Emotional Intelligence and the Work Place
Jeffrey S. Royer
In his best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that emotional skills can be more important than conventional measures of intelligence in determining success in life. Emotional intelligence not only contributes to successful careers and relationships, but deficiencies in basic emotional abilities can lead to poor mental and physical health.
Goleman describes emotional intelligence as consisting of the following five qualities:
Fortunately, according to Goleman, there is much individuals can do to improve their emotional intelligence.
Peter Drucker, the prominent management expert, predicts that by the end of this decade a third or more of the U.S. work force will consist of "knowledge workers," individuals whose jobs are based on adding value to information. Because knowledge workers are highly specialized by nature, they must work on teams and within organizations that can convert their knowledge into productivity. Accordingly, teams are increasingly replacing the individual as the basic work unit. This implies that the skills that help individuals harmonize in the work place are becoming even more valuable.
How successful a group is in achieving a goal depends on its "group intelligence," which is a product of the talents and skills that the individuals in the group bring to it. And the most important element in group intelligence is not the average intelligence of its members in the academic sense. Rather, it is the group's emotional intelligence that enables some groups to be more successful than others with similar talents and skills. Specifically, a group's success is based largely on the degree to which it can create an internal state of harmony that enables it to take full advantage of the talents and skills of its members.
The success of an individual working within an organization also is a function of emotional intelligence. In particular, much of this success depends on the abilities of individuals to motivate themselves and to accomplish tasks by forming ad hoc teams from a loose network of fellow workers with specific talents and expertise. Goleman cites a study by Robert Kelley and Janet Caplan of "star performers" at AT&T's prestigious Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs is staffed by highly trained engineers and scientists, all of whom would score high on standard intelligence tests. Because the work studied by Kelley and Caplan is beyond the abilities of any single individual, it generally is performed by teams, ranging from 5 to 150 members.
The individuals selected as outstanding performers by their managers and peers did not differ significantly from other employees in terms of academic talent or conventional intelligence. However, they did differ in the interpersonal strategies they used to perform their jobs. One of the most important factors explaining their success was the practice of cultivating good relationships with people whose services might be needed to solve a problem or handle a crisis. By building reliable networks, star performers usually got quicker answers from technical experts when they needed them. Meanwhile, other engineers and scientists lost valuable time waiting for advice while their phone calls and e-mail messages went unreturned.
Analysis of informal networks suggests that there are at least three kinds--communications webs (based on the others to whom individuals talk), expertise networks (based on those to whom individuals turn for technical advice), and trust networks (based on those to whom individuals confide sensitive information). According to Goleman, the star performers of an organization are frequently individuals who are well-connected on all three types of networks.
In addition to mastering interpersonal networks, the Bell Labs stars were good at several other social skills--working effectively on teams, providing leadership in consensus building, being able to see things from the perspective of others, acting persuasively, and promoting cooperation while avoiding conflict. The stars also demonstrated two other skills related to emotional intelligence--taking initiative by accepting additional responsibilities and practicing self-management skills in regulating their time and work commitments.
From Cornhusker Economics, Mar. 13, 1996.