Today, I spoke to Daniel Goleman, who is an internationally known psychologist that lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5 million copies in print worldwide in 30 languages, and has been a best seller in many countries. His latest book is called Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence (Selected Writings). In this interview, he talks about emotional intelligence versus IQ, his competency framework, and more.
A recent study came out by CareerBuilder that states that 71% of employers value emotional Intelligence over IQ. What are your thoughts about this?
It’s not “IQ versus emotional intelligence” – both have great value.
IQ tells you what level of cognitive complexity a person can manage in their job: you need high levels for top management, the professions, the sciences, while lower levels work fine in lower echelons.
Emotional intelligence (or EI) sets apart which leaders, professionals, or scientists will be the best leaders.
Can you explain your competency framework? What can professionals do to become more self-aware?
Emotional intelligence competencies are learned abilities like the drive to achieve and emotional self-control, both of which build on underlying EI components like self-management. Self-awareness is one of four EI domains (the others: self-management, social awareness and relationship management). A powerful way to boost self-awareness is to undergo a 360-degree evaluation by people you know well and trust evaluating you on the EI competencies.
What would you say are the top 3 skills that make a leader based on your famous HBR article?
“What Makes a Leader?” was the title of the 1998 article I wrote in HBR that the review calls one of its ten “must-read” articles of all time. I wrote about three abilities that distinguish the best leaders from average: self-awareness, which both lets you know your strengths and limits, and strengthens your inner ethical radar; self-management, which lets you lead yourself effectively; and empathy, which lets you read other people accurately. You put all those together in every act of leadership.
How important is psychology in understanding the needs of employees and customers? Explain.
Crucial: it’s all based on people’s emotions, whether customers or employees. For employees, how a leader makes them feel plays a large role in their level of motivation, commitment, and even drives their brain in (or out of) the best zone for marshaling whatever cognitive abilities and skills they bring to the job. And for customers and clients, how they feel about their interactions with the people in your organization determines how they feel about the company as a whole.
True or false: if you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage someone else? Explain.
So true. The ability to manage yourself – to have self-awareness and self-regulation – is the very basis of managing others, in many ways. For instance, science has learned that if you are tuned out of your own emotions, you will be poor at reading them in other people. And if you can’t fine-tune your own actions – keeping yourself from blowing up or falling to pieces, marshaling positive drives – you’ll be poor at handling the people you deal with. Star leaders are stars at leading themselves, first.
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Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a science journalist, Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages, and has been a best seller in many countries.
