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RESULTS
Oil Industry Supplier - A Case Study Report
Participant Comment
"There were ten or twelve people in a meeting two weeks ago, reviewing a performance problem with a new prospect. There were comments made that could easily have been interpreted as a hit or criticism of production. Every response would have been a defensive/blaming response. As I sat there, I used the Freeze-Frame® tool and thought through my response. While we know there is a problem, let's design a series of experiments to find the root cause. It avoided blaming, shouting responses. Before the (program), I might have said, The problem is (you)... In something like this, you can defer something 3 to 6 months before the personalities get unclouded. Depending on the product, this could cost millions of dollars."
Background
Jane Shuman of Shuman & Associates and Byron Stock of Byron Stock & Associates have provided the Developing Emotional Intelligence (EI) Skills™ training program (including the Inner Quality Management® technology) to a variety of corporate and public sector clients. One client, a 3000 person organization that licenses its intellectual capital (patents and processes) to the oil industry, asked us to design a training program to assess the effectiveness of the Developing EI Skills program with a diverse group of professional and administrative employees. A summary of these results follows.
Why the Developing Emotional Intelligence Skills Program was Selected
The Developing EI Skills program was selected over other programs for a number of reasons. The Developing EI Skills program...
- provides simple, scientifically proven tools and techniques that anyone can use in-the-moment to relieve stress.
- had measured pre and post results from several organizations demonstrating the positive impact on performance, stress, health, and attitudes (emotions).
- is not just an "event." It is a comprehensive program designed to create changes in the affective (emotional) center of the brain.
- is based on medical research that has been published in peer review journals such as the American Journal of Cardiology, the Journal for the Advancement of Medicine, and others.
- supports the client organization's cultural competencies in many factors, including Thinking, Leadership, Communication, Interpersonal Skills, and Self-Management.
Emotional Intelligence
The evidence supporting the critical importance of emotional intelligence is mounting. Emotions have long been recognized as a major contributor to stress and, more recently, as important to personal and organizational success. Emotional intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge from one's emotions and the emotions of others in order to be more successful and lead a more fulfilling life. Daniel Goleman in his landmark Harvard Business Review article, What Makes a Leader? (HBR Nov./Dec., 1998 p. 93) shares insight into the power of emotional intelligence:
"...when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ and emotional intelligence (identified in competency models from 188 companies) as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence was twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels. ...Moreover, my analysis showed that emotional intelligence played an increasingly important role at the highest levels of the company, where differences in technical skills are of negligible importance..."
Unmanaged Emotional Reactions
The impact of unmanaged emotional reactions and lack of emotional intelligence skills in business is widespread and significant. Unmanaged emotional reactions or lack of emotional intelligence skills by executives and employees at all levels can lead to ...
- high turnover
- stalled change initiatives
- inadequate innovation and creativity
- unsuccessful process improvement initiatives
- slow development of high potential talent
- decreased productivity
- decreased customer satisfaction
- unsuccessful re engineering initiatives
- decreased customer loyalty
- declines in revenue
- increases in stress and healthcare costs
- disruptive organizational climate/culture
- workplace violence
Participants
Employees who participated in the program were selected non-randomly. Members of the committee that selected the Developing EI Skills program were asked to participate. Additionally, individuals who could benefit the most from reductions in the physical symptoms of stress, improvements in emotional intelligence skills, and improvements in creativity were invited to participate. The goal was to enlist a cross section of levels and functions within the organization to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. A total of 14 people were selected.
Program Design
Our Developing EI Skills program is comprehensive and includes pre-training individual interviews (with pre-training psychological surveys), two-day training, reinforcements materials (emails), on-the-job skill practice by participants, three half-hour individual phone coaching sessions at 7, 21, and 35 days, and three one-day integration training sessions at 14, 28, and 42 days. This is followed by a post-training psychological survey and individual one-hour Critical Incident Interviews.
Measures
There were three measurement methods included in the program. The Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment (POQA) survey was used to determine 3rd level affective changes in participants' attitudes as a result of the training. The POQA was administered to the pilot group before the interviews and after the final integration session. The Personal Goals and Accomplishments (PG&A) notebook was used to determine 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level skill and use changes of participants' and organizational impact examples. The PG&A was administered during the interviews and at each of the Integration sessions. Critical Incident Interviews (CII) were conducted with participants approximately 4 months after the last Integration Session. These interviews asked a series of questions and were used to determine 3rd and 4th level skill and use changes of participants' and organizational impact examples.
General Results
Participants reported improvements in positive emotions and an increased capacity to manage their stress and negative emotions. Improvements in productivity, communication effectiveness and job satisfaction were also noted.
Negative Emotional Affect
As participants learn to recognize and become aware of stress-producing emotional states such as anger, frustration, and fear in-the-moment, and to manage those emotions in-the-moment, transforming them into positive productive emotional states and actions; negative, draining, time-wasting emotions decrease significantly.
- "I have more self-awareness. I feel the burning (flushed, heart, blood)."
- "I do not explode the way I used to."
