EI: Emotional Intelligence assessments
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Can you have your emotional intelligence assessed? Yes. There are an increasing number of emotional intelligence assessments available. I have found that some are far more relevant, useful and statistically sound than others. They also vary in the way that they assess your emotional intelligence and in the types of emotional skills they focus on.
The emotional intelligence assessments also differ because of the definition or model of emotional intelligence upon which they are based. Some emotional intelligence assessments are quite general in nature, and are based on a broad ranging definition of emotional intelligence. Thus, they may include aspects of social behaviour, relationship management or personality traits, for instance, as well as measures of emotions. Assessments such as these therefore, in my opinion, give you a broad ranging examination of many facets of your behaviour and are not really specific to emotional intelligence, as it was originally defined and intended. The first thing to do therefore, when considering emotional intelligence assessments, is to check out the author's definition of emotional intelligence. The second thing to do is to look at the content of the tasks: do they appear to be assessing emotions and emotional knowledge, or something broader than that? Some I have evaluated have language that is not really about emotions at all. Thirdly, determine whether the assessments have been empirically evaluated or not. Are there peer reviewed articles and research showing the reliability and validity of the results, and proving that they do actually assess emotional intelligence? Of the assessments that are available there are three I will discuss more fully.
I am an accredited user of both the GENOS and MSCEIT and I have been assessed on both. I have been assessed on the SEI too but have not taken up the opportunity to train in its use. Rather than covering all the theoretical aspects of each assessment, I will focus on my own personal review of them based on my own experiences. If you want a fuller account of the issues surrounding emotional intelligence assessments these have been written about at length in the book:
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Emotional intelligence tests vary in both style and content so what are the different ways to test your emotional intelligence? Watch our video to find out.
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1. The GENOS emotional intelligence assessments.The Genos Emotional Intelligence assessments are focused exclusively on emotional intelligence and emotional behaviours in the workplace. They evaluate your overall emotional intelligence, and your skills on each of the seven dimensions of emotional intelligence in their model. Their research clearly shows, for example, that the assessments measure a paradigm significantly different from measurements of personality and IQ. The basis of their assessments are two-fold. They have both a self-report measure and a 360 multi-rater assessment. In the 360 they invite you to rate yourself on a number of emotionally driven workplace behaviours. Thus, you are asked to rate statements such as:
You rate these on a scale of 1-5: almost never, seldom, sometimes, usually, almost always. This is done online and takes about 20 minutes. In addition, approximately 12 other people, selected by you, also rate you on similar statements. The people are selected from different categories, such as, senior people, peers and direct reports. The people give their answers anonymously. Typical statements for them may include:
Just from these few examples alone it is apparent that emotions are the main focus of the statements, e.g. anger, frustration, upset and feelings, are some of the words used. There is some debate over whether it is appropriate to ask others to measure someone's emotional intelligence as they may not be aware of specific emotions driving a person's behaviour, for example. However, these statements do cover items that raters can rank, e.g. asks others how they feel. I have found the assessment results very useful and highly relevant in understanding the impact that a person's emotionally driven behaviours can have in the workplace. The comprehensive normative data available on both Australian leaders and Australian employees have also struck favour with my Australian clients. I have found it very helpful to consider the differences between the self-report ratings and those given by senior people, peers and direct reports. Sometimes there have been large differences and my clients have discovered that the way they are perceived, at least by certain sections of their workforce, can differ quite radically from their own perceptions. For example, I remember a senior management team who all had their emotional intelligence assessment conducted at the same time. They were very surprised to find that while they rated their understanding of staff emotions highly, their staff totally disagreed. Not a single member of the team received a staff rating above the 49 percentile on this dimension and many received far lower ratings than this. If an executive team wishes to engage their staff this is very important information to gain. The Genos Emotional Intelligence assessments technical manual can be downloaded here. In case you are interested in cross cultural applications the manual includes "Nation Specific Norms and Analyses" for America, Asia, South Africa and China. Recent references and research on the Genos assessments are available. If you would like to have your emotional intelligence assessed on the Genos 360 emotional intelligence assessment please contact me on or visit our assessment page for more details.
