an independent entity, to perceive, understand and manage emotional dynamics effectively, leveraging this understanding to achieve its goals and objectives. With several research directions backing this up, organizations with high levels of OEI may experience numerous benefits, including increased employee engagement, improved collaboration, higher levels of innovation, greater adaptability and resilience, stronger grit, greater agility and enhanced overall performance. Despite these benefits, organizations have yet to embrace OEI as a strategic imperative.

Why is there not enough research? Why is OEI still not well known? I argue that the answer lies in the challenges that come with exploring such a complex area. Where would one start? What is one looking for? EI itself is not an easy field to research and OEI takes the discussion to an entirely different level.

Available Tools for Measuring OEI

The tools that are available today to measure emotional intelligence largely focus on the EI of individuals, mainly leaders in teams and organizations. Several tools and models found in the literature address individual EI, leadership EI, team EI, emotional culture or partial aspects of OEI, including:

• Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Assessment (EILA)

• Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI)

• Emotional Competency Inventory (ECI) and the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI)

• The Emotional-Social Intelligence Model (ESI)

• Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Model (MSCEIT)

• Emotional Culture Index

• Team Emotional Intelligence Survey (TEIS)

• Organizational Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (OEIQ)

I discuss these tools and their relevance to OEI measurement in greater detail in my article, “Organizational Emotional Intelligence (OEI): Key Components and Measurement.”

In summary, there appear to be indications that the concept of OEI, although relatively new and uncharted, is solid and of interest, but has yet to receive the full attention of the academic community and to be adopted by organizations. There are multiple tools addressing different aspects of EI, team EI, leadership EI, emotional culture or partial aspects of OEI, but none that are purely focused on OEI and comprehensive enough to cover all aspects of the organization as an independent entity.

This demonstrates the significant value and promising potential of introducing an effective tool for measuring OEI within organizations. For this reason, I found it extremely important to develop a model that addresses this need.

The Organeiq OEI Profiler™ (the OEI-Q)

In response to the limitations of existing individual EI, team EI and partial organizational tools, Organeiq Corporate LTD developed the OEI Profiler™ (the OEI-Q) as a dedicated framework for evaluating Organizational Emotional Intelligence at the systemic organizational level.

The Organeiq OEI Profiler™ (the OEI-Q) examines how OEI is reflected across the three central organizational cornerstones described in this article: Core Components, Organizational Culture and Processes and Methods of Operation.

These three cornerstones are independent, though ideally aligned with one another and mutually reinforcing. Each can also be examined separately.

The Organeiq framework also examines OEI through the perceptions and experiences of five key stakeholder groups:

Employees and Managers: Including, where relevant, volunteers and other internal contributors.

Customers: The individuals or organizations who receive, purchase or use the organization’s products or services.

Vendors: Including service providers, suppliers, contractors and other external providers that support the organization’s activity.

Investors: Including donors, grant providers, funding partners and others who provide financial resources or strategic financial confidence.

Candidates: People who interact with the organization through recruitment, selection or pre-employment processes, whether or not they eventually join it.

These stakeholders are not a separate cornerstone of OEI. Rather, they are the lenses through which the organization’s core components, culture and processes are experienced.

OEI as a Catalyst for Organizational Change

The past two decades also have witnessed many changes in the work environment and in organizations. While two decades ago managers would say implicitly that the primary mission of an organization is marketing, for the past decade or so, it has become evident that the focus has shifted to something else: change.

Driven by global transformative shifts, such as globalization and advanced and everchanging technology, significantly enhanced by Covid-19 constraints and post-pandemic trends and last but not least, the rapid insertion of AI into every aspect of organizations, the primary mission of every organization that aims to survive in a turbulent and fluctuating world is constant change in light of an everchanging environment.

Organizational change is not only a necessity, but it must also be a state of mind. To successfully complete organizational change, an organization must always be one step ahead of the competition. This cannot be achieved without a well-planned change-management process.

