Transcription
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Future of Work. I am joined today by Daniel Goldman, the father, as he is known, of emotional intelligence. He's a renowned psychologist and New York Times best-selling author of several books, including Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, and Primal Leadership. Daniel, thank you for joining me today.
Jacob, it's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Of course, of course. Um, why don't we get started with a little bit of background information about you? I was on your website and reading, I think you wrote like a long thing on there on your website directly from you. It talks about your background and history, which is fascinating. Uh, so give us a little bit of background about you. How did you even get involved with emotional intelligence and studying this stuff?
Well, I, I do have a PhD in psychology from Harvard, actually. But I ended up being a science journalist at The New York Times, and I was covering what they called the Decade of the Brain. This is a while ago, when there were a lot of new discoveries, particularly about emotions in the brain. And I wanted to write about that. And by the way, I didn't invent the phrase emotional intelligence. I just made it famous. The guy who invented the phrase is now the president of Yale University, Pete, Peter Salovey, with his then graduate student, John Mayer. And I saw that they had written an article called Emotional Intelligence in a very obscure journal. My job at the Times was to look at all the journals and see what's newsworthy, what's interesting, what's relevant, and then make that an article in the Times. And I, I thought, wow, emotional intelligence. What a great phrase. It seems like an oxymoron. How can you have intelligence and emotions? But then I realized it means being intelligent about emotion. And so I, I use that as the frame for the book I wrote, Emotional Intelligence, which became a global bestseller. It's in more than 40 languages these days. And that kind of launched another career for me, where I started going to companies and organizations and schools. I became very big in schools under the name Social Emotional Learning, which means teaching kids K through 12 the basics of emotional intelligence, which are self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social skill. And we all need those to get along in life. And actually, it turns out to be outstanding in the workplace. And I think as we go forward into the future, it's going to matter even more.
Was there something about this field of study that particularly intrigued you? Because as a psychologist, you could have gone into so many different areas and specializations. Why emotions?
Well, we all have them all the time. It seems it seemed utterly relevant. Even when we think we don't have them, we do have them. Uh, the brain is wired to like, to dislike, to react continually. And this is part of a survival mechanism in, in our, you know, human history. And it's hard-stamped in all of our brains. Can't avoid it.
Yeah, no, everybody does have emotions, as you said. Well, we're going to talk about emotional intelligence and leadership. So I thought it only makes sense to maybe start with an explanation of both of those things. So first, I'm really curious to hear your take on what is leadership, or what does it mean to be a leader? How do you define that?
I think that having a sphere of influence means you're a de facto leader. And in that sense, I think we're all leaders, whether it's our family and friends or an organization with a formal title. It comes down to whether people listen to you, respect what you say, and are guided by what you say. So I think that leadership applies in all spheres of life.
Okay. And then how do you define or explain emotional intelligence?
Well, once I wrote about emotional intelligence, I went back to my psychology background. I started working with an old friend of mine, a colleague, Richard Boyatzis, who's at the, now Case Weatherhead School of Management at, uh, in Cleveland, and at Case Western Reserve. And he and I had been students of David McClelland at Harvard, who was one of the people who developed the idea of a competence, a workplace ability that makes you outstanding compared to other people. And competencies can be learned. And it turns out that there's a set of about a dozen competencies within the domain of emotional intelligence that, uh, are hallmarks of people who are the best leaders. So I've been working, uh, with Richard and others along those lines since, because it turns out that emotional intelligence sets the best leaders apart from others. And by the way, this is interesting new data. Even in areas you wouldn't think it's true. Engineers at a global manufacturing company rated each other on how effective are, are these guys as engineers, or are you as an engineer? It turned out that engineers' ratings of other engineers' effectiveness had zero correlation with IQ, and a very high correlation with emotional intelligence.
I love that you mentioned new data, because I always love new data and research. That's, you know, a fascinating example for engineers. So emotional intelligence then, like you said, is being intelligent and being intelligent about your emotions. So if we put those things together, an emotionally intelligent leader would be someone with a sphere of influence who is intelligent about their emotions.
Sure.
Okay. Um, and one thing that I'm always fascinated about this topic is, is emotional intelligence something that you learn, or is it genetic? And I ask because I did a 23andMe test a couple years ago, and through 23andMe, you can take all the data and download it and put it into something called Prometheus, which basically does all this, you know, looks at the genes and all this, all that stuff in there. And, uh, my wife and I were laughing because we were looking at my genetics and it basically said, um, you might be missing an empathy gene. And so you might, you might not be good at empathy based on your genetics. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And I was like, wait a minute, is that, is that a thing? So it really just made me wonder, is, is this a genetic thing, or is this something we can all learn?
Emotional intelligence is learned and learnable. And I think 23andMe is overselling what they know because everything is a combination of nature and nurture. You get your genetic makeup, but that doesn't limit you. That's what you start with. And so, for example, for empathy, uh, it's, it's definitely learnable. You can definitely amp it up. But you need feedback. You need life experience. You need to realize that when I assume such and such about how she was feeling or he was feeling, it was right or was wrong. That's how you get better at this. So feedback in real time is very important for enhancing emotional intelligence abilities across the board. And I, you know, some people may, on a 23andMe type test, look like they have a good empathy basis, but that's just where they start. Your life experience is going to determine where you end up.
No, I love that. And I actually remember seeing some study or some research that basically said even sociopaths can be emotionally intelligent. Like, you can, you can still practice these things and, and implement them even if you have, you know, are clinically a sociopath.
Well, here's, here's the problem with that. Uh, there are three kinds of empathy, each of which is based on a different set of brain circuits. There's cognitive empathy. I know how you think about things. I know the words to use to communicate with you effectively. There's social brain empathy, which means I feel what you feel. A sociopath can have those two kinds of empathy and make his or her way in the world pretty well. What they lack is the third kind. It's called empathic concern. And it's based in the mammalian caretaking circuitry. It's basically a parent's love for a child. And it means I care about you. Sociopaths don't have that by definition. They just don't care about their victims.
Interesting. I did not know that. Uh, so when we think about emotional intelligence, how many, which, which emotions go into that? I know you've written about this extensively. Um, so what are the emotions that go into that intelligence, uh, grouping?
Every emotion you've ever felt. Anything. And so, yes, anger, disgust, sadness, all of that. As a partner. However, here's what emotional intelligence tells you. If you're in a negative emotional state, it, because the way the brain is wired, you're narrowing the bandwidth of your other capabilities, your cognitive abilities, whatever talents you may have. Because emotions, the way the brain is designed and wired, take up a huge amount of space. In fact, emotional distractions, that thing she said to me that got me so upset, are far stronger than external distractions. It's going to cop your intelligence, your attention continually. So emotional intelligence helps you manage disturbing emotions. And it also encourages you to have positive emotions, to have an optimistic outlook. So they call it a growth mindset these days, you know, I can get better, other people can get better. