Dr. Dana Ackley speaks about EQ

What is The EQ Leader Program 2.0?

The EQ Leader Program 2.0 is a turnkey coaching program, presented in a 483 page manual accompanied by a flash drive containing customizable files, that helps leaders build Emotional Intelligence skills.

EQ Leader, Inc. works with organizations, their leaders, and their leadership teams to build those elusive non-technical skills that make the difference between ordinary performance and outstanding performance.

Self Awareness: Assessments help leaders and teams know where their strengths lie, and what areas of development would yield the most value. They are specifically designed to identify hidden, often self-imposed barriers to getting to the next level of performance.

Leader Development-Coaching/skill building: Using assessment as a road map, we help leaders overcome obstacles that have stopped them from achieving key goals. Awareness and skill building help leaders break through past limitations. Leaders become poised to achieve superior performance and greater success for their organizations.

Team Development: High performance teams create synergistic outcomes. Dysfunctional teams fail to fully reach critical goals. We help teams pinpoint problem areas in team functioning and learn the five skills critical to team success. Guided practice helps teams bring this new knowledge to life.

Star Performer Studies: We use a tested research process to identify star performers in your organization’s critical positions, allowing you to discover which specific non-technical skills are most likely to help people in these positions succeed. The Star Performer analysis can be applied both to selection and to development.

Leader Selection: The right EQ skills matter as much to success as the right technical skills and knowledge. We can help your organization master this part of the equation. We help you 1) identify the specific qualities, beyond technical skills, that would enable candidates to create the atmosphere needed to carry out your organization’s mission, vision, and values, 2) measure those qualities in leading candidates, and 3) select the best candidates, with predictions for job performance and recommendations for development for those top candidates.

Succession Planning: EQ Leader can help you select and develop the people you need to fill your leadership pipeline. Making sure that the right people get the right development at the right time ensures ongoing organizational success.

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

An obscure term in the early 1990s, EQ has become a staple of corporate learning. Thousands of studies demonstrate the high value that EQ skills provide to organizations. Leaders with strong EQ vastly outperform low EQ leaders. As a result, demand for effective ways to strengthen EQ is at an all-time high. Coaches who deliver value have a powerful competitive advantage.

Who was The EQ Leader Program 2.0 written for?

The EQ Leader Program 2.0 was written for external and internal executive coaches, consultants, Chief Learning Officers and HR professionals who make decisions about leader development, coaching programs, and faculty in graduate level programs, among others. In conjunction with a coach or consultant, it can be used by managers, supervisors, leaders of professional practices, and anybody who develops leaders.

Originally published in 2006 by MHS – (Multi Health Systems, Toronto), it has been used successfully by coaches around the world. Its author, Dana C. Ackley, Ph.D., has used the program to generate millions of dollars of revenue for his company.

Its science-based methods create sustainable behaviour change. The updated version, The EQ Leader Program 2.0, which became available in October 2020, contains a wealth of new information and ideas gained by Dr. Ackley through his use of the program over the intervening 14 years.

What does “Turnkey” mean?

Turnkey means “fully equipped; a ready-to-go into operation.” In this context, turnkey means that the EQ Leader Program 2.0 is ready to be used out of the box. It lets you maximize billable time by saving potentially hundreds of hours of uncompensated development time. And, it can be delivered in person or virtually, which is important in times when you and your clients may need to social distance.

What does The EQ Leader Program 2.0 include?

The EQ Leader Program 2.0 (EQL) includes original content from version 1.0, updated to include what Dr. Ackley has learned in the fourteen years since the first edition was published. In addition, it now aligns with the EQ-i  2.0, the best scientifically validated measure of EQ available.

EQL takes clients through 1) an introductory workshop to win the hearts and minds of participants, 2) a comprehensive, science-based assessment of current clients’ EQ skills, to help them discover strengths as well as areas for improvement, 3) development planning to customize the program to each individual, and 4) executive coaching tools to guide learning. This sequence creates high engagement and lasting growth, and thus, real value. In addition, EQL includes guidance on marketing and selling your services, because no one gets coaching until a coach wins a contract. Finally, EQL includes guidance on delivering the program virtually when necessary.

The program is entirely customizable to fit different coaches’ needs, styles, and preferences. All customizable files, including PowerPoint presentations, speaker’s notes, emails, exercises, handouts, questionnaires, interviews, templates for report writing, and even marketing worksheets, are included on a flashdrive which accompanies the program manual.

I already own the original program. What’s new in 2.0?

