[2021-04-21] Emotional intelligence (part 2)
In Emotional intelligence (part 1), I shared excerpts from an interview with Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Goleman appeared recently on the podcast Sounds True: Insights at the Edge, hosted by Tami Simon.
Today's post completes the series by taking a closer look at a few competencies within the four domains of emotional intelligence, which are self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social skill.
Goleman shares the work he did with Richard Boyatzis to look at the competencies of star performers compared to those of average performers in various organizations and companies. He says:
We realized that a very large set of those [competencies] had to do with emotional intelligence, and that each one of those nested within a particular set of the four parts, like being able to manage your emotions, or being able to work towards your goals, or being able to be adaptable, or to stay positive.
Simon asks Goleman whether emotional intelligence (EQ) is always more important to success than cognitive intelligence (IQ), but Goleman dismisses this idea. Doing well in school, he insists, is determined in large part by IQ. And certain domains, such as writing software, demand a lot of cognitive ability. Others, though, require more EQ, which increasingly distinguishes stars from average performers. Goleman explains:
Once you’re in the workplace, once you have an MBA, once you have your degree, and you get a job commensurate with it, now you’re competing with a pool of people that have the same abilities as you on the IQ side. But whether they have the motivation that you have, whether they have the self-discipline, the self-management skills you have, whether they have the empathy, whether they’re socially skilled, that’s where the playing field really differs among people. And that’s where you see stars emerge. I think that’s the sense in which emotional intelligence is more important than IQ.
Elaborating on motivation, Goleman maintains that individuals who are very goal-focused will outperform people of equal IQ because they work harder. The motivation to stick with something despite setbacks and obstacles is invaluable.
Simon asks Goleman how to develop self-confidence, which she argues is a competence many people are trying to cultivate. Goleman states plainly that self-confidence is about realistic self-confidence. He contends:
There’s a kind of bullshit self-confidence, like every kid is the most wonderful kid in the world. The self-esteem movement was a little overboard that way.
The key to building realistic self-confidence, he suggests, is to do a realistic self-assessment, asking questions such as "What are my strengths?" "What could I get better at? "What can I not get better at?" He adds:
Strengths can be improved on, very often. For example, if you have social anxiety, social anxiety can be overcome. Social anxiety means I don’t speak up in a group because I tell myself people won’t want to hear what I have to say. Well, you can talk back to that kind of thing. In other words, there are specific steps people can take to get better. But I believe that self-confidence should flow from what your strengths really are rather than being some aura of "I’m just good at everything," because nobody’s good at everything. So, know what your strengths are, know where your limits are.
Goleman references the 12 competencies that nest within the four domains of emotional intelligence (which are presented in this Harvard Business Review article: Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On?). People who are assessed against the 12 competencies get a profile, which represents their strengths in the 12 areas. Then, working with a coach, they can decide where they want to improve. The point is not to get all 12 to the top, he asserts. People should decide which ones they want to improve based on their specific situation and challenges.
Goleman notes that star performers don't have the same strengths—it's dependent on the job and their role. Moreover, a strength that served someone well in one job may hold them back at a later point in their career. A goal-oriented perfectionist, for example, might be an excellent individual performer but a poor leader. Goleman elaborates:
The difficulty with perfectionists is if they become the head of something, they may view other people through the lens of perfectionism, which looks at what people do wrong, not what they do right.... [I]t’s a common problem we see in the workplace with leaders with that pattern. They were very good as individual contributors. That’s why they became a team leader or whatever. But once they lead, they don’t realize that they need to coach, that [they] need to see that people can improve.... The best leaders understand that part of their leadership is not just inspiring and guiding and motivating, but also helping people get better at what they’re doing. Not dismissing them, as "You’re not good at that."
Similarly, certain competencies are best balanced by other abilities. For example, goal-oriented leaders who lack empathy will drive people to achieve results regardless of the human cost and the impact on morale. Goleman remarks that this kind of leadership was heavily rewarded after the 2008-2009 recession. People with this quality were promoted until companies realized that their best people were burning out and leaving. Goleman advises:
You need to balance, for example, goal orientation with empathy. If you don’t have empathy, if you don’t tune in with concern—and here I need to say there’s three kinds of empathy: cognitive empathy, where you know how people think, you can communicate well; emotional empathy, you know how they feel; those are great, but you can use them to manipulate people; the third kind of empathy is caring about them, concern, and that’s the kind of empathy that a leader with really high goal motivation needs to balance it all out.
Goleman expresses that the third kind of empathy is what you want in your partner, your parents, your friends and your boss.
Simon concludes the interview with a focus on high-performing teams and emotionally intelligent organizations. Goleman speaks about the work of Vanessa Druskat, whose research has found that high-performing teams have a collective emotional intelligence, defined by the norms they set for interacting. For instance, Google found that its top-performing teams created a sense of psychological safety, which Goleman explains as: "It’s OK to bring that up here." He continues:
It’s not OK in many, many groups to bring up the thing that no one wants to mention. But if you have a high-performing team, it’s going to be OK to bring up just about anything—particularly something that people disagree about but aren’t talking about. If you let it simmer, it might explode, or it’s going to throw things off in one way or another. This is why it’s really helpful to bring out and work out whatever people disagree on, and to make time for that, and to make it OK for that, and to have that as a norm of a team.
This ability to bring up uncomfortable topics is a norm of high-performing teams, finds Goleman.
On what it takes to be an emotionally intelligent organization, Goleman suggests:
It takes leaders who model [emotional intelligence], who value it, who show that it matters to them, and in the organization. You want that model to ripple throughout because that becomes a value or a norm of the organization.
He adds that emotional intelligence needs to be applied when new employees are hired, brought into the organization, trained, developed, managed and promoted.
Everything that Goleman covered in his interview meshed with my own experience. Throughout my career, I have seen that employees' emotional intelligence has had a significant bearing on their ability to advance in their careers. This is especially true for people whose EQ competencies are balanced: self-awareness complemented by self-confidence, achievement orientation combined with empathy, emotional self-control integrated with inspirational leadership. That's not to say that the kind of managers Goleman said excelled in the wake of the 2008-2009 recession don't exist; in fact, I've worked for some. However, the majority of my bosses have, thankfully, been both effective and empathic.
I've also had the privilege of working in emotionally intelligent organizations. In every case, the leader modeled emotional intelligence, treated employees with respect, cared about their staff, and led the team to success through a form of collective leadership. The leader also recognized the value and potential of employees, focused on what they did well, and knew when good enough was enough.
The best leaders I've worked for and with are the same ones I recommend to employees who are seeking new opportunities. Recommending leaders with both a high IQ and high EQ is a small thing we can all do to help ensure that those at the top are rewarded not just for what they achieve but also for how they achieve it.
