Psychology Classics

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (see 50 Self-Help Classics) was a surprise hit, selling over five million copies worldwide. Inspired by a couple of obscure academic papers by John Mayer and Peter Salovey which linkedthe emotions with intelligence, Goleman combined journalistic flair (he was a writer for the New York Times) with his academic psychology background (Harvard Phd) to produce a work of popular psychology of unusual impact.

Though Emotional Intelligence attracted the general reader, Goleman had also been taken by surprise by the strong response from the business world. Many people contacted him with their stories, usually along the lines of, 'I wasn't at the top of my class in college, far from it, but here I am running a large organization/company'. The EQ concept seemed to explain why they had been successful while other, more intellectually gifted colleagues had not done as well.

Most follow-up efforts to original, bestselling titles fail to meet expectations, but Working With Emotional Intelligence is as fascinating a read as its predecessor. Divided into five parts, Goleman attempts to define 25 'emotional competencies' that can determine whether a person moves ahead or lags behind in their careers, and provides a rationale for why we should be attempting to create emotionally intelligent organizations.

What employers want

Goleman begins by telling us how much the rules have changed in the world of work. There is no such thing as job security anymore. Once, what sort of job you ended up in depended on how well you did in college or your technical skills. But now, academic or technical ability are simply the threshold requirements to gain entry to a career. Beyond this, what makes you a 'star' is your possession of things such as resilience, initiative, optimism, adaptability to change and empathy towards others. Very few employers will give as a reason for hiring someone that they were 'emotionally intelligent', but it will often be the decisive factor. Other terms might be used like character, personality, maturity, soft skills and a drive for excellence.

Goleman lays our the reason why emotional intelligence matters to companies now and why they want to increase it amongst their staff: because in competitive industries, growth from new products is limited. Companies do not compete just on products, but how well they utilize their people. In a very competitive business environment, it is the EI skills that will take a company further.

Goleman reveals research done at 120 companies, in which employers were asked to describe the abilities that made for excellence in their workforce. 67 per cent of these were emotional competencies. That is, two out of three were generic behavioral skills beyond IQ or expertise requirements. Specifically, employers wanted in their staff:

- Listening and communication skills

- Adaptability to change and ability to get over setbacks

- Confidence, motivation, wish to develop one's career

- Ability to work with others and handle disagreements

- Wanting to make a contribution or be a leader

Are you emotionally competent?

In 1973, David McLelland published a celebrated paper in American Psychologist which argued that traditional academic and intelligence testing was not a good predictor of how well a person would actually do in a job. Instead, people should be tested for 'competencies' which would be important to the job. This marked the beginning of competency testing, now widely used in the private sector to select from applicants or create teams, in addition to the conventional consideration of academic skills and experience. Today, McLelland's concept is almost conventional wisdom, but at the time it was groundbreaking. Goleman took his mentor's ideas further, presenting 25 emotional competencies, based around these core five:

Awareness of your own feelings and using them as a guide to better decision making. Awareness of abilities and shortcomings. The sense that you can tackle most things.

Self-regulation. Being conscientious and delaying gratification in order to achieve goals. Ability to recover from emotional distress and manage one's emotions.

Motivation. Developing an achievement or goal orientation, such that frustrations and setbacks are put in perspective and qualities such as initiative and perseverance are refined.

Empathy. Awareness of what others are feeling and thinking, and in turn to be able to influence a wide range of people.

Social skills. Handling close personal relationships well but also having a sense of social networks and politics. Interacting well with people; the ability to cooperate to produce results.

Emotional intelligence can make the most of whatever technical skills you have. As Goleman notes, if you are a scientist, you want the rest of the world to know what you are doing. If you are a programmer, you want people to feel you are service oriented and not just a ‘techie’. Most tech companies have well-paid troubleshooters who can liaise with clients to get things done. They are just as smart and often as skilled as the regular techies, but also have the ability to listen, influence, motivate people and get them collaborating.

