Daniel Goleman's Blog, page 8

Daniel Goleman: How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

I just heard from the Harvard Business Review that three of my articles will be in the new “Ten Must Reads” they are publishing – one on emotional intelligence. (Just between us, though, all of my HBR articles are available already in a single volume, What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters.)

As the HBR editors recognize, emotional intelligence is an active ingredient in great leadership.

But how do you know your level of emotional intelligence?

First of all, you should understand that, unlike IQ, no one can summarize your EQ in a single number. Know someone with great self-confidence, but zero empathy, for example?

I think of emotional intelligence in terms of a profile of specific competencies that range across four different areas of personal ability:

self-awareness
self-management
empathy and social awareness
and relationship management.

Nested within each of those four areas are specific, learned competencies that set the best leaders and performers apart from average.

I listed some of these emotional intelligence competencies in a recent short article in the New York Times (which went platinum: most e-mailed article that day). But if you want to see the longer list, here you are, as given on the website of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations:

Self-Awareness concerns knowing one's internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions. The Self-Awareness cluster contains three competencies:

Emotional Awareness: Recognizing one's emotions and their effects.
Accurate Self-Assessment: Knowing one's strengths and limits.
Self-Confidence: A strong sense of one's self-worth and capabilities.

Self-Management refers to managing ones' internal states, impulses, and resources. The Self-Management cluster contains six competencies:

Emotional Self-Control: Keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
Transparency: Maintaining integrity, acting congruently with one’s values.
Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change.
Achievement: Striving to improve or meeting a standard of excellence.
Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities.
Optimism: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks.

Social Awareness refers to how people handle relationships and awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns. The Social Awareness cluster contains three competencies:

Empathy: Sensing others' feelings and perspectives, and taking an active interest in their concerns.
Organizational Awareness: Reading a group's emotional currents and power relationships.
Service Orientation: Anticipating, recognizing, and meeting customers' needs.

Relationship Management concerns the skill or adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others. The Relationship Management cluster contains six competencies:

Developing Others: Sensing others' development needs and bolstering their abilities.
Inspirational Leadership: Inspiring and guiding individuals and groups.
Change Catalyst: Initiating or managing change.
Influence: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion.
Conflict Management: Negotiating and resolving disagreements.
Teamwork & Collaboration: Working with others toward shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Emotional Intelligence Coach

You can use this as a rough personal checklist if you like. But we are not always the best judge of our own strengths and limits.

If you want the best appraisal of your own abilities, I recommend getting a 360-degree look. One way is with the ESCI-360, which I co-designed with my colleague Richard Boyatzis at Case Western and Hay Group. It’s based on this competency list, and will guide you through a process (best done with a coach), that will help you gain more strength.

We don’t have a fixed profile of emotional intelligence – it’s an ability that can change throughout life. That’s why the ESCI-360 and similar measures of emotional intelligence are best used working with a coach.

Plus, it’s never too late to get better – if you are motivated. That’s good news for anyone who wants to get better at this set of success skills.

View the SlideShare deck for a quick overview.

 

 

 

 

 

Apply these concepts into your training program with Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide. The collection offers more than nine hours of research findings, case studies and valuable industry expertise through in-depth interviews with respected leaders in executive management, leadership development, organizational research, workplace psychology, innovation, negotiation and senior hiring.

Supplemental Reading

Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence - Selected Writings

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights

Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations

Daniel Goleman: Are You a Great Multitasker?

Probably not. CNN recently posted an interesting video of Dr. Sanjay Gupta explaining what happens to the brain while multitasking. Gupta argues that we’re not actually doing two tasks at once; we’re diverting our attention from one task to work on another, and giving each just partial attention.

He references a study done on multitasking while driving. It showed that listening to sentences while driving decreased the driver’s attention to operating the car by 37%. So rather than listening and driving simultaneously, you’re offering each activity your reduced attention, resulting in substandard performance.

Now think of how often this happens at work.

Does Our Attention Shrink?

