The latest thing. Or is it?

Do you have problems keeping up with the latest business trends that do the rounds?

Me too!

Some are now so out of fashion that sooner or later, just like that old cardi you’re hiding away in the cupboard, they’ll come back into the mainstream.

There are a number of useful tools that have come out of the NLP market place that are now used to enable HR professionals to asses current and potential employees. However, what I thought was a new one to me has popped up in two recent client meetings.

EI. Or Emotional Intelligence. EI describes the ability, capacity, skill or a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. As I understand it different models have been proposed for the definition of EI and some disagreement exists as to how the term should be used. Despite these disagreements, which are mainly highly technical, the ability EI and trait EI models enjoy support in the literature world and have successful applications in different domains.

So: something new for me to get my teeth into. At least so I thought until I mentioned this to a different client who then proceeded to tell me that EI is old hat! The phrase was apparently first coined in the early 80’s or possibly even earlier which definitely doesn’t make it the new kid on the block.