Think

Fantastic claims have been made about Emotional Intelligence (EI) and its importance for leadership and business success.  Daniel Goleman, one of EI’s leading proponents and author of several  best-selling books on the subject, has asserted that EI accounts for “nearly 90% of the difference” between the best performers at work and average ones.  Other investigators have reported similar findings, some in scientifically-reviewed journals that impose high standards on the evidence that goes to support such claims.  EI has been called more powerful than IQ in predicting top performance.

A recent article in American Psychologist asks, what is Emotional Intelligence?  Well, it depends on who you ask—and therein lies a real problem.  The term Emotional Intelligence was first coined by John D. Mayer at the University of New Hampshire and his colleagues in 1990.  The original conception was that people vary in their abilities to reason about emotions and to use them effectively.  It was seen as another dimension of general intelligence, which includes verbal ability, logic, spatial reasoning and so on.  According to Mayer, people with EI are able to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings, discriminate among them, and use that information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

As EI gained popularity with researchers (and the public), the original notion of what it is changed remarkably—so much, in fact, it’s often not clear what’s meant by it now.  There seem to be about as many different definitions of EI as there are experts on it.  One significant difference is that some researchers, including Goleman, are describing EI in terms of positive character traits or social skills (e.g., high self-esteem, assertive, optimistic).  It’s not apparent that what’s being called EI is actually any form of intelligence. Some developmentally-challenged individuals, even those with autism, can be taught to behave in socially appropriate ways. But does that mean they possess EI? Are they identifying, understanding, managing, and using emotions to facilitate thinking?

Of course, this creates an enormous problem for researchers and those trying to make sense of what the research means.  If EI refers to everything, it refers to nothing at all.  It isn’t all bad news, though.  It turns out that when EI is defined and measured as originally conceived, high EI correlates with more productive working relationships, behaviors that are supportive of the goals of the organization, and effectiveness in developing others.  These findings are independent of cognitive ability and personality factors.

What does it all mean?  My view is that there is a mental ability that involves the understanding and use of emotions to guide behavior.  We can call it Emotional Intelligence, but we need to be careful not to confuse it with a mix of personality traits and social skills (that may be important in their own right).  EI does appear to be one of perhaps many ingredients for success in leadership and in the business world.  More and better- controlled research is needed to understand just what EI is and how it can be used to best advantage in these contexts

Scott