Keep in mind that attention is a limited capacity. In the 1950s, cognitive psychologist George Miller suggested that our brains had a sweet spot for information processing—between five and nine bits of information at once. But more recently, cognitive scientists claim that four bits of information is the most our brains can process. This theory took hold—however briefly—and many perceived this capacity shrunk as a result of our modern, very distracted lives. But that’s not quite right.

“Working memory hasn’t shrunk,” said Justin Halberda, a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s not the case that TV has made our working memory smaller. The mind tries to make the most of its limited resources,” Halberda explained. “So we use memory strategies that help.”

For instance, we learn to combine discrete elements, like numbers, into a single block. Instead of remembering the numbers 5 and 1 and 8 separately, we remember 518.

Which brings me back to Dr. Gupta’s point. While many assume we’re splitting our attention while multitasking, cognitive science tells us this is impossible. We do not have an expandable area of attention to offer simultaneously; instead, we have a limited amount to allot. We’re not partitioning our attention, we’re just moving it back and forth rapidly. And doing so really prohibits us from being fully absorbed.

In this way, multitasking is often thought of as the real root of inefficiency. When we’re interrupted working on a task, it often takes up to 15 minutes to resume full attention. Multiply that by how often you’re interrupted on a daily basis.

But mindfulness training can help you recover more quickly. When human resources professionals were trained in mindfulness, then faced with a series of interruptions during a typical frantic day, they found that their concentration improved dramatically. They were even able to stick with tasks longer and complete them more efficiently.

It’s just a matter of learning how to cope. So when you find yourself bombarded with distractions, try these tips:

Identify your weaknesses. A lot of the interruptions we face arrive digitally, as social media pings, emails, texts, and the like. Try an app that blocks these temptations. 
Take note of how you get distracted. When you notice where your mind has gone—rearranging your bookshelf instead of writing a proposal—acknowledge what’s happening. “My mind is wandering from what I need to get done.” Just doing this disentangles you from the distraction and re-engages your brain with the more pressing task on your radar.
Practice daily mindfulness. Try this simple exercise: Watch your breath, note when your mind has wandered, and come back to your breath. Consider this to be your mental workout, just like lifting weights. Each curl makes you a little stronger. When you practice mindfulness, the brain’s ability to notice when your mind has wandered, let go, and then return gets much stronger.

My colleague Elad Levinson, head lecturer in the forthcoming Praxis You online course, also has some useful ideas.

Be very conscious about bringing all of your energy together in one place at one time. Now give all of your attention to one chosen task. Move sequentially and deliberately through the steps required to complete this task.

“Sit and stay.” This skill helps you avoid multitasking. And it’s similar to any training where concentration is required, like training a child to sit and stay with her homework, even when it’s difficult. So next time you’re having a conversation, give that person your full engagement. Don’t check your phone, don’t let your mind wander. Just listen.

Exert control over your attention. This requires you to lift your attention from where it lies, then place it elsewhere consciously and intentionally. Put this into practice. In the next workweek, break up your day into 45 minute time periods. Work with concentration in these 45-minute blocks. After each one, take a five-minute break to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Try to relax the muscles around your eyes, shoulders, jaw and neck.

Thriving on Change

Sign up for More Than Sound's free newsletter to learn how and when to register for my Praxis You course, Thriving on Change. Email mike@morethansound.net to sign up.

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Additional Resources

The Leader's Mind

Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence

Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations

Awake at the Wheel: Mindful Driving

Daniel Goleman: The Secret to Time Management

Do you wish there were more hours in a day? Does it seem like you have more tasks than time? I think we’ve all felt time-starved at some point, and unfortunately many of us experience this on a daily basis. I recently had an interesting conversation about this problem with my colleague, Elad Levinson, instructor for the upcoming Praxis You course, Thriving on Change.

Elad asked me, “Is there someplace where leaders should not focus their attention? You’ve talked about some of the ways in which leaders should focus. But are there places where the attention of leaders shouldn’t go, because it just doesn’t help?”

It got me thinking how leaders today are saddled with back-to-back meetings, conversations, phone calls, emails, texts… and it’s all happening at once! It can be very confusing. And the big challenge for attention is sorting out what’s urgent right now from what’s just a distraction. Every time you pay attention to an email, a text, a phone call, you’re turning over your attention to someone else’s agenda. It means you’ve lost that time for yourself.