In their article, McKinsey & Co. argue that only 35% of large-scale transformation efforts are successful (McKinsey & Company, 2022). Towers Watson go even further to claim that only 25% of change management initiatives are successful over the long term (Towers Watson, 2013).

The reasons for these low values vary. They include the absence of key elements: a clear and compelling vision for change, strong leadership, clear and effective communication, commitment and engagement, adaptability, manageremployee relations, employee involvement in the change process, supportive organizational culture, change management strategy and resistance management. Most issues involve the human capital component.

To understand the reasons behind the change processes going awry, one must delve into the core of employee resistance. As Issah (2018) stated, organizational change might interfere with one’s much cherished sense of comfort, which change tends to disrupt, thus leading to feelings of anxiety, uncertainty or fear of the unknown. Essentially, no one likes to surrender the comfort associated with the status quo. Issah (2018) emphasized that change always involves a spectrum of emotion because it might appear as a threat to one’s identity, or to their competency or skills, and it also might challenge one’s self-confidence.

I believe that the human capital component is the most valuable asset any organization possesses, and that is why it needs to be treated as such. Veshne & Munshi (2020) claim that employee engagement is seen as a route to business success and improved business performance, by encouraging employee commitment, energy and productivity (Veshne & Munshi, 2020). Working with people, treating them with sensitivity and thoughtfulness and creating among them a sense of commitment, motivation and engagement compels leaders and organizations to acknowledge, understand and support feelings of others, as well as their own.

Managers often pride themselves on being problem fixers, adept at handling challenging situations. Yet we do not often see leaders who are able to guide people through those same situations successfully, with those people still standing alongside them. To be clear, change management done right, much like true leadership, is a process of working with people through situations, rather than merely handling the situations themselves.

This is where OEI steps in. OEI highlights the significance of fostering a culture that nurtures emotional well-being and psychological safety and accommodates positive interactions among employees and managers. It also asserts our capacity to influence and guide organizations in maintaining a positive work environment, facilitating effective communication, enhancing teamwork and responding adaptively to challenges and changes.

Organizations most certainly can be taught and led to provide an atmosphere where employees feel valued, supported and engaged, leading to higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment. However, OEI is not only about creating a positive atmosphere. It is about building an emotionally intelligent organization, one whose core components, culture, processes and methods of operation support trust, clarity, resilience, grit, agility and long-term success.

High OEI also has a preventive role. It helps organizations identify weaknesses in their core components, culture and methods of operation before they become visible organizational problems. In this sense, OEI is not only a corrective capability, but also a preventive one.

Diagnosing OEI: Cornerstones for Evaluation

How does OEI manifest throughout the organization? What cornerstones do we need to explore? OEI is not a single point of focus; it permeates various aspects of an organization's structure and practices.

To facilitate the understanding and evaluation of an organization’s OEI, I attempt to break the assessment parameters into three key cornerstones and explore how OEI manifests in all three of them. These cornerstones are independent, though ideally aligned with one another:

1. Core Components

2. Organizational Culture

3. Processes and Methods of Operation

1. Core Components:

The cornerstone of Core Components examines the organization’s formal and informal sense of direction, meaning and guiding principles. It includes the organization’s vision, mission or purpose and values.

From an OEI perspective, these core components are not merely strategic statements. They are the foundation for the organization’s ability to inspire, create meaning and emotionally connect people to its message, path and purpose. When written well, clearly and with inspiration, they can also help pave the way for embedding Organizational Emotional Intelligence within the organization’s culture, processes and methods of operation.

A strong core identity can help an organization become a learning and evolving system, one that grows wiser over time and continuously improves the emotional quality of the way it thinks, communicates, makes decisions and operates.

This cornerstone evaluates the following aspects:

Vision: Does the organization have a clear and inspiring vision that creates direction, aspiration and emotional connection?

Mission or Purpose: Does the organization have a clear and inspiring mission or purpose that explains why it exists, what value it seeks to create and why this matters?

Values: Are the organization’s values clear, authentic and relevant to the way it operates, makes decisions and interacts with people?

