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Proven Emotional Intelligence Required

Maria DWEGGAH, WHO

The Gobal Fund is recruiting. The following text is taken from the body of the vacancy notices (VN): “The Global Fund, established in 2001, is an independent public-private partnership. The Global Fund has an agreement with the World Health Organization whereby WHO provides secretariat services to the Global Fund. It is the largest global fund in the health domain, with over USD 2.0 billion currently committed. The purpose of the Global Fund is to attract, manage and disburse additional resources to make a sustainable and significant contribution to mitigate the impact caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in countries in need, and contributing to poverty reduction as part of the Millennium Development Goals.

This vacancy is in the Secretariat of the Global Fund. The Secretariat translates the Fund’s objectives and strategies into daily business operations, building on best practice from the public and private sectors. The Secretariat is established as a highly professional, non-hierarchical and lean organization. The Global Fund is looking for staff with strong commitment, an open mind-set, entrepreneurial and flexible attitude as well as proven emotional intelligence.”

Two interesting things to note: one, there are no grades mentioned, although at the bottom of each VN the comparative compensation package level in the UN system is given. The other is a new and welcomed addition to the VN language—proven emotional intelligence, a concept which too often takes back seat to technical competence and intellect but which is just as important, if not more so.

First of all chapeau to the person who wrote the vacancy notices. You have demonstrated a fresh approach currently practiced by other agencies such as the WTO and the World Bank, a step toward doing away with the discriminatory G/P nomenclatures of the UN system. As WHO, and most, if not all UN agencies still use the G/P category, the VN for Executive Secretary for instance, was directed to the General Service
(G) Staff Vacancies while the others (managers and technical officers) were escorted to the Professional Staff Vacancy Notices. Perhaps there should be a separate category for such VNs entitled simply Vacancies.

Proven emotional intelligence – I can help out with the definition, but it will be up to you to prove it at an interview. Daniel Goleman, creator of the term and author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence defines it as the ability to: “motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope.”

He continues, “Unlike IQ, with its nearly one-hundred-year history of research with hundreds of thousands of people, emotional intelligence is a new concept. No one can yet say exactly how much of the variability from person to person in life’s course it accounts for. But what data exist suggest it can be as powerful, and at times more powerful than IQ”.

If you attended the seminar on Emotional Intelligence organized by our colleague Monique Eïd, member of the Editorial Board of the UNSpecial, you may be ahead of many of your colleagues. This seminar was held on 31 May 2002 at WHO and was part of an ongoing activity of the WHO Staff Association to provide lunchtime discussions on topics of interest to staff at large. The presenter was Mr Norbert Apter, practicing psychotherapist in Geneva.

His presentation was clear, fun and worthwhile. He started off the hour by defining emotional intelligence, often quoting Goleman. He gave examples of the primary emotions—fear, anger, love, pleasure, sadness, and shame and explained their purpose and roots. He continued his presentation by assuring us that it is ok to have emotions but that we should be aware of them, accept them and master them. We should not become a victim to them. Where we often get trapped is in not knowing what to do with them, how to handle them or how to express them. And this in a nutshell is what emotional intelligence is all about—hearing, listening and mastering our emotions and choosing how to express them. It is understanding what is really behind them and how we react to other people’s emotions.

If you are interested in learning more about emotional intelligence, read Goleman’s book. Here is the review by The New York Times: “Goleman’s fascinating and persuasive book argues that our view of intelligence is too narrow, ignoring crucial range of abilities that matter immensely for how we do in life.

Drawing on the groundbreaking brain and behavioral research Goleman shows the factors at work when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well. These factors, which include self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy, add up to a different way of being smart—one he terms “emotional intelligence.” While childhood is a critical time for its development, emotional intelligence is not fixed at birth. It can be nurtured and strengthened through adulthood—with immediate benefits to our health, our relationships and our work.”