When you’re interrupted, practice asking yourself: Can this wait? Can I put it aside? You’ll find that the answer is almost always yes. Leaders need the capacity to decide what matters now and then make that clear with a strong sense of goodwill. Tell people, kindly, I’ll get to that, but not just now.

The Reality of Time-Starvation

And let’s remember that time starvation is both a function of how we perceive it and also founded in reality. People on average take in 5 times more information today than they did 15 or 20 years ago. And it takes time to absorb all this information. There was an observation made that information consumes attention. So, a wealth of information means a poverty of attention. That’s just the fact of life today.

That’s why I feel it’s so important for everyone—whether you’re a leader or not—to be strong about the boundaries of your attention. Do not become seduced by the wealth of information around you; get done now what you need to get done, and only pay attention to what’s relevant to that.

Focus is Productive – and Satisfying

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, psychologists at Harvard Business School, studied 238 members of teams engaged in creative projects, from designing new kitchen gear to complex information technology systems. The team members kept daily diaries of their work days, including how productive and satisfying they found each day.

The most productive and satisfying days, hands down, came when they were able to have unbroken time to focus on their project. These “productive cocoons” are where they came up with small wins, like innovations, problem solving, and taking concrete steps toward their goal.

We all need to carve out time like that. There are some interruptions we can't avoid, to be sure. And there are times we need to reach out to other colleagues, too. But the biggest category of cocoon-destroyers is the multitude of distractions we cave in to.

Sign up for More Than Sound's free newsletter to learn how and when to register for my Praxis You course, Thriving on Change. Email mike@morethansound.net to sign up.

Take a Survey

To help us develop useful, practical courses for you, please take a few moments to complete a very short survey. As a thank you, we'll give you free access to the introductory module of our first course, Thriving on Change. Be sure to provide your email address when you're done with the survey.

Additional Resources

Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence

Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations

Create to Innovate

Getting Beyond Yes

Additional Reading

How to be emotionally intelligent

Start saying yes to saying no

How not to lose your focus when you need it most

Daniel Goleman: Find Strength in Admitting Your Weakness

The willingness to admit your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities is actually very powerful. You can gain strength by admitting your faults to yourself and your peers. When you admit it, you make it a part of what we share as information about ourselves. It makes it okay for me to bring it up, which is crucial for working through conflict. You can even joke about it to ease tension. “You’re doing that thing again.”

But if you keep it to yourself or worse, are unaware of your own faults, then people don't know what to do. You become the elephant in the room.

I spoke with Bill George, Harvard Business School professor, for my Leadership: A Master Class series about authentic leadership. Bill talks about the dangers of only putting your best foot forward. Here's what he had to say.

“I lead small group discussions with my students at Harvard. Everyone tells their life story. They share the good, the bad and the ugly. We also talk about how they “lost their way.” It’s liberating for everyone. It’s a relief to hear someone admit they’re not perfect. It allows me to share a similar experience, and how I bounced back.

I remember when I started playing the corporate CEO game. I thought I was on track. I thought I was a valued leader. But early on, it was hard for me to admit that I was losing the race. I had to come to my senses and get real about what was working and what wasn’t.

My greatest crucibles are now part of my story. I noticed that in telling my story, warts and all, people not only know who I am, but they don’t “reject me” when I tell them a less than flattering aspect about myself. People understand because chances are they’re been to some difficult places, too.

That level of acceptance gives me a sense of well-being. I’m okay. I’m not a failure. I don’t have to hide. That weight lifted allows me to focus on the things I'm good at. I don't have to worry about all the things I'm not so good at because I know I can surround myself with people who can pick up the slack, so to speak.

You can’t be comfortable in your skin until you know who you are, and you're willing to open up and admit who you are. I've never met anyone who didn't have weaknesses. But I’ve met a lot of people who have blind spots. They won't acknowledge or admit where they fall short.