- "In general, at work, I haven't run out of here screaming. It's helping me survive."
- "I am managing and controlling my own reaction to irritants better. Less expenditure of energy over things I can't control."
Personal Effectiveness
As participants learn emotional self-awareness and self-management, their ability to think clearly and effectively improves. Self-motivation also improves at the same time. As a result participants think more clearly (mental and goal clarity), they communicate more effectively with peers and teammates, they get more work performed, thus increasing their personal and job satisfaction.
- "In general the tools have allowed me to focus on critical, important issues - My productivity is up 20%, I can do 5 days work in 4."
- "On my last project, I used the tools to really listen to when, what, how, instead of throwing up defenses. There was more cooperation, no doubt."
- "I'm more organized, more productive."
- "I'm working more and complaining less."
Positive Emotional Effect
Being able to manage one's emotions in-the-moment, which leads to greater personal effectiveness creates an overall more positive outlook in the participant. Instead of being anxious and distressed, participants are calmer and more peaceful, paving the way for creativity, innovation and improved teamwork.
- "I'm perceived as calmer, more together, more organized."
- "I feel better, more even."
- "I respond more to people. I'm doing more for them."
- "I find once I calm down and think more clearly, things flow."
Physical Symptoms of Stress
After the tools and techniques are used for awhile, the effects of coherent positive emotions and heart energy begin to be noticed and sensed physically. As the systems of the body (hormonal, digestive, cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, etc.) synchronize and start working in harmony more of the time, other benefits are realized.
- "I am now well rested with a clear head. I can work well all day. If I'm not rested or not feeling well, I'm distracted, not having the energy."
- "I'm sleeping better, I'm calmer, more relaxed."
- "I haven't had a migraine headache in a long time."
- "I'm feeling much less stress. I sleep better. I'm more organized, more focused. I'm a better listener."
Productivity Improvements
Three times during the 12-week program, each participant was asked to identify the percentage of productivity improvement (if any) he/she was experiencing using the new skills. To define productivity improvement, participants were asked how much of their work they were getting done in a shorter period of time, or how much more work were they getting done in the same amount of time. Directors and managers indicated 19 - 28% productivity improvement while engineers and support people averaged 38 - 48%. In this multi-contact program, the average productivity improvement increased from 10.25% in the week two integration session to 31.94% at week ten's integration session.
Return on Investment
To determine the value of the program to the client, each participant's salary was multiplied times the midpoint of the productivity improvement percentage. The sum value of the Developing EI Skills program to the client is conservatively calculated to be $264,529 per year.
Return on training investment can be determined in two basic ways. The first method requires subtracting the total costs of the investment (in this case out of pocket costs plus salary costs to attend the training) from the productivity improvements (in salary dollars) generated by the investment. The net return on investment in the program was calculated to be $ 216,092. The second method involves dividing the productivity improvements (in salary dollars) generated from the investment by the total costs of the investment (in this case out of pocket costs plus salary costs) to arrive at a ratio of return on investment. The return on investment ratio of the program was calculated to be 5.5 to 1.
Conclusion
The program was shown to increase productivity of the group trained by an average of approximately 32% over the twelve weeks of the training and coaching. This translates into $264,259 added value to the client based on participants' salaries. The return on investment ratio of the value to the cost of the program was 5.5 : 1. In addition, significant improvement occurred in all four of the personal and organizational quality constructs:
- Personal Effectiveness
- Positive Emotional Affect
- Physical Symptoms of Stress
- Negative Emotional Affect
These results suggest that the techniques provided in this program were effective in reducing the most fundamental source of participants' stress by giving them greater ability to manage and transform stress-producing perceptions and negative, emotional reactive patterns. Reducing stress allowed participants to dramatically improve their productivity, performance, interactions with others, and their own health.
Jane Schuman
A talented speaker, facilitator and trainer from Illinois, Jane Shuman has motivated, inspired, and coached workers in organizations as large and diverse as GE, AT&T, and the US Postal Service. Since 1995, Jane has delivered multiple programs on emotional intelligence, ranging from conference keynotes to in-depth training programs for employee development. Jane is an Independent Certified Trainer with the Institute of HeartMath. Jane's private sector clients include Siemens Rolm, the National Association of Electric Distributors, Quaker, Wendy's International and Philip Morris. Public sector clients include the US Postal Service, government municipalities, community colleges and K-12 school district administrative teams.
Byron Stock
Byron Stock is an internationally known motivational speaker and seminar leader, committed to making the workplace a better place - where employees flourish and productivity increases. With business experiences in manufacturing engineering, human resources, research and engineering, and corporate education functions, Byron works easily with a variety of industries and organizations. Byron has extensive experience in delivering speeches on the topic of emotional intelligence and facilitating Developing EI Skills workshops. Byron is an Independent Certified Trainer with the Institute of HeartMath. Some of his customers include the top one hundred executives at Georgia-Pacific, Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley, BellSouth Telecommunications, Microsoft, Kraft Foods, and the University of Western Australia.
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