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Emotional intelligence is a valuable resource thatcan renew and re-ignite organizational purposeand inspire people to perform better. As clientswill attest, the emotionally intelligent organizationis in tune with its needs.

By Richard E. Boyatzis and Ellen Van Oosten

Richard E. Boyatzis is Professor and Chair, Departmentof Organizational Behaviour, Weatherhead School ofManagement, Case Western Reserve University. He isalso co-author (with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee)of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of EmotionalIntelligence (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

Ellen Van Oosten is Assistant Dean and ExecutiveDirector, Executive Education, Weatherhead School ofManagement, Case Western University.

Frank Sims was standing on Roadway Express’sshipping dock, watching one of the company’s trucksdrive away with goods for Specialty Glassware (apseudonym), one of Roadway’s large customers. Frankwas worried. The damage problems had been mountingand he was worried about how this might be affectingRoadway’s customers. As he walked to his office, Frankbegan to recall a workshop on emotional intelligence(EI) he had attended recently. Simply recalling theworkshop immediately put Frank in a better state ofmind: Instead of worrying about the damage and anangry customer, he started to ask himself how he coulduse what he learned in the workshop to do somethingconstructive and important. As he watched another truckbeing loaded, an idea began to take shape. What, hewondered, if Roadway’s dockworkers and driversunderstood how important loading the trucks was fortheir company? Immediately, he started thinking abouthow he could engage people in solving the customer’sproblems.

That afternoon, Frank called Specialty Glassware’ssenior transportation manager, to get his help invideotaping glassmaking operations and interviewinglabourers and salespeople about their business processes.Then he called Roadway’s dock crew to a specialmeeting at the Roadway terminal, where several topexecutives from Specialty Glassware described theircompany’s vision, business and strategy, theircustomers, manufacturing processes and value chain.Frank played the videotape and the crew got to askquestions. At the end, each dockworker was presentedwith a commemorative mug made by SpecialtyGlassware.

The dock crew was surprised that the customer’s topmanagement would put so much effort into helping themunderstand the glassware business. They felt goodknowing how their efforts fit into the big picture, howimportant the glassware products were and how wellSpecialty Glassware served its own customers’ needs.It made them want to be more careful and find ways tohelp Specialty Glassware succeed. Later on, workerswould describe these meetings to new hires as anexample of why Roadway was a great place to work.

Leaders like Frank Sims are among the many whocan raise the human spirit and make their organizationsbetter. They do so by using their emotional intelligenceto create an atmosphere in which people want to do andbe their best. In this article, we describe how emotionallyintelligent leaders ignite organizations and people toperform better. The article also provides the notinsignificant hope that, though EI-based leadership maybe rare, it can be developed.

Breakthrough leadership

Frank Sims’s experiment with new ways to lead istypical of the many innovations at Roadway Express

A leadership imperative:Building the emotionally intelligent

organization

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Inc. during the past three years. A trucking companyfounded in 1930, Roadway has more than 26,000employees and 379 terminals throughout the U.S. andCanada. To succeed in the highly competitive truckingindustry, company executives recognized that theyneeded an enduring strategy to energize their employeesand outpace competition in the long run. In 1999, itpartnered with the Weatherhead School of Managementto begin a transformation marked by the launch of acustomized leadership development program.Over the next three years, this program produced directand measurable results, including a company-widesafety initiative that:

• Has saved Roadway $6 million• Decreased the number of injuries by 43 per cent

annually; and• Decreased the number of accidents by 41 per cent

annually.

Jim Staley, Roadway’s president, says, “We’reconvinced we’re developing leaders at every level ofthe organization. That’s what we’re doing with EI. Wewant to not just develop leaders in the seniormanagement team, but at every level. …The resonanceanybody can create as a leader can improve performancefor the individual and the organization.”