Values are especially important because they shape the organization’s DNA and personality. Several organizations may operate in the same industry, provide similar products or serve similar customers, but if their values are different, their conduct, priorities, processes, culture and final outcomes may look and feel very different.

For example, imagine four companies that all manufacture notebooks.

One company is guided by values of precision, product quality and aesthetics. Its notebooks, production processes, branding and customer experience are likely to emphasize clean design, accuracy, durability and visual refinement.

A second company is guided by values of humanity, warmth and community. Its organizational culture, employee experience, customer communication and even product choices may emphasize accessibility, kindness, inclusion and human connection.

A third company is guided by values of usefulness, efficiency and professionalism. Its processes, products and service model may prioritize practicality, reliability, speed, clarity and cost-effective performance.

A fourth company is guided by values of sustainability and environmental responsibility. Its materials, production methods, vendor choices, packaging and organizational messaging may be shaped by ecological considerations and long-term environmental impact.

All four companies may manufacture notebooks. Yet the way they operate, make decisions, design processes, treat employees, work with vendors, communicate with customers and shape the final product may be entirely different because their values, organizational DNA and organizational personality are different.

Consistency between Vision, Mission or Purpose and Values: Are the organization’s core statements coherent with one another? Do they create a clear and emotionally intelligent foundation for the organization?

2. Organizational Culture

The cornerstone of Organizational Culture digs deep into the broader cultural aspects that influence the emotional environment within the organization. It encompasses the shared values, norms, behaviors and overall climate that define the organization's identity and shape the interactions among its members. It also includes traditions, informal patterns, unwritten expectations and more.

This cornerstone evaluates the following aspects:

Positive Organizational Culture Development: This focuses on fostering a supportive and collaborative work environment. High-OEI organizations promote psychological safety, where employees feel comfortable expressing themselves without fear of judgment. Such organizations actively seek employee feedback and create opportunities for growth, development and innovation.

Example: The organization regularly recognizes and celebrates team achievements, both large and small. This could involve public recognition, team meetings or small tokens of appreciation.

Effective Corporate Communication Practices: Open and transparent communication is a hallmark of OEI. High-OEI organizations communicate clearly and consistently, using multiple channels to reach all employees. They encourage two-way communication, allowing employees to ask questions and voice concerns.

Example: Leaders hold regular Q&A sessions with employees and apply an open-door policy on a regular basis. Information is disseminated openly through various channels, such as internal communication platforms, email newsletters and team meetings.

Positive Customer Relations: Emotionally intelligent organizations understand the importance of customer experience. Employees are equipped with the skills, clarity and organizational support needed to manage customer interactions effectively, fostering trust and loyalty.

Example: The organization provides customer-service representatives with training and guidance, focusing on active listening, empathy and conflict resolution. Customer feedback is actively solicited and used to improve processes and service delivery.

Conflict Resolution Practices: High-OEI organizations approach conflict constructively. They encourage open communication and active listening to address disagreements respectfully. Conflict resolution processes are available and used effectively.

Example: Managers are trained in conflict-resolution techniques and encourage open communication within their teams. The organization has a clear process for addressing employee disputes fairly and confidentially.

3. Processes and Methods of Operation

The third cornerstone focuses on the operational aspects of the organization and how OEI manifests in its processes and methods of operation.

This cornerstone includes both generic organizational processes and core operational processes. Generic processes may include recruitment, onboarding, decision-making, promotion, internal communication, development processes, departures and more. Core operational processes are the processes unique to the organization's industry, services, products, regulatory environment and operational model.

This cornerstone evaluates some of the following aspects:

Human Capital Processes: This area encompasses the holistic spectrum of emotions experienced by employees and candidates throughout their journey with the organization. From the initial stages of recruitment and onboarding to development, promotion, retention and eventual departure, it delves into the organizational routines that shape their experience, emotions and perceptions of the organization as a whole.

Example: A high-OEI recruitment process is clear, respectful and consistent. A high-OEI onboarding process is well structured, providing new hires with the information and support they need in order to feel comfortable and engaged.

