@sing emotional intelligence to help college students succeed in the workplace John J. Liptak

Research related to the characteristics that are sought by recruiters and prospective employers in graduating college students suggests that emotional intelligence (El) skills are as important as, if not more important than, job-related skills. Counselors working with college students, however, usually focus on career management and job search skills and neglect the development of El skills. El seems to be an excellent framework to use in helping college students find a job and succeed in the workplace. By using the Confluence Counseling model, counselors working with college students can effectively combine career counseling with personal counseling in a holistic manner. ....

More than ever, college graduates must have a wider array of skills and knowledge to become successful employees and citizens. Although job-related knowledge is critical, today’s college students need other skills to succeed in the workplace. Research (e.g., Goleman, 1998; LaPlante, 1991; Shivpuri & Kim, 2004) suggests that many students finish college only to find that they are ill prepared for dealing with many aspects of their personal and working lives.

Many colleges and universities are now interested in educating students using a broad, holistic approach that combines “hard” job-related knowledge and skills with “soft” so- cial skills (Shivpuri & I m , 2004; Wolf-Wendel & Ruel, 1999). Colleges and universities are increasingly concerned about the skill gaps in students who are looking for employ- ment upon graduation. To verify this notion, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) recently surveyed a 0 randomly selected college recruiters to identify the most important performance dimensions currently being sought by prospective em- ployers. The surveyed employers rated interpersonal skills as the most important skills they desired in recent college graduates, followed by ethics and integrity, leadership, per- severance, and knowledge (Shivpuri & IGm, 2004). The interesting finding of the NACE survey was that the first four most sought-after dimensions were “soft” career skills.

The theory of emotional intelligence (EI) can provide a valuable framework for career counselors in higher education settings to use to help students be more successful in the workplace upon graduation. The career counseling literature, however, has greatly ignored the connection between EI and success for new college graduates. The purpose of this article is to discuss EI and its impact on a person’s career, explore the increasing need for career counselors to be prepared to help college students enhance their EI skills, and explore a model for successfully integrating personal and career counseling by focusing on both career management skills and EI skills.

EITHEORY

Career counselors in higher education must first understand what EI is before they can help students learn more effective EI skills. Goleman (1995) described EI as a set

John J. Liptak, Experiential Learning and Career Development, Radford University Correspon- dence concerning this article should be addressed to John J. Liptak, Experiential Learning and Career Development, Radford University, Box 6901, Walker Hall, Radford, VA 24042 (e- mail: jjliptak Q radford. edu).

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of key skills, abilities, and competencies that, unlike IQ, which has traditionally been viewed as being primarily innate, can be learned by anyone. He wrote that EI includes such skills as being able to motivate oneself, being persistent in facing obstacles and achieving goals, controlling impulses and delaying gratification, controlling one’s moods, thinking rationally, empathizing with others, and hoping. Similarly, Mayer and Cobb (2000) defined EI as the ability to accurately process emotional information such as perception, assimilation, understanding, and the management of one’s emotions.

Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) suggested that EI is a set of abilities that accounts for how a more accurate understanding of emotions often helps people solve problems in their emotional lives. They defined EI as “the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others” (Mayer et al., 2000, p. 396). Bar-On (1997) said that “emotional intelligence is an array of non-cognitive capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures” (p. 14).

Howard Gardner (1983) talked about two forms of EI: intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence. H e suggested that intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to access the full range of one’s own emotions and “the capacity instantly to effect discriminations among these feelings and, eventually, to label them, to enmesh them in symbolic codes, and to draw upon them as a means of understanding and guiding one’s behavior” (Gardner, 1983, p. 239). In addition to intrapersonal intelli- gence, Gardner believed that people also have an interpersonal intelligence that can be learned and nurtured. He thought that this form of intelligence was “the ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions” (Gardner, 1983, p. 239). Goleman (1995) concluded that there is a set of five EI competencies that makes u p the two primary domains (see Appendix).

