Emotional Intelligence – Emphasising an Important Skill for Information Systems Students

The numbers of Information Systems (IS) graduates has increased dramatically in the last decade. This is due to several reasons including the business need for increased numbers of staff with business analysis and systems analysis skills. The Information Systems academic discipline has also matured in recent years as evidenced by the increasing numbers of IS conferences, focussed IS journals, curriculum accreditation standards and the awareness in schools of the IS discipline. IS students at UCT follow a 3 or 4 year business degree. Apart from the typical IT courses, the students are also exposed to a broad range of business skills. In the 3rd year, all students are taught project management skills that they then apply in a team-based systems development project. Whilst the students have been taught some leadership skills and some soft skills, there is currently little focus on behavioural skills. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a topic receiving a lot of attention in the popular press. Essentially EQ can be defined as the ability to monitor ones own feelings and other’s feelings and emotions. EQ can be categorised into 5 components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Goleman & Dalziel (1999) categorise these 5 components into 20 competencies and they argue that an effective project manager needs to be strong in 6 or more of them. They identify what he calls the "big eight " competencies including Self-Awareness, Self-Control, Achievement Drive, Initiative an