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The Agency Edge: The Human Advantage

Emotional Intelligence: the Agency advantage AI can’t copy

Emotional intelligence: the Intelligence AI Can’t Copy

“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.” (John D Rockefeller)

An historic quote but we’d argue it’s more relevant than ever in agency life today.

As we manage the staggering pace at which artificial intelligence is impacting the creative service world, we’re also seeing another intelligence move into the spotlight – Emotional Intelligence (EQ). As fast as we seek to automate everything in sight, agency leaders must remember that EQ will be the differentiator that sits behind an increasingly AI-driven offer.

It’s EQ that sparks the understanding and creativity for a pitch winning idea.

It’s EQ that comes to the fore when handling those angry client calls or the performance conversation you’ve been avoiding.

It’s even EQ when you decide to do something different in the moment to get a new business pitch back on track and the rest of the team sits stunned because it didn’t happen in rehearsals.

In short, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is our ability to understand ourselves and others, make decisions with empathy and build meaningful and trusted stakeholder relationships.

It’s these relationships that are central to agency success.  For example:

  • Trusted advice.  As AI streamlines many routine services, agencies are leaning more on their strategic counsel to differentiate. As this trend continues, the ability to establish trusted advisor client relationships using our EQ is more important than ever.
  • Leading and inspiring your team. Emotions drive people and people drive performance.  As competition for talent continues to grow, its managers and leaders who can best connect with, build trust, inspire and ultimately retain top talent who will thrive.  AI tools will not replace the human skills required to get the best from your teams – that’s EQ.  
  • EQ is earned and learned, not programmed…And it boosts your team’s well-being.  EQ provides the self-awareness and regulation to build resilience, manage stress and reframe challenges – allowing us to not just withstand adversity but learn and grow from it.  The best performing agency teams demonstrate high EQ.  
  • Sometimes, you’ve got to trust your gut – especially when hiring!  AI might be able to tell you a given candidate is the best fit for the job based on a set of criteria.  But when it comes to hiring decisions, how often does your gut tell you one thing while the paperwork says another – the former often proving to be correct! That’s EQ at work.

So how can you develop EQ?

The good news is that unlike our IQ (which is largely fixed), our EQ can be developed.  One of the fastest ways we’ve found to build it in agency teams is Insights Discovery — because it gives people a shared language for behaviour under pressure.

It uses a simple but powerful four colour model to increase self-awareness, deepen our understanding of others and develop the skills to adapt our interactions for maximum success.

Each colour energy reflects a set of behavioural traits. While we all have splashes of all four colour energies, what determines our behavioural and interaction preferences is how much of each energy we naturally possess.

Insights Discovery and EQ - Emotional Intelligence

Predominantly, we tend to display both the strengths and the potential weaknesses of our two most dominant colour energies.  The remaining two colour energies will show up occasionally but are less visible in general.

Colour energies

This insight is gold dust when it comes to developing our self-awareness and self-control – both essential for developing our EQ.

Helpfully, we can then use the same tool to recognise the behavioural and communication preferences of others and find ways to adapt our interactions for greater success.  The graphic below indicates how best to connect with each colour energy.

Emotional Intelligence. Insights Discovery colour energies

So there you have it.  One powerful tool to help boost your EQ.  Give it a try with your teams and clients.  Identify their top two colour energies.  Then employ some of the corresponding tips to enhance your interactions (think managing, motivating, pitching, influencing and so on).        

People buy people

When it comes down to it, agencies are and will remain people businesses.  It’s your people who determine how good your offer is and how good the results are.  They determine the strength and depth of your client relationships and how engaged, motivated and inspired your teams are.  AI will undoubtedly continue to change the landscape at pace but it’s our EQ that will ultimately attract, engage and retain the clients.

If you’d like to explore how to build more self-awareness and behavioural flexibility across your team, drop us a line at info@ambergroup.net.

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