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

If career counselors are to help college graduates succeed in their transition to the world of work, they need to be aware of the guiding principles that are becoming more prevalent in the field of career counseling. These guiding principles are (a) EI skills can be taught, (b) a career is more than work, and (c) personal and career counseling can be combined. Knowledge of these principles is critical for career counselors plan- ning to use the Confluence Counseling model (CCM) described in this article.

El Skills Can BeTaught

Regardless of how EI has been defined in the literature, research indicates that EI is a skill or set of skills that can be taught and learned. Goleman (1995) suggested that “emotional life is a domain that, as surely as math or reading, can be handled with greater or lesser skill, and requires its unique set of competencies” (p. 36). H e believed that EI is composed of two primary domains: (a) personal competencies, which determine how individuals manage themselves, and (b) social competencies, which determine how individuals handle relationships.

Similarly, Salovey, Mayer, and Caruso (2002) suggested that people need to learn four aspects of EI to be successful: emotional perception and expression, emotional

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facilitation of thought using EI, emotional understanding, and emotional manage- ment. They believed that training for success in the workplace should focus on the role that emotion plays and should help employees gain an awareness of how their emotional reactions and the emotions of others affect management and supervision.

The effectiveness of EI training is well documented. Goleman (1995) said that people with well-developed emotional skills are more likely to be content and ef- fective in their lives and that evidence verifies that people who are emotionally intelligent-those who know and manage their own feelings well and who read and deal effectively with other people’s feelings-are at an advantage in any domain of life, whether it is dealing with intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in organizational politics. Salovey et al. (2002) concluded that “the person who is able to understand emotions-their meanings, how they blend together, how they progress over time-is truly blessed with the capacity to under- stand important aspects of human nature and interpersonal relationships” (p. 162). Goleman concluded that it is EI rather than traditional analytical intelligence that predicts success in school, in the home, and in the workplace.

A Career Is MoreThan Work

Many career counselors once defined a career as a person’s job, and career planning focused on matching a person’s skills to the best available job. For example, Isaacson and Brown (1997) described a career as “a series of paid or unpaid occupations or jobs that one holds throughout his or her life” (p. 11). In today’s society, however, these types of definitions seem to be too limiting in their view of career and career development as only the work one does. To be a successful employee, the college student of today will need to do more than meet the requirements of a job.

In recent years, a number of other authors have taken a more comprehensive view of what constitutes a career. Career has been seen as developmental and encompassing much more than just one’s vocation or occupation. Super (1951) first defined career as a “continuous, lifelong process of developing and implementing a self-concept, testing that self-concept against reality, with satisfaction to self and benefit to soci- ety” (p. 88). Later, he amended his definition to say that a career was the course of events that constitutes a life, the sequence of occupations and other life roles that com- bines to express one’s commitment to work in his or her total pattern of self-development (Super, 1976). Herr and Cramer (1984) said that careers are unique to each person and include occupations and other life roles, such as family, community, and leisure. McDaniels (1984) saw one’s career as the totality of one’s work and leisure over the life span. Similarly, Liptak (2004) took the position that a career is each person’s at- tempt to implement a particular lifestyle made up of work, leisure, and learning.

Liptak (2001) suggested that leisure is extremely critical in the career develop- ment of people in today’s society and workplace. He suggested that “one of the big- gest changes in career development is the inclusion of other life roles, particularly leisure, as essential aspects of a career” (Liptak, 2001, p. 3). Liptak (1991) found that leisure can actually play a more important role in career development than work, especially in the development of EI skills. He found that leisure was extremely important in a variety of ways, including helping people explore their leadership ability by becoming involved in

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clubs and organizations, developing and practicing effective communication skills in safe environments such as neighborhood parties or social functions, and learning conflict reso- lution skills and building relationships by engaging in athletic contests.