Of course, in moving through a career, people are rather tacitly encouraged to present their best parts. Asking people to include their faults into the mix is a tough sell. But in every course I teach, I ask a simple question: When are you going to stop chasing the world's adoration and admiration and follow your own deepest internal desires? The world is a fickle partner. You can be hero one day and a bum the next. You have to be solid to withstand the rocky roads ahead."

Learn How to Share Your Story

Here are ways to help you become more comfortable with telling your whole story.

1. Read Bill George's book, True North, which debunks the myth of the superhero top executive. Over 100 executives talk about their failures and personal tragedies, and how these setbacks shaped them as leaders.

2. Keep a journal. Not ready to go public with your faults and failures? Write them out first. According to Teresa Amabile, work diaries offer people a new perspective on themselves as professionals and what they needed to improve.

3. Find a mentor. We've all hit roadblocks in our career. It helps to talk with someone who has "been there" to guide you over the hurdles.

Put leadership best practices to work in your organization. Order the new Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide. Enter LMC250 at checkout to save $250.

Get an overview of the content on SlideShare.

Daniel Goleman: Thinking and Feeling Go Hand in Hand in the Classroom

Cognitive empathy means understanding people's perspective the world. It goes hand in hand with emotional empathy, which is “feeling with”. In a discussion I had with Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management, I wanted to know how feelings and emotions were addressed in systems education. Here’s what he had to say.

SEL and Systems Thinking

Educators who have been leading this systems revolution encourage students to really inquire into the social systems they find themselves in. I would say that the accelerating confluence of the social and emotional learning and systems thinking gives educators a repertoire of pedagogical strategies. The combination can really get the kids doing good, reflective work on emotional states, and the interactions they have with one another.

We Don't See the Whole System

When studying how students develop their systems thinking skills, the one thing that I find really interesting is how sensitized they become to how each other sees the world. They realize that we’re all looking through a peephole of our particular sense of sensory apparatus. No one sees the whole system. We all see aspects of the system. So if you really want to understand and improve a system, you need to get really good at seeing how you see it, and how she sees it, and how he sees it. When you’re able to see it differently, then you’ll be able to learn.

Intelligence is Multifaceted

I’ve worried for a long time that for some the social/emotional learning work is a little too peripheral in the sense of, “Well, it’s good the kids also have emotional intelligence.” No. It’s good that kids are intelligent. Intelligence is multifaceted. It is cognitive and emotional. I’ve been around a lot of people at MIT who are great in their lab, and a disaster in their family. People would not call those people particularly intelligent. They’d say they’re a bunch of nerds who can really do something specific. But as soon as they walk out of that lab, they’re dysfunctional as human beings. So, I think that where this is headed is simply to understand intelligence as innately a multifaceted phenomenon.

Intelligence is a System

Also, we need to break down the walls between what we think of as academic intelligence and emotional intelligence. For example, the brain ignores all of those barriers. It’s a very interrelated and integrated system. Anyone who looks at the brain and how it works knows that your emotional state directly affects how you can use your academic skills. If you’re upset, it shrinks your working memory. You can’t pay attention to what the teacher’s saying. You can’t learn. So in a way, it’s totally arbitrary to separate them. If you open up the brain, you’re not going to find a bunch of little boxes.

Learn how to apply social and emotional learning and systems thinking into the classroom with The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education and the Focus bundle for educators.

PODCASTS

Systems Awareness in Schools

Bringing Systems Thinking to the Classroom

Inner, Outer and Other Focus

Myths about the Teenaged Brain

Daniel Goleman: The One Reason Why People Don't Want to Work For You

The higher up the ranks you climb in an organization, the less honest feedback you receive from peers. And one common bit of advice many leaders could benefit from is, ironically, how to effectively deliver feedback to their team. I spoke with Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, for my Leadership: A Master Class about authentic leadership. Below is a snapshot of our conversation around cultivating a motivational culture versus a fear-inducing workplace.

Daniel Goleman: Many executives and managers are fixated on the idea that feedback only means negative feedback. You have to give people bad news. Tell them how they screwed up. Of course mistakes need to be corrected, but you want to help people get the information they need to improve. Don't only focus on the negative. Help them understand that the information isn't a judgment. Here's your baseline. Let's see how you can grow. Let's see how I can help you grow. That's real leadership.