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2. The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (The MSCEIT)The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, (The MSCEIT), is an ability-based computer assessment involving a series of tasks. The tasks cover different categories of skills as outlined in their four stage model of emotional intelligence. Different pictures and scenarios are presented and you are asked to solve problems about emotions, or problems that require the use of emotion. Specifically they include: Perceiving Emotions
Facilitating Thought
Understanding Emotions
Managing Emotions
There are 141 items. Although I am accredited in the assessment I have never used it on someone else, as my own results made little sense to me. I am also not convinced that the tasks translate to how my clients understand emotions and apply their skills in real time, with real people, at work. One of the tasks is the identification of emotions in artwork. If I can't do this does this mean I'm not emotionally intelligent? I don't think so. It may just mean I don't care about art! Also, there is, to me, a big difference between my being able to look at a picture of a face and work out what emotion is shown, and being able to do that in a real interaction with a group of people over lunch, while talking business and wanting to make a good impression. One aspect I do like, is the keen focus of the MSCEIT on the assessment of people's emotional knowledge. I found this quite different from the GENOS and very interesting. Emotional knowledge is an important part of emotional intelligence. Suffice to say I don't at present use this assessment. However, it is used by others, partly as a result of the ease with which it can be administered, and also because of the lack of expense involved. This makes it easier for people in recruitment to use. In comparison, a GENOS 360 involves a lot more people, time and expense.
Ease and speed of administration, however, don't mean that the results are of value. More information on the MSCEIT can be found here. It includes a sample report of results.
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3. Six Seconds (SEI)The six seconds model is fairly new to me. It is based on their model of:
I am not trained in the model but have completed the SEI recently. It is a simple self-report survey, with just over 80 questions. Here are some sample questions from it:
Each item is rated on a 1-5 point scale: I disagree / Partially disagree / Neither disagree nor agree / Partially agree / I agree. I am not sure it is simply measuring emotions, emotional knowledge or emotional intelligence. It has a broader scope for its definition than either the GENOS or the MSCEIT. As you can see it includes, for instance, questions related to goal achievement and to one's purpose in life. (It believes alignment with purpose brings happiness.) It said on my results analysis that my three main strengths were:
While the results may be interesting it seems to measure items in addition to emotional intelligence, by my definition. I have included it here only because someone in one of my LinkedIn groups asked if anyone knew what it was! |
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Other emotional intelligence assessments you might come across:1. The Emotional Competence Inventory, (ECI) or the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, (ESCI). These have been developed by the Hay Group, and are based on the emotional competencies identified by Daniel Goleman in his book, "Working with Emotional Intelligence", (1998). The ECI is reported to measure 18 competencies organised into four main areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
For example, the self-awareness area contains three competencies:
2. Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory - EQ-i. This covers both emotional and social intelligence.
Five of the items covered under the intrapersonal skills of self-awareness and self-expression include:
I think these assessments have moved outside of the definition of emotional intelligence under discussion on this site, and have included a broad range of human behaviours, some of which we have known about for a long time. For example, personality theory, assertiveness, etc. The results may be interesting, it's just that I don't think they cover precise measures of emotional intelligence as originally defined. I acknowledge they are both used extensively. I like to know what is being measured! I have used measures of personality for years, for example, and am looking for emotional intelligence assessments that build on existing knowledge and that provide us with something new, and about emotions. Please feel able to let me know about any experiences you have had with having your emotional intelligence assessed on any test.
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If you would like to have your emotional intelligence assessed on the Genos 360 emotional intelligence assessment:
Please contact me on: or, Visit our assessment page for more details, Or pick up the phone and call 08 9390 1188. We will be happy to arrange this for you and explain the significance of the results afterwards.
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