• Updated: Keynote workshop
• New: A second sample workshop, this one for specialized audiences
• Updated: Ways to structure an EQ assessment
• New: Sample individualized report for the EQ-i 2.0
• New: Sample individualized report for the EQ 360
• New: Individualized EQ-i 2.0 interpretive protocol
• Updated: Instructions for the debrief process to engage clients in coaching
• Updated: Ten step developmental planning process for teams and large groups
• New: Guidance on coaching issues, including the nature of an effective coaching relationship, boundaries, confidentiality, flexibility, structure, ROI, and many more
• New: twenty-five coaching tools
• Updated: 186 exercises designed to guide clients’ efforts in building EQ skills – one set for each EQ skill – printable on your letterhead to give to your clients. Includes exercises for the newly broken out skill of Emotional Expression.
• New: Instructions for virtual program delivery
• Expanded: Six Steps of Marketing
• Expanded: How to negotiate win/win contracts with organizations
• New: How to overcome sales anxiety

Does it make sense to be getting something like this in the middle of the pandemic?

Business may be slow right now because of the pandemic. Yet the need for leader and executive development isn’t going away. It’s growing. Crises expose leadership gaps you can help fill.

The consultants and coaches who will be in business a year from now are those who spend down time preparing for the torrent of demand that will arise. Organizations will find ways to invest as if their survival depends on it. It does.

There are many ways you can prepare for the coming demand: upgrade your marketing plan, sharpen your skills, master a new approach. The EQ Leader Program 2.0 (EQL) is one way to do all three. At nearly 500 pages, EQL is a turnkey comprehensive program which coaches can use to help leaders build their EQ. In addition to programs and processes that have been field tested by coaches around the world, EQL includes sections on sales and marketing, as well as ideas for doing the program virtually.

I run a coach training program. Is The EQ Leader Program 2.0 (EQL) something I could use?

The EQ Leader Program 2.0 could be a useful addition to what you offer in two ways:

1. You could use the program as one of your textbooks, adding to your offerings without having to spend the many hours required to create a new course.
2. You could offer the manual to your alumni as one way to maintain your relationship with them. Contact us about revenue sharing.

Here are some details.

Benefits for coach training programs:

• Easily add EQ Coaching to your repertoire of courses
• Prepare students for success with organizations of all sizes
• Help your students learn to sell their services (successful graduates refer their colleagues)
• Support principles and ethics that you teach
• Optional revenue sharing from manual sales (contact us to discuss)

If you use EQL as the basis for one of your courses, your students will:

• Get exposure to science-based laws of sustainable behaviour change, supporting what you have been teaching them.
• Learn to market and sell services, enhancing the economic value of having gone through your program.
• Have access to ready-made, field tested workshops proven to engage participants.
• Learn about EQ assessment models that identify clients’ coaching needs
• Review critical issues and decision making in conducting a coaching relationship
• Explore twenty-five coaching tools
• Have access to 186 field tested EQ skill-building exercises used with clients.

A Resource for Alums: 

If you like to keep in touch with your alumni, sharing information about EQL can be an opportunity to do so. They may be glad to hear about a resource that:

• Can save them tens to hundreds of uncompensated hours otherwise spent in program development
• Has materials that they can edit to make their own and customize to fit various client organizations
• Allows them to use their own logo/letterhead to provide clients with program materials without having to give attribution to EQ Leader, Inc. (Lets them be the experts.)

I am a clinician who would like to broaden my services to include executive coaching. Is The EQ Leader Program 2.0 (EQL) something that would help me get started?

Dr. Ackley was a clinician for twenty-five years before making the transition to executive coaching and organizational consultation. He understands and has experienced the journey you want to take. In addition to providing you with all the elements needed for an effective and comprehensive program, you will find guidance about key differences between the work you do now and the work you want to do. Clinical skills have an important place in coaching and consultation. But there are differences that are important to understand. EQL will help you recognize them for a smoother transition.

The cost of The EQ Leader Program 2.0 (EQL), $1320, is a lot. Is it really worth it?

If you are looking for an unbiased answer here, you might not find it. We think it is worth this amount and more. Here’s why: Many purchasers have the skills to put together a program like EQL themselves. But it would take many, many hours to create all the elements covered in the nearly 500 pages of this manual. (Dr. Ackley knows because he did it.)

Let’s suppose you charge $400/hour, which is probably somewhere in the mid-range for executive coaches. In this case, buying the manual accounts for three hours, but do the math yourself with your own rate. Compare that to the amount of time you estimate it would take to put together an introductory workshop, think through how you want to do the assessment, develop an assessment interview, plan a development planning process, sort out the many challenging issues that coaching involves, create menus of exercises for each of the sixteen skills measured by the EQ-I 2.0, and develop the structure for a marketing and sales program. EQL does all of that for you, giving you free time that can turn into billable time. If you were to convert just twenty hours of development time into twenty hours of compensated time, at $400/hour, that’s $8,000. Based on our experience in creating EQL, twenty hours seems like a major under-estimate.