Bill George: That emotionally neutral feedback should happen very close to the event.

DG: The closer the better.

BG: You just came to tell me your project's delayed six months. Okay, let's go over why that was the case, and what can we learn about that situation right now. I'm not going to wait until your performance review in January.

DG: Exactly.

BG: I want to talk about it right now. I have a sense that you weren't on your game in this project. What did you learn about yourself that can help you perform better next time?

DG: And that allows the person you’re talking with to respond logically rather than emotionally.

BG: Right, because you think you're going to get fired. You’re assuming the worst, which never brings good results.

DG: Exactly. It activates a motivational system instead of a fear system. And that motivational system opens people up to possibility. It opens them up to learning, to improving, to giving their best instead of getting contracted and defensive, which is the worst case scenario in any workplace.

BG: As soon as you start attacking me I'm going to get defensive. I'm putting on my armor. I had bosses like that, and I just shut down. Or I would come back at them just as harsh. I would get hooked by them.

DG: That’s the kind of boss people hate to work for. If you're a leader, you want to be the boss people want to work for, which means someone who cares about me, understands me, who's going to help me do better instead of just look at how I've blown it.

BG: So my work in leadership in the last 10 years has been trying to encourage people to get rid of those people. You see them when they're coming up. Get rid of bullies and ego maniacs. That's not always easy because they look good to the bosses. When I was a boss I would say, "Oh, we ought to promote Charles over here. He gets all his work done. He's really terrific." HR's response was often, "Yes, but he has a 40 percent turnover in his department because no one can stand to work for him."

DG: That's a classic mistake in promotion. Look at someone who is an outstanding individual performer and not ask the question: how would this person serve as a leader of a team or a group? Because that's a different skill set. And many people fail as leaders who are outstanding individual performers. They don't have the kind of authenticity you're talking about. They don't have the self-awareness, empathy, or the ability to motivate people.

BG: Right. Sometimes in short term they get by, but they always fail in the long run.

Adopt these leadership best practices into your development curriculum with Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide.

Here's a SlideShare deck of key points from the article.

Additional Resources:

Grow: Identifying and Fostering Talent (Amazon, iTunes, Nook)

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

The HR and EI Collection

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

Daniel Goleman: Not All Leaders Are Created Equal

I’ve always been interested in self-awareness as a leader’s capacity to take stock, to reflect, and to look at things defining a bigger perspective. But after I spoke with Claudio Fernández-Aráoz for my video series Leadership: A Master Class, I learned another reason why self-awareness is crucial for effective leadership. Here’s what Claudio had to say.

“We often think about self-awareness as the basis for developing our self-control, self-regulation, and social awareness. Our relationship management is based on those three clusters.

But self-awareness is also crucial for job allocation. Some people are outstanding for some jobs, and they are lousy for others. One of the most dramatic examples I’ve seen was in wonderful research done by Boris Groysberg and Nitin Nohria from Harvard on GE alumni. General Electric has not only a reputation of being an outstanding company, but it’s a talent factory. If you look at the profile of the Fortune 500 CEOs, the largest individual group are Harvard MBAs, and the second largest individual group are GE alumni.

Because it’s such a source of outstanding leaders, they were often recruited from General Electric into CEO positions of other companies. Each time a senior executive leaves GE to become the CEO of another company, instantly the market value of this new company spikes at least by one billion dollars, and in some cases by up to 10 billion dollars.

These two professors analyzed a group of 20 GE alumni. They found that the market value of a company always spiked once they hired this great executive from General Electric. But then they watched what happened over the next three years. They calculated the net person value of the value created, industry-adjusted, so that they could compensate for any factors in the sector.

They found that about half of these great GE executives created great value and the other half actually destroyed value.

And what was the reason for that? They weren’t always the right leader for the job. First, they may not have been a strategic fit. Some people are good for start-ups, some for turnarounds. Others are good for managing a cyclical business.

Second, they may not have been a good organizational fit. There are some organizations that focus on the long term, while others are focused on the short term. There are some organizations that are hunters; others are farmers. There are some organizations that are team oriented; while others value individuality. There are some organizations that develop people from within. There are some organizations that grow through mergers and acquisitions, while others grow organically.

