Emotional Intelligence in Relocation

More and more, external executive hires are failing, and not for the obvious reasons. Some recent research sheds light on what has been previously overlooked in the hiring process.

“Outside hires take twice as long to ramp up as a leader promoted from within. Astoundingly, C-suite executives report that only one out of five executives hired from outside are viewed as high performers at the end of their first year in house. And ultimately, of the 40% of leaders who are hired from outside each year, nearly half fail within the first 18 months. The direct and indirect costs of the failures are staggering, far exceeding the cost of the search that found the executive.” – "For Senior Leaders, Fit Matters More than Skill,” Harvard Business Review.

As an executive relocation coach, my goal is to help the relocation stick and it’s important to understand the facts behind the failures. Steve McKinney, president of McKinney Consulting, Inc., recently shared this info from a three-year study of 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and healthcare organizations:

“The study found that 26% of new hires fail because they can’t accept feedback [coachability], 23% because they’re unable to understand and manage emotions [emotional intelligence], 17% because they lack the necessary motivation to excel [motivation], 15% because they have the wrong temperament for the job [temperament], and only 11% because they lack key skills [technical competence.” – “Why New Hires Fail,” McKinney Consulting, Inc.

I agree with the next statement McKinney makes, “The failure of new hires should not be a surprise because hiring managers’ focus very little on the emotional aspect of the candidate. More time is spent on evaluating the technical skills of the candidate.”

23 % is significant. When an executive is worried about the assimilation of his family to the new environment where they moved to support his career, emotional intelligence is a valuable skill to cultivate. Not just in managing his own emotions around the job change, the new team, the new systems, but as said above, in “accurately assessing” the emotions of his family and spouse so that he is available to help.


My job as an executive relocation coach is to help the executive and the spouse of the executive assimilate into their new home and geographic environment. We aim to develop their emotional skills by planning for the issues we can predict, and to build emotional intelligence and resilience to deal with what we cannot predict.