Emotional intelligence, he points out, is not about 'being nice' or even 'expressing our feelings' – it is learning how to express feelings in an appropriate way and at appropriate times, and being able empathize with others and work well with them.

IQ explains 25 per cent of job performance, Goleman argues, which leaves a full 75 per cent for other factors. In most fields, a reasonable level of cognitive ability or IQ is assumed. So are basic levels of competence, knowledge or expertise. Beyond these, it is emotional and social competencies that separate the leaders from the rest.

What separates the best

Goleman argues that the more senior you go in an organization, the more 'soft skills' matter for doing the job well. At the top leadership level, technical skills are of no great import. What matters, in addition to the obvious factors such as the desire to achieve and the ability to lead teams, are:

Capacity for 'big picture' thinking, that is, the ability to accurately chart future directions from the mass of current information.

Political awareness, or having a picture of how certain people or groups interact and influence.

Confidence. Psychologist Albert Bandura coined the term 'self-efficacy' to describe a person's belief in their potential and ability to perform, aside from actual ability. This belief alone is an excellent predictor of how well a person actually does in their career.

Intuition. Studies of both entrepreneurs and top executives discovered that intuition is at the heart of their decision-making processes. They need to provide 'left-brained' analyses to convince others of their view, but it is the subconscious analysis that brings them to correct decisions.

It is instructive to also look at executive failure, and the book mentions several studies of  executives who were working at a high level but then fired or demoted. According to the 'Peter Principle', such people 'reach the level of their incompetence' and go no further. Goleman believes that they are held back by shortcomings in the key emotional intelligence competencies. They are either too rigid, unable or unwilling to make changes or adapt to change, or have poor relationships within the organization, alienating those who work for them or with them. The executive search firm Egon Zehnder found that executives who failed were usually high in both IQ and expertise, but often had a fatal flaw such as arrogance, unwillingness to collaborate, inability to take account of change, and overreliance on brainpower alone.

In contrast, the most successful managers stayed calm in crises, took criticism well, could be spontaneous, and were perceived to be strongly concerned for the needs of those they work with.

Final comments

Goleman mentions possibly the most important difference between IQ and emotional intelligence: whereas we are born with a certain level of native intelligence, and it does not change much after the teen years, emotional intelligence is largely learned. Over time we have the chance to improve our ability to manage our impulses and emotions, to motivate ourselves, and to be more socially aware. The old-fashioned terms for this process are 'character' or 'maturity'; unlike native intelligence, their development is our responsibility.

A fair amount of controversy has swirled around the emotional intelligence concept. John Mayer and Peter Salovey, the psychologists who originally created it, have stated that Goleman's inclusion of what constitutes EI (with words such as zeal, persistence, maturity and character) goes far beyond, and distorts, their original definition of the concept. They have also noted their unease with Goleman's thesis that EQ can be a predictor of success in life. Yet Goleman notes the considerable research on emotional competencies going back 30 years to the work of his mentor at Harvard, David McLelland, plus studies done in over 500 contemporary organizations. The weight of this research suggests that IQ is secondary to emotional intelligence (EI) as the predictor of how well a person will do in a job.

There is still plenty of debate about whether emotional intelligence exists at all. Many of its attributes, some argue, are simply attributes of personality, while other psychologists maintain that IQ is still the most reliable predictor of work success. Yet Goleman's own argument has been distorted. Nowhere does he say that IQ does not matter. He says that, all things being equal (intelligence level, expertise, education), the person who works well with others, is far sighted, empathic and is aware of their emotions will go a lot further in their career. This thesis will make sense to anyone who has begun working life and discovered that their ability to 'get ahead' depends little on what they learned in training school or university.

The second two thirds of the book simply fill out what was said in the first, but it is fascinating to read the author’s examples from corporate life. Though the specific references to late-1990s companies will inevitably date, the book is a sort of blueprint for how an emotionally intelligent organization should operate, and it may change your views on how things should be done where you work.