Personal and Career Counseling Can Be Combined

By using EI skills as a focus, counselors can effectively integrate personal counsel- ing with career counseling. Imbimbo (1994) suggested that career counseling and personal counseling have always been viewed as two distinct fields of practice. The problem with this view is that it often ignores the long tradition in the field of career development of recognizing the importance of personality factors in choosing and succeeding in a career. He believed that in

both the personality and career development theories, the counselor is required to be able to move back and forth between the active and directive role of the career counselor and the facilitative and exploratory role of the personal counselor. . . . To suggest that career and personal counseling should be mutually exclusive or that individuals can separate their personal issues from what happens in their career lives is simplistic. (p. 50)

Peterson and Gonzalez (2005) agreed that personal and career counseling “no longer need sharp distinctions, because people who come for career counseling often require both, and the reverse is often true” (p. 270). Imbimbo (1994) concluded that career counselors often need to be able to provide comprehensive career services to clients who have comprehensive personal and career needs. Yost and Corbishley (1987) suggested that for many people, per- sonal counseling and career counseling are vimally synonymous. They concluded that “the psychological constraints affecting career counseling express themselves in the form of dys- functional emotions, behaviors, and cognitions” (Yost & Corbishley, 1987, p. 25).

Richardson (1993) even suggested that rather than conceptualizing career counseling as a separate field from personal counseling, practitioners might best consider career coun- seling as a form of brief, focused counseling. Peterson and Gonzalez (2005) added that in their experience most people who are making vocational choices often have questions about other aspects of their lives, and “a deeper understanding is needed as to when coun- selors should give information as opposed to when they should probe for understanding and insight into dynamics that may block realization of career goals” (p. 270).

Therefore, career counselors must begin to look for ways to help college students develop appropriate EI skills. The premise of this article is that career counselors need to start looking for ways to bring EI skill deficits into the career counseling process. The next section describes a process for doing so.

THE CCM

Goleman (1998) said that regardless of the type of organization for which individu- als work, they are evaluated on skills other than those related to their job. There- fore, to be effective in helping college students develop the EI skills they need to succeed in the workplace, career counselors must be prepared to address issues outside of the traditional career counseling realm. They must be prepared to help their cli- ents learn a variety of EI skills, including enhancing self-esteem, developing a ser- vice orientation, understanding and accepting diversity, communicating effectively, and managing conflict. Findings such as those of the recent NACE survey suggest

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that career counselors need to continue helping their clients develop “soft” EI skills as well as traditional “hard” career development skills.

Although many career counseling professionals agree that personal and career counsel- ing should be integrated for a holistic counseling approach, no system currently exists for doing so. The CCM Gptak, 2005) can be used to help people develop the career and job search, personal competence, and social competence skills they need to be successful in the workplace (see Figure 1). This approach allows career counselors working with college stu- dents to effectively move back and forth between personal counseling and career counsel- ing with their clients. The three sets of skills included in the CCM were developed through research (cf. Liptak, 2005) to identify the necessary skills to succeed in the workplace.

The first set of skills that college students need to be successful in the workplace is career and job search skills. These skills are the more traditional skills used by career counselors to help their clients develop their careers. In helping students develop ca- reer management skills. counselors often begin by administering and interpreting a variety of career assessments, exploring irrational thinking students are engaged in, matching personal characteristics with similar occupations, teaching decision-making skills and helping in the decision-making process, teaching job search skills, and helping stu- dents adjust to the workplace and develop an appropriate lifestyle consisting of a bal- ance between work, leisure, family, and education.

The second set of skills that college students need to be successful in the workplace is appropriate personal competence skills. In helping students develop these skills, the counselor can administer assessments to make students more aware of their personal competence strengths and weaknesses, increase their self-esteem by focusing on strengths they possess, enhance their personal responsibility for their career development, and discuss the importance of being trustworthy and dependable in the workplace.

The third set of skills that college students need to be successful in the workplace is appropriate social competence skills. In helping students develop these skills, the counselor can help students learn to be more cooperative, be supportive of cowork-

Personal Competence

Skills

Career & Life

FIGURE 1 The Confluence Counseling Model

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ers, take the initiative to lead when called upon, be a good follower of leadership, communicate effectively, value diversity, and relate well to customers.