Decision-Making Processes: High-OEI organizations make well-based decisions that take into account both logical reasoning and emotional intelligence. They encourage diverse viewpoints, consider the potential emotional impact of decisions and communicate them clearly to relevant stakeholders.

Example: Leaders gather input from various departments and levels of the organization before making important decisions. They explain the rationale behind decisions and acknowledge potential impact.

Formal and Informal Leadership: Supportive and empathetic leadership is an important expression of OEI. High-OEI organizations have leaders who are selfaware, attentive and inspiring. They foster a collaborative environment where employees feel valued and empowered. Further, informal leaders are acknowledged and leveraged, just as much as formal leaders.

Example: While organizational change is taking place, informal leaders may be approached and engaged to help management achieve and complete the change.

Organizational Memory and Learning: High-OEI organizations learn from experience, both positive and negative. They capture and share knowledge effectively, ensuring that past knowledge informs future decisions.

Example: The organization conducts knowledge-sharing sessions where employees can learn from each other's experiences. Lessons learned from past successes and failures are documented and incorporated into future processes, thus becoming common knowledge throughout the organization.

Core Work Processes: High-OEI organizations examine their core processes to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, emotional intelligence and stakeholder experience. These processes, unique to the organization's industry and offerings, are ideally aligned with the organization's overall goals and values.

Example: A real estate company, for instance, with a focus on property rental, may prioritize a tenant-centered experience. It uses a customer-centric approach to understand tenant needs, improve service processes and respond effectively to issues that arise during the rental relationship. The leasing team is empowered to make decisions and provide responsive service, leading to higher trust, satisfaction and long-term tenant relationships.

Checks and Balances: High-OEI organizations develop mechanisms that help ensure emotionally intelligent policies, processes and methods are consistently applied and remain effective over time. These mechanisms protect OEI from becoming dependent on a specific manager, leader or temporary initiative.

Example: The organization documents key processes, defines responsibilities, creates learning routines and preserves organizational knowledge so that emotionally intelligent conduct remains part of the organizational system over time.

By examining the three cornerstones outlined above, Core Components, Organizational Culture and Processes and Methods of Operation, and by prioritizing empathy, positivity, understanding and emotional awareness within each cornerstone, an organization will gain significant insight into its overall OEI.

OEI should be an organization’s way of life, a code of conduct and not a mere agenda. By actively fostering OEI across the areas outlined above, organizations can cultivate a more positive, productive and successful work environment that drives success and sustains long-term growth.

OEI and Stakeholder Experience

Beyond these three cornerstones, OEI should also be examined through the way different stakeholders experience and perceive the organization. In the Organeiq framework, five key stakeholder groups are especially important:

Employees and Managers: Including, where relevant, volunteers and other internal contributors.

Customers: The individuals or organizations who receive, purchase or use the organization’s products or services.

Vendors: Including service providers, suppliers, contractors and other external providers that support the organization’s activity.

Investors: Including donors, grant providers, funding partners and others who provide financial resources or strategic financial confidence.

Candidates: People who interact with the organization through recruitment, selection or pre-employment processes, whether or not they eventually join it.

These stakeholders are not a separate cornerstone of OEI. Rather, they are the lenses through which the organization’s core components, culture and processes are experienced.

A candidate may learn a great deal about an organization’s OEI through the recruitment process. A customer may experience OEI through service, communication, reliability and trust. A vendor may experience OEI through fairness, responsiveness and partnership quality. An investor or donor may experience OEI through credibility, transparency and consistency. Employees and managers experience OEI through almost every part of organizational life.

Concluding Remarks

Organizational Emotional Intelligence is a transformative force that can propel organizations toward improvement and success. I believe OEI has the potential to create a positive and emotionally intelligent future for organizations.

OEI fosters a thriving workplace environment, by enhancing employee retention, well-being and effective communication. It also equips organizations with tools to navigate challenges and implement change-management initiatives more effectively. By embracing OEI as a core organizational capability, organizations can cultivate a culture of innovation, resilience, grit, agility and growth, driving sustained success and evolution.

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