Roadway had a traditional culture, with amanagement structure that was hierarchical andcommand-and-control. The company’s financialperformance was average. Seeing that Roadway neededbreakthroughs in performance, leadership andmanagement, top executives crafted a vision in which“everyone would be fully engaged in the success of thecompany and committed to the success of each other.”The leadership program became the tool for attuningkey leaders to the vision and enhancing their capabilitiesto achieve it. The overall objective was to help managersdevelop new knowledge, competencies and motivationto pursue the vision and succeed together. Specific goalsincluded:

• Increasing leaders’ self-awareness and emotionalintelligence;

• Positioning leaders to develop leaders at everylevel;

• Developing the capabilities of the leadership team

to achieve breakthrough performance; and• Broadening the participants’ understanding of

issues that are crucial for long-term economicperformance.

A nine-day program, designed and delivered over sixmonths to key company leaders, including the president,focused on emotional intelligence, strategy, systemthinking, marketing, finance and appreciative inquiry -- process for leading change.

Creating better leaders: Stimulating moreEmotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is defined as a set ofcompetencies (see Table 1) that derive from a neuralcircuitry emanating in the limbic system. Thousands ofstudies have shown that effective leaders consistentlypossess more emotional intelligence competencies suchas self-awareness and self-management. Frank Simsused his awareness of his own worried feelings and hiswillingness to be flexible in order to stimulate a differentway of thinking about Roadway’s problems. He wasalso socially aware, something that led him to believethat Roadway’s dockworkers probably didn’t understandtheir customer’s challenges and concerns.

Along with Case Western, Roadway developed aprogram called Breakthrough Leadership, which focuseson helping managers identify areas for behaviouralchange, and then gives them opportunities to practicenew habits in real time. Breakthrough Leadership guideseach participant through a process of discovery calledSelf-Directed Learning, shown in Figure 1. (Boyatzis,R.E., Cowen, S.S., & Kolb, D.A., Innovations inprofessional education: Steps on a journey fromteaching to learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995;Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E., and McKee, A., PrimalLeadership: Realizing the Power of EmotionalIntelligence, Boston, Harvard Business School Press,2002). Because of the discontinuous nature of sustainedchange, the process is experienced as five discoveries.The first discovery is the Ideal Self—–what each of uswants out of life and work, and the nature of our dreamsand aspirations. As each person discovers or rediscoverstheir passion at work, their renewed energy becomesthe driving motivation for changing their leadershipbehaviour. After a number of exercises, each persondevelops a Personal Vision statement describing their

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Ideal Self.

Each participant then works toward the seconddiscovery—awareness of his or her Real Self. Afterreceiving feedback from a 360 assessment of emotionalintelligence competencies, participants analyze theresults with personal coaches. This view of their RealSelf allows them to develop a Personal Balance Sheet

of their distinctive strengths, their individual gaps (orweaknesses) that are close to the tipping point ofeffectiveness, and those that are further from the tippingpoint.

Coaches help each person convert their PersonalVision and Balance Sheet into a Learning Plan for theirdevelopment as a leader—the third discovery in the

Table 1Emotional Intelligence Competencies Related to Outstanding

Leadership(Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2002)

Personal Competence

The Self-awareness Cluster:Emotional self-awareness: recognizing our emotions and their effectsAccurate self-assessment: knowing one’s strengths and limitsSelf-confidence: a strong sense of one’s self worth and capabilities

The Self-management Cluster:Adaptability: flexibility in dealing with changing situations or obstaclesEmotional Self-control: inhibiting emotions in service of group or organizational normsInitiative: proactive, bias toward actionAchievement orientation: striving to do betterTrustworthiness: integrity or consistency with one’s values, emotions, and behaviorOptimism: a positive view of the life and the future

Social Competence

Social Awareness Cluster:Empathy: understanding others and taking active interest in their concernService orientation: recognizing and meeting customer’s needsOrganizational awareness: perceives political relationships within the organization

Relationship Management Cluster:Inspirational Leadership: inspiring and guiding groups and peopleDeveloping Others: helping others improve performanceChange catalyst: initiating or managing changeConflict management: resolving disagreementsInfluence: getting others to agree with youTeamwork and Collaboration: Building relationships with a creating a shared vision and synergy

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process. The plan motivates each person to convert theirlife and work activities into a kind of learning laboratoryin which they are provoked to think about using theirday-to-day and week-to-week experiences as the basisfor learning. Instead of an imposed one-planning-method-suits-all, each person is encouraged to choosehis or her own preferred learning style and lifestyle. Asillustrated by Frank’s experience, experimentation andpractice—the fourth discovery—occur on the job.