HELPING STUDENTS EXPLORE El SKILLS

Teaching EI skills is an experiential process in which individuals plan an action, engage in it, reflect on how effective it was, and then take steps to either repeat it or make adjustments to it (Kolb, 1984). Johnson (2003) described experiential learn- ing as a process by which people make generalizations and draw conclusions based on direct experience. He suggested that experiential learning “emphasizes experi- encing directly what you are studying, building a personal commitment to learn, and being responsible for organizing the conclusions you draw from your experi- ence” (Johnson, 2003, p. 24).

Confluence counseling (Liptak, 2005) is not just a philosophy but a unique way of integrating personal and career counseling through work with both career man- agement skills and EI skills. It is a method for helping students explore their EI, understand cognitively why they engage in effective and ineffective behaviors, and apply this wisdom in their daily lives and in the workplace. The following are five steps career counselors can use in helping their students gain personal competence, social competence, and career competence skills.

1. Understand why EI skills are important. In this phase, students usually ask the question “How will it be of value to me?” It is important at this point in counseling to talk to the student about the importance of EI skills in attain- ing a job and succeeding in today’s workplace. Students can benefit from seeing the emotional competence framework (see Appendix) and by identifying situ- ations in which these EI skills might be helpful.

2. Identify EI skill deficits. At this point, trying to assess the student’s EI weak- nesses is critical. This can be accomplished by administering an EI assessment such as the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 1997) or the Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-On, 1997). Another way is to administer Super’s (1990) career rainbow in an attempt to discover deficiencies in roles other than that of work. For example, a person may get angry when losing in a sporting contest or may constantly have arguments with a significant other.

3. Assess the effect of EI skill deficits on career development. Once a skill deficit area has been identified, students usually need assistance in exploring how the lack of this skill is affecting their career development and how it could keep them from being successful in the workplace. A variety of assessments, such as the Job Survival and Success Scale (Liptak, 2005), and activities (see, e.g., Liptak, 2 W , Liptak, Khalsa, & Leutenberg, 2002) are available to assist students in this process. Mezirow’s (1990) transformative learning, or learning through critical reflection, can be helpful during this phase. Joumaling or writing about the particular EI skill can also be beneficial.

4. Use the EI skill more effectively. At this point in the career counseling process, students need help in learning to be more effective using the EI skill. The role of the career counselor becomes one of a teacher and a model for the skill.

5. Practice the EI skill. Social learning theorists (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978) believe that the best learning takes place not in isolation but in various social set-

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tings. On a college campus, opportunities to practice EI skills are everywhere. Participation in hobbies, in leisure activities, and in clubs and organizations can provide excellent opportunities for students to practice EI skills. In addi- tion, interactions with others on campus or in residence halls can be opportu- nities to practice interpersonal skills.

CONCLUSION

Research indicates that interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are some of the most sought-after characteristics of new and prospective employees, even more so than job-related knowledge. These characteristics and skills, however, have been neglected in the literature, in research, and in services provided by career counselors working with people transitioning into the workforce.

EI seems to be an excellent framework to use in working with college students to help them be more successful in finding a job and in being successful on the job. By using the CCM described in this article, counselors working with college students can effectively combine career counseling with personal counseling in a holistic manner.

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APPENDIX The Emotional Competence Framework (Goleman, 1995, pp. 26-27)

Personal Competence Social Competence 1. Self-awareness or knowing one’s IV. Empathy or awareness of others’

feelings, needs, and concerns internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions Understanding others

Emotional awareness Developing others Accurate self-assessment Service orientation Self-confidence Leveraging diversity

II. Self-regulation or managing one’s Political awareness internal states, impulses, and resources V. Social skills or adeptness at inducing

Self-control desirable responses in others Trustworthiness Influence Conscientiousness Communication Adaptability Conflict management Innovation Leadership

Ill. Motivation or emotional tendencies that Change catalyst guide or facilitate reaching goals Building bonds

Achievement drive Collaboration and cooperation Commitment Team capabilities Initiative Optimism

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