Behavioral Competencies Of Digital Professionals: Understanding The Role Of Emotional Intelligence

125 Pages·2020·1.657 MB·English

by  Sara Bonesso, Elena Bruni, Fabrizio Gerli

Behavioral Competencies
of Digital Professionals
Understanding the Role of
Emotional Intelligence
Sara Bonesso
Elena Bruni
Fabrizio Gerli
Behavioral Competencies of Digital Professionals
“I encounter many data scientists and analysts whose sole focus is solving analytical
problems and developing accurate models. They are not very effective in their
roles because they can’t build trust and interact effectively with people. They all
need to read this excellent book and adopt its recommendations!”.
—Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor, Babson College, Research
Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Author of Competing on
Analytics and The AI Advantage
“Big data, Digital disruption, new jobs and competencies: we are familiar with the
big picture but we are not equipped to have a practical and helpful framework to
guide us. Sure, technical skills will remain necessary but are not sufficient. This
book provides a compelling, credible and sound narrative to de-code complexity
by developing a set of competencies (action, social, awareness, cognitive, explora-
tion and organizational) supported by emotional intelligence. A must read for
Leaders and HR practitioners, for the intellectual curious eager to understand that
Human Beings will have to remain central to Human Development”.
—Paolo Gallo, Author, Executive Coach, former CHRO at World Economic
Forum, World Bank and European Bank, www.paologallo.net
Sara Bonesso • Elena Bruni
Fabrizio Gerli
Behavioral
Competencies of
Digital Professionals
Understanding the Role of Emotional Intelligence
Sara Bonesso Elena Bruni
Department of Management Department of Management
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Venice, Italy Venice, Italy
Department of Business and
Fabrizio Gerli
Management
Department of Management
LUISS Guido Carli University
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Rome, Italy
Venice, Italy
ISBN 978-3-030-33577-9 ISBN 978-3-030-33578-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33578-6
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F
oreword
Titles of books are a major challenge. I am seriously bad at it. For example,
I titled my first book of research on competencies predicting outstanding
and superior performance in the private and public sector, The Competent
Manager. If I had known that same year, 1982, In Search of Excellence
would sell 4 million copies in its first couple of years, I could have used
that title and invited readers to a more exciting experience. After all, that
was exactly what I was describing with a voluminous set of data. The
German publishers all but insured that our 2002 international best seller,
Primal Leadership, would not even make up the advance in Germany by
calling it The Emotional Leader. Titles are a tough choice.
Don’t be misled by the somewhat boring title of Sara Bonesso’s, Elena
Bruni’s, and Fabrizio Gerli’s latest book, Behavioral Competencies of
Digital Professionals. They have written the Rosetta Stone of the digital
mind and lifestyle! It is an exciting book about how professionals in our
digital age can navigate the interpersonal and conceptual domain of their
subordinates and colleagues, competitors and hard technology to adapt,
innovate and perform better than others. Working with technology and
digital transformations is not an individual effort, it is a team sport.
Without others, no one will buy your goods or services, no one will remain
working with you, and your great ideas will be relegated to the trash heap
of things that “could have been.”
Let me explain two underlying discoveries that illustrate how important
their work about behavioral and emotional intelligence competencies are
to digital work. The first discovery comes to us from neuroscience.
Professor Anthony Jack’s opposing domains theory and work on opposing
v
vi FOREWORD
poles of reasoning has shown that among the many neural networks, two
are particularly important to our work: the Analytic Network (formally
called the Task Positive Network); and the Empathic Network (formally
called the Default Mode Network).
The Analytic Network enables us to solve problems, make decisions
and focus our perceptual and mental work. Any time we engage in analytic
work with abstractions, like building an information system or securing a
system from cybercrime, or numerical work, like analyzing financial data,
we use the Analytic Network. When companies place major emphasis on
the financial performance, metrics or goals, they activate the AN repeat-
edly. People who go into financial, analytic, software and digital work,
often have a disposition to engage in such activities. People who have IQs
above the normal range are also disposed to be analytic and think in
abstractions.
The Empathic Network enables us to be open to new ideas, scan the
environment for observations of trends and patterns, be open to people
and emotions. We need this network when interacting with others, under-
standing them or learning and innovating. When organizations emphasize
staying in touch with customers, patient experience, understanding your
staff, they emphasize the EN.
Sadly, these two neural networks suppress each other! Yes, activating
one suppresses the other. Activating one repeatedly, suppresses the other
repeatedly. In fact, activating one repeatedly on top of a possible pre-
disposition to engage that network over the other is a recipe for narrow
minded approaches to anything! Often, the appeal of digital work is
greater to people more comfortable with the AN than the EN – and the
nature of the work feeds that predisposition and over-emphasizes the AN
over the EN.
In the past, many scholars and consultants have discussed the differ-
ences in management or leadership styles and approach of those that are
task versus people oriented. This is further exaggerated by people claiming
rational versus emotional difference sin approaches to thinking. The
underlying causes of these distinctions are these two networks. Both the
AN and EN are cognitive processes. Both involve reasoning. But they base
the reasoning on different stimuli. Digital work invites a lopsided activa-
tion at work which can easily contagiously spread to how people live
their lives.
This new book on behavioral competencies and in particular EI helps
the reader orient themselves toward a more effective balance of the AN
FOREWORD vii
and EN. It helps to establish the empirical basis for working with both
neural networks. It explains and shines a light on how the intricate combi-