The fifth discovery—the development of trustingrelationships that encourage the person at each step—continues throughout the process. Coaches are especiallycrucial to change during the fifth discovery, since theyhelp people reflect on and develop their dreams andaspirations, look a how they project to others, identifystrengths and weaknesses, and overcome blind spots intheir leadership style. They help each person to “reality-test” their learning plan, including ways of working ongoals during typical work and life experiences, andanticipating and overcoming likely obstacles. Duringexperimentation and practice, coaches also help people

keep track of, and reward, their own progress.

Creating an exciting culture

The ultimate goal of Roadway’s BreakthroughLeadership initiative was to transform the culture sothat everyone understood not only the big picture(howRoadway would be successful), but also their personalresponsibility in the big picture (how their actions

affected the customers and the financial results).Ultimately, each employee would have to be able tolink his/her actions to the financial results of theorganization. To help change the Roadway culture, thecompany and Weatherhead modified the BreakthroughLeadership Program by creating and introducing a self-directed process of change called Engagement ThroughEducation in the Fundamentals of Business. Using aprocess called Appreciative Inquiry to convene large-group meetings, or Summits, people were broughttogether to discover and share their organizational“Ideal.”– the times when they were at their best andproud to be a part of Roadway, when they served their

#1: My Ideal Self - Who do i want to be? What do I want out of life and work?

#2: My Real Self - How do I act

#2: My StrengthsWhere my ideal and Real Self overlap

#2: My Gaps - where my Ideal & Real Self differ

#3: My Learning Agenda - Building on my Strengths while reducing Gaps

#4: Experimenting with new behaviour thoughts & feelings

#4: Practice the new behaviour, building new neural pathways through to mastery

#5: Developing Trusting Relationships, like coaches that help, support & encourageeach step in the process

Figure 1. Boyatzis' Theory of Self-Directed Learning (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2002)

customers, and when they helped the financialperformance of the company. (Srivastva, S.,Cooperrider, D. L. (Eds.), Appreciative management andleadership: The power of positive thought and action inorganizations; Jossey-Bass Inc., 1990). They alsoexamined how the company was doing along numerousdimensions; in other words, they looked at the “Real”organization.

Each Summit dealt with a major business topic, suchas “delivering unsurpassed speed and leveragingemployee pride and involvement,” or “developing ateam-sell approach.” Groups of 200-300 people whohad a stake in this topic attended each Summit to explorethe organization’s strengths and gaps related to theshared Ideal.

At the end of the Summit, the participants broke intoaction learning teams that continued to meet regularlyover several months to develop a company LearningAgenda based on the overall theme. Participantspracticed new leadership behaviour using emotionalintelligence; in other words, they solved real problemswhile they developed a new culture for the organization.At the same time, they formed the trusting relationshipsthat became the basis for a new Roadway culture.

In one real-life, profitable example of change, amechanic and a driver discovered how to save Roadway$130,000 per year on one route. Applied to 379 terminalsand many routes, this discovery had the potential todeliver dramatic savings.

In another example, a mechanic, a driver and theterminal manager discussed the problem of overweightshipments that caused delays in getting drivers on theroad. They ultimately realized that the new trucks’ largerfuel tank was the source of the extra weight. By fillingthe tanks only three-quarters full, they could use theremaining weight for freight.

Roadway feels like a new company in an old business.Its people are excited about being leaders, and haveexpanded the ways in which they can make a personalimpact. Inspiration and energy have become contagious.A new culture has emerged, one in which people aremotivated and innovative. The new Roadway issurpassing many of its competitors in revenue and netprofit growth through savvy acquisitions and cost

savings during a period that has not been kind to theindustry. Roadway’s experience is a powerful exampleof how emotional intelligence can ignite excitement andinspire better performances from everyone in yourorganization.