I’ve seen extremely successful executives make poor career shifts. They mess up their next job because they were not fit for it. They were just looking at their past track record, being unaware about their circumstances and the competencies under which they really would excel.”

Learn how to recruit the right leader for the job with the new Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide.

New Ebook

Now available on Amazon, iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

In Grow: Identifying and Fostering Talent, Daniel Goleman discusses authentic leadership, talent strategy, and the components of high-performing teams with Bill George, Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, and Warren Bennis.

This is the second in a set of three ebook compilations from our Leadership: A Master Class video series. The first ebook, Transform: Habits of Superior Managers is available now.

Daniel Goleman: A Relaxed Mind is a Productive Mind

Last week's Harvard Business Review article, Help Your Overwhelmed, Stressed-Out Team, offered some useful, practical approaches to help a leader keep her team calm and focused.

But one key element was missing from the mix: the leader's mindset. If a leader is filled with stress, conflict, anxiety, and negative emotions, it spreads like a virus. A steady dose of toxic energy from higher-ups will encourage valuable team members to update their résumés rather than their to-do lists.

Our Brain on Stress

When we’re under stress, the brain secretes hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that in the best scenario mobilize us to handle a short-term emergency, but in the worst scenario create an ongoing hazard for performance. In that case, attention narrows to focus on the cause of the stress, not the task at hand. Our memory reshuffles to promote thoughts most relevant to what’s stressing us, and we fall back on negative learned habits. The brain’s executive centers – our neural circuitry for paying attention, comprehending, and learning – are hijacked by our networks for handling stress.

Emotional Contagion

In 2000, Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that in 70 work teams across diverse industries, people in meetings together ended up sharing moods – both good and bad – within two hours. One study asked teams of nurses and accountants to monitor their moods over weeks; researchers discovered that their emotions tracked together, and they were largely independent of each team’s shared hassles. Groups, therefore, like individuals, ride emotional rollercoasters, sharing everything from jealousy to angst to euphoria.

Practice Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is a key ability of emotional intelligence. People who can manage their emotions well are able to recover more quickly from stress arousal. This means, at the neural level, quieting the amygdala and other stress circuits, which frees up the capacities of the executive centers. Attention becomes nimble and focused again, the mind flexible, the body relaxed. And a state of relaxed alertness is optimal for performance.

Your Focus Determines Your Mental State

As my colleague George Kohlrieser pointed out in my Leadership: A Master Class series, how you manage your emotions is determined by what you focus on.

Think of the mind's eye as a flashlight. This flashlight can always search for something positive or negative. The secret is being able to control that flashlight – to look for the opportunity and the positive. When you do that, you're playing to win. You're able to focus on the right things and maintain that positive self.

And keep in mind that a leader not only has to focus her mind's eye, but help others focus their minds' eyes as well.

More Than Sound's upcoming online course, Thriving on Change, will delve deeper into ways leaders can manage their stress and enhance their focus. Sign up for their free newsletter to learn when and how to register.

Audio Resources

Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence

Working with Mindfulness

Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills

PODCAST: Guided exercise - sensory focus

PODCAST: Focus and the high-performing leader

Video Resources

Daniel Goleman: China: Emotional Intelligence Isn't Enough

What leadership skills make a country’s economy vibrant? There’s no doubt that high emotional intelligence among executives boost a company’s success.

So when I read in Inc. that China has a “secret weapon” – strengths among business leaders in self-management and in interpersonal skills – I thought, those abilities are necessary, for sure. But in the world’s competitive economy, they are not sufficient.

Before I get into China's missing ingredient among executives, let’s look at the impact of East Asian culture on business.

Self-Management: A Strength and a Weakness?

Since Confucian times Chinese culture has put high value on self-control and group harmony. Those values mark thinking in China’s government today. So it’s no surprise that executives in that country reflect strengths in these.

A Chinese consultant told me about her own early school days, when she and her classmates were taught to keep their arms behind their backs while listening to their lessons – an extreme form of self-control. So self-management gets engrained in Chinese children very early.

