Emotional Intelligence – The 2 Main Parts

Based on an article by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman, the “inventor” of the concept of Emotional Intelligence, says he once met a  CEO who complained that despite having MBAs from great universities, many of his managers were unable to perform and deliver. The explanation for this according to Daniel Goleman lies in the interplay between IQ and emotional intelligence. For high performance and leadership, you need both…

Intelligence in the form of IQ is essential where handling cognitive complexity is required. Doctors, scientists, researchers, technical managers, professors etc. all need this and usually have this in large doses. Then why the lack of performance as encountered by so many CEOs? Well, IQ may enable you to handle complexity but it does not enable you to relate to other people. In fact, the more you have to interact with other people whether in sales, in teams, as a manager of a large group of people, the more emotional intelligence matters.

A high-enough IQ is necessary, but not enough, to be a star performer.

While there are many models of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman suggests there are two main parts: self-mastery and social intelligence.

The purely cognitive jobs require self-mastery – e.g., cognitive control, the ability to focus on the task at hand. Self-mastery refers to self-confidence, how we handle ourselves in terms of emotional self-control, how well we react to pressure, etc.

But the second half of emotional intelligence, social intelligence, holds the key to the performance issues outlined by CEOs. As long as those super-smart MBAs are working on their own, their IQ and self-mastery makes them high performers. But the minute they have to work with others, lead people or interact with a team, they also need social intelligence.

A former head of research at Egon Zehnder International who spent decades hiring C-level executives for global companies across different cultures in America, Germany and Japan found that while they had been hired for their intelligence and business expertise – they were fired for a lack of emotional intelligence. They were smart and intelligent but not good at people management.

Another set of 132 different research studies involving more than 27,000 people concluded that emotionally intelligent managers and leaders have the most satisfied employees. The same study says emotional intelligence has been found to boost:

-leadership effectiveness
-job performance
-negotiation skill
-managing stress
-organizational citizenship