Neil Wood

At the CIPD’s HRD conference in 2005 I came across the MHS (Multi-Health Systems) stand where I started a conversation with UK manager Paul Vella. We talked about measures of intelligence and how successful leaders seemed to have more than just a decent IQ – that leading and managing people was based primarily on relationships, the ability to influence and get the best from individuals. This discussion reaffirmed my belief that, by incorporating emotional intelligence (EI) development into our portfolio of leadership programmes at Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, we could give our leaders an edge. Research suggests that IQ is fixed yet our emotional quotient (EQ) can be developed, peaking in our fifties. With this in mind and following my gut feeling that developing EI was crucial to leadership success, I piloted a module on EI incorporating the BarOn EQ-i psychometric questionnaire in our leadership development programme in 2006.