Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman

My model of emotional intelligence has three levels: brain circuitry, domains that emerge from those circuits’ activity, and competencies that depend on each EI domain.

So these neural highways undergird my EI model’s four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. And the twelve key EI competencies depend on one or another of these domains.

While emotional intelligence has found a secure niche in the working world, my original focus was on education, in the form of what’s now called “social/emotional learning” (or SEL).

When those children were tracked down as adults in their thirties, cognitive control turned out to correlate more strongly with their financial success, health, and good citizenship than did their childhood IQ or the wealth of the family they grew up in. It seems to level life’s playing field for childhood inequities.

Aristotle’s Challenge Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not easy.

Some of the less obvious reasons emotional aptitudes are moving to the forefront of business skills reflect sweeping changes in the workplace. Let me make my point by tracking the difference three applications of emotional intelligence make: being able to air grievances as helpful critiques, creating an atmosphere in which diversity is valued rather than a source of friction, and networking effectively.

In a sense, criticism is one of the most important tasks a manager has. Yet it’s also one of the most dreaded and put off. And, like the sarcastic vice president, too many managers have poorly mastered the crucial art of feedback. This deficiency has a great cost:

in a study of 108 managers and white-collar workers, inept criticism was ahead of mistrust, personality struggles, and disputes over power and pay as a reason for conflict on the job.

Many managers are too willing to criticize, but frugal with praise, leaving their employees feeling that they only hear about how they’re doing when they make a mistake.

An artful critique can be one of the most helpful messages a manager can send.

An artful critique focuses on what a person has done and can do rather than reading a mark of character into a job poorly done.

Harry Levinson, a psychoanalyst turned corporate consultant, gives the following advice on the art of the critique, which is intricately entwined with the art of praise: • Be specific. Pick a significant incident, an event that illustrates a key problem that needs changing or a pattern of deficiency, such as the inability to do certain parts of a job well.

Offer a solution. The critique, like all useful feedback, should point to a way to fix the problem. Otherwise it leaves the recipient frustrated, demoralized, or demotivated.

Be present. Critiques, like praise, are most effective face to face and in private.

Be sensitive. This is a call for empathy, for being attuned to the impact of what you say and how you say it on the person at the receiving end.

Biases may not budge, but acts of prejudice can be quashed, if the climate is changed.

The more effective diversity training courses set a new, organizationwide, explicit ground rule that makes bias in any form out-of-bounds, and so encourages people who have been silent witnesses and bystanders to voice their discomforts and objections. Another active ingredient in diversity courses is perspective-taking, a stance that encourages empathy and tolerance.

In short, it is more practical to try to suppress the expression of bias rather than trying to eliminate the attitude itself; stereotypes change very slowly, if at all.

What can make a difference, though, is sustained camaraderie and daily efforts toward a common goal by people of different backgrounds.

While people have always worked in tandem, notes Drucker, with knowledge work, “teams become the work unit rather than the individual himself.”

The key to a high group IQ is social harmony. It is this ability to harmonize that, all other things being equal, will make one group especially talented, productive, and successful, and another—with members whose talent and skill are equal in other regards—do poorly.

While a group can be no “smarter” than the sum total of all these specific strengths, it can be much dumber if its internal workings don’t allow people to share their talents.

One surprise was that people who were too eager to take part were a drag on the group, lowering its overall performance; these eager beavers were too controlling or domineering. Such people seemed to lack a basic element of social intelligence, the ability to recognize what is apt and what inappropriate in give-and-take. Another negative was having deadweight, members who did not participate.

The single most important factor in maximizing the excellence of a group’s product was the degree to which the members were able to create a state of internal harmony, which lets them take advantage of the full talent of their members.

Things go more smoothly for the standouts because they put time into cultivating good relationships with people whose services might be needed in a crunch as part of an instant ad hoc team to solve a problem or handle a crisis.

The stars of an organization are often those who have thick connections on all networks, whether communications, expertise, or trust.

While all of these rely on social skills, the stars also displayed another kind of knack: taking initiative—being self-motivated enough to take on responsibilities above and beyond their stated job—and self-management in the sense of regulating their time and work commitments well.