nation and integration of a person’s cognitive and emotional competen-
cies results in outstanding performance.
But the person is not static. The second major discovery is about
change. The last 25 years of medical and behavioral research has shown us
that humans are malleable from how we act with others to our DNA. Yes,
we do affect our genetics in two major ways. First, we have experiences,
consume certain foods and manage our moods to turn our genes on and
off. Geneticists call it gene expression. Second, our life experiences (and
even before we are born our birth Mother’s experiences) actually can
change out genetic make-up in profound ways. All of that brings us back
to the point that not only does our body renew itself (or die) all of the
time at the cellular levels but our spirit and what excites us also changes
(life and career cycle changes).
We now know that adult humans can create new neurons from stem
cells in parts of our brain. It is called neurogenesis. We also know that
“annoying” stress episodes can cause hormones to enter our bloodstream
that inhibit or stop this neurogenesis. We know that the deluge of annoy-
ing stress, not to mention acute stress that bombard us daily cause a dete-
rioration in our cognitive, emotional and perceptual capabilities – the
effect of activating our Sympathetic Nervous System. Meanwhile, our
bodies have the amazing capability to reverse that through another part of
our autonomic nervous system, the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
At the behavioral level, and in terms of the specific competencies that
predict effectiveness in a wide range of leadership and professional roles in
most countries of the world, we know that adults can dramatically develop
these competencies. Whether you are focusing on those we call emotional,
social or cognitive intelligence, they can be developed and the changes
sustained over years. The published research studies of my colleagues,
including Bonesso, Bruni and Gerli and myself have shown that in the past
25  years. Others have been showing this effect during the same
period of time.
So why do we persist in thinking that we cannot change? First, change
is difficult. Most training programs in government and industry, as well as
graduate education programs produce little sustained, desired change in
these competencies. So we often conclude that people do not change
because we have typically been so ineffective at inspiring and engaging
durable or sustained changes. Second, people often focus on traits. These
viii FOREWORD
are the deeper, relatively stable characteristics we have, like openness or
agreeableness, conscientiousness or introversion. But here as well, recent
research is showing that people can change on even these deep traits.
Our recent neuroimaging and hormonal studies have affirmed an
approach to helping people change called coaching with compassion. That
is, helping people change toward their dreams, values and calling (i.e.,
sense of purpose). The studies show, quite clearly, that the more typical
approach of giving people feedback and trying to help of fix them does the
reverse. It slows change and makes it less sustaining. It is like New Year’s
Eve resolutions – the effort lasts no more than 3 weeks, if that long.
This brings us back to the hope which you will experience in reading
Sara, Elena and Fabrizio’s new book. You CAN change! You CAN become
more effective! You CAN move closer to your dreams. This is not some
naïve hope. It is based on our experiences and decades of our and col-
leagues published academic research studies.
Richard E. Boyatzis is Distinguished University Professor, Case Western
Reserve University, Co-author of the international best seller, Primal
Leadership and the new book, Helping People Change.
Cleveland, OH, USA Richard E. Boyatzis
P
reFace
Why do some people get exceptional results? How can we improve the
performance of individuals and teams? These are some questions that
probably every CEO, HR director, and manager, asks himself every day.
And they are not the only ones asking these questions. Business schools,
universities, teachers, and trainers are all asking the same questions. In
addition, of course, to all those who work within organizations of every
kind and want to improve themselves.
To provide an answer to this kind of questions the Ca’ Foscari
Competency Centre was founded in 2012 within the Ca’ Foscari University
of Venice, Italy. A team of researchers works with the aim to increase the
performance of people, through the development of their behavioral com-
petencies. People think that having more technical skills allows them to
obtain better results. But for more than thirty years, scientific research has
taught us that although technical skills are required to perform a job, they
alone do not allow to obtain an excellent performance. On the contrary,
behavioral competencies, like emotional, social and cognitive competen-
cies, are the actual determinants of an outstanding performance. Within
the Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre, and in collaboration with the best
scholars and research centers in the world on these topics, we develop
training courses to improve these skills, tools to evaluate them and – above
all – we do a lot of research to identify the most relevant ones for specific
roles and for carrying out specific processes.
This book seeks to answer the above questions, exploring some big data
roles, which are emerging jobs extremely requested and critical for the
competitiveness of organizations, and contains the results of our research
ix
x PREFACE
on their behavioral competencies. This book is a journey into the still
unexplored world of data scientists and data analysts, into the world of the
problems they have to solve every day, of the situations that require their
intervention and of the behaviors they adopt to address them. For those
who already do these jobs, it is also a guide for evaluating themselves and
comparing themselves to others, to better understand one’s own strengths
and weaknesses and to learn the ways to acquire some competencies that
today are not adequately possessed. For those who are approaching these
jobs, it is a way to immerse themselves into the reality and understand
what their real contents are. For those who are in charge of training pro-
grams, and for educational institutions, it is a tool to guide the design of
new courses and curricula, which include the development of behavioral
competencies and use consistent tools and methods. For all the others, it
aims to be a map to move towards a better awareness of what is needed for
a better performance.
Venice, Italy Sara Bonesso
Venice, Italy Elena Bruni
Venice, Italy Fabrizio Gerli