And studies of cultures worldwide show East Asian countries to be highest in “collectivist” thinking – that is, viewing your self-identity in terms of your family and group. This contrasts with individualist cultures like the U.S. and Australia, where “rugged individualism” prevails.

But it would be more interesting data if it had compared top 10 percent performers in each culture – U.S. and China – rather than being a “convenience” sample, where you just look at people whose test scores you happened to have. It may well be that the best leaders in the West are every bit as good on these abilities as are their peers in China, as data from HayGroup suggests.

The Other Secret Ingredient for Success

Now for the missing ingredient. You can have a large group of competent managers – with good self-management and interpersonal competencies – and still have economic stagnation. China is still riding the momentum of deploying its vast low-cost labor pool, a financial tide where it’s hard to fail.

But look at Japan, a country with the same cultural values – self-control and group identity – which is flailing.

Both cultures lack strength in the secret ingredient: innovative thinking.

Cultures that teach conformity – another word for too much self-control – can weaken their ability for creative thought. So both Japanese and Chinese companies are in the position of buying their way out of missed opportunities, by having to purchase successful startups began by entrepreneurs who took smart risks in pursuing disruptive breakthroughs.

The good news: every emotional intelligence competence –including the innovator’s drive to achieve – can be taught.

What do you think?

Weigh in on the discussion in the comments or on Twitter.

Additional Resources

Articles:

Teach the Key Ingredients for Leadership Success

The Active Ingredients for Innovation

Systems Blindness: The Illusion of Understanding

Podcasts:

When to Use the Right Leadership Style

The Focused Leader

How Managers Support or Stifle Creativity

Leadership Training Resources:

Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

The HR and EI Collection

Daniel Goleman: Creativity and Innovation: What's the Difference?

The terms “creativity” and “innovation” are often used interchangeably. But how similar – or different – are they? I spoke with my colleague, Teresa Amabile, an expert on workplace innovation, for my Leadership: A Master Class video series. Here’s her take on the connection between these commonly used terms – and what it means for business.

It all starts with creativity

According to Teresa, creativity is essentially responsible for all of human progress. That’s a phenomenal force. Perhaps that’s why some people tend to think that it’s very mysterious. But they shouldn't.

The research over the past 50 or 60 years illuminates how creativity happens. Basically, creativity is the production of anything. It could be an idea, a tangible product, or a performance. What’s developed should also be different from what’s been done before in some way. Creativity in the workplace should also be appropriate to some goal or meaning.

Now, it’s difficult in some domains to talk about usefulness. For example, what does appropriateness mean in the visual arts? There, appropriateness means it expresses some meaning that the artist intended. But in business, creativity has to “work” in some way. It has to make a contribution to some valuable end.

The Misunderstood Connection of Business and Creativity

The connection between creativity and business success is very important, yet it’s often overlooked. Business people tend to think of what they do as being very organized and strategic. Of course it should be, but businesses cannot succeed, especially under modern competitive conditions, without innovation. And innovation depends on creativity. Creativity is the front end of a process that ideally will result in innovation.

Creativity is coming up with new and useful ideas. Innovation is the successful implementation of those ideas. One interesting connection between creativity and innovation: you can have quite a lot of creativity in a business organization without having much innovation at the other end. This occurs when people aren’t very motivated, or proper systems aren’t in place. Such workplaces have difficulty hearing the creative ideas, developing them, letting them grow, and figuring out how to implement them successfully.

In other words, you can’t have innovation without a healthy mix of creativity on the front end, and solid systems in place to foster that ingenuity.

Share Your Thoughts

What does the creative process look like in your organization? What do you like about it? What would you change? Share your experiences and insights in the comments.

Additional Resources:

Transform: Habits of Superior Managers

Leadership: A Master Class - Create to Innovate

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide

Additional Reading:

The Active Ingredients for Innovation

Organizational Attention Deficit Disorder

The Role of Attention for Creativity

Three Must-Haves for Team Creativity

Podcasts:

Creativity in the Workplace

How Managers Can Stifle or Support Creativity

Necessities for Team Creativity

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