The trick is to learn while doing other things, a strategy that might be thought of as “stealth learning” and that can be useful for improving emotional intelligence abilities, particularly leadership skills. In studying outstanding managers among scientists and engineers—those who, for example, regularly used competencies such as empathy—researcher Christine Dreyfus found that they had refined those talents in many settings. 31 Their abilities were particularly impressive given that they were engineers working in a technological culture that didn’t often model those competencies.
