HR Leaders Identify Top Brain Talents Needed for 2024

Over 300 HR professionals in Italy select the top emotional intelligence Brain Talents that will be essential in 2024 and beyond.

By Lorenzo Fariselli

What are the Brain Talents that HR leaders consider strategic to practice in 2024 to lead transformational change and put PEOPLE at the center of every organization?

Finding the answer to this question marks the high point of a collaboration this year between Six Seconds EQBiz, the corporate division of the world’s largest emotional intelligence nonprofit, and HRC, Italy’s largest HR Community. These two organizations worked together this year to send a clear message: Emotional Intelligence is vital to HR departments and entire companies.

Emotional Intelligence Dashboards for HR Teams

Every year HRC awards the top HR departments in 5 different categories: development, digital transformation, diversity & inclusion, employer branding & talent acquisition, and engagement & internal communication. This year, however, they added another category: Emotional Intelligence Dashboards based on the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence assessment (SEI). With the extraordinary support of Six Seconds Italy’s EQ Biz Consultants and the HRC L&D function, 467 HR leaders completed the SEI Assessment and more than 50 companies received team Dashboards, with data on:

– Average Emotional Intelligence. A score that synthesizes the ability to integrate rationality (what we think) with emotions (what we feel) to choose and decide what is most sustainable and important. A figure that highlights how full the team’s tank is and how well equipped the team is for the road ahead.

– Top Brain Styles of team members. Each of us have different ways of linking thoughts and emotions. Knowing your own Brain Style and those of other team members allows you to set up communication more effectively and efficiently.

– Top and bottom Brain Talents to become aware of any strengths or obstacles to achieving optimal Performance.

– The current level of Performance, based on Success Factors such as Effectiveness, Relationships, Wellbeing and Quality of Life.

Looking at the data from all 50 companies, here are 3 key takeaways from the research:

3 Key Takeaways: EQ and Performance

There are 3 key pieces of information emerging from the perceptions of the nearly 500 HR professionals who took the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence assessment (SEI).

1. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is strongly correlated with performance. As emotional intelligence increases for HR professionals, performance increases. This is a strong, positive correlation, as you can see on the graph below.

2. Performance indicators show HR high in Achievement, but low in Influence.

The Emotional Intelligence Dashboard includes a snapshot of a group or team’s key performance indicators.

What are the greatest strengths and challenges of this group of HR professionals?

Highest indicators

Achievement (Realizzazione in Italian) – The group’s top performance indicator, this high Achievement score highlights the HR department’s ability to ground strategy by focusing on operations.

Networking & Community – The next two highest performance indicators put a spotlight on HR’s role focusing on people and relationships. These professionals on average play an important role in the social and relational network of the company.

Lowest indicators

Influence (Influenza in Italian) – Even though this cohort plays a critical role in social connection, the low score on Influence points to a greater difficulty in influencing people and effectively engaging them in change processes.

Wellbeing – (Salute General in Italian) – Is HR so focused on other people that they sacrifice their own wellbeing? This data suggests this is a risk. While this is a noble thing because it aligns with HR’s mission as a people-supporting function, it puts a shadow on the sustainability of HR teams’ performance over the medium and long-term.

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3. The group’s top Brain Talents seem oriented toward social connection and short-term production, but possibly at the expense of long-term vision.

Based on robust research with thousands of leaders, Six Seconds identified 18 essential Brain Talents. Like a smartphone app, these “Brain Apps” are tools to build effectiveness. Below you will see all 18 Brain Talents on the left, and the HR cohort’s top and bottom talents to the right.

The 18 Brain Talents

HRC Cohort: Top & Bottom Talents

The top talents are Commitment and Proactivity, which provide motivation and energy to keep moving forward and get the job done. Next comes Connection, which is about empathy and supports HR’s role in sustaining relationships.

The bottom Talents are Prioritizing, Vision and Adaptability. The low score in Prioritizing may result from organizations asking employees to do more with less, creating a sense of high urgency and overwhelm. That sense of overwhelm may also show up in the low score for Vision. When we feel overwhelmed, we feel unable to take a strategic and intentional look at the future. After years of change and uncertainty, many employees feel burnt out and lack enthusiasm for practicing more Adaptability.

These less practiced talents lead to low performance in Influence and activate the need for a development process that makes HR a leading division for the organization. HR at the center means people at the center. That’s the central challenge!

Talents for the Future: Looking Ahead to 2024

As we look forward to 2024, what are the talents that HR leaders consider essential to practice in 2024 to be a leading figure in a transformation process, capable of putting PEOPLE at the center of every organization?

The response from the more than 300 HR professionals present at the awards night set the course for the future:

Data Mining. Think about how much information should be considered day-to-day in the organization that is never considered. Knowing how to collect and analyze emotional data is a key element for a people-focused organization.

Critical Thinking. The company is a highly complex organism, and critical thinking can be an important key to evaluating situations and challenging one’s own beliefs and biases. This skill helps us filter critical information from what’s superfluous.

Vision. Guided by one’s purpose, Vision is the north star that guides HR actions within organizations. When there is clarity about the future and the path forward, it builds energy and attracts more and more people into the change process.

These Brain Talents speak to the need for the HR sector to train and develop Emotional Intelligence in all its parts. In the Six Seconds Model of Emotional Intelligence, there are 3 parts that complement each other: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and Self-Direction. The 3 Brain Talents chosen for 2024 represent each area. HR has stated the need and the desire to increase their awareness by gathering information more and more precisely through emotional data mining, managing themselves by critically evaluating the importance of emotional data, and directing themselves towards the future in an increasingly conscious way with a clear, shared vision.

This is the commitment made by HR. EQ Biz and HRC L&D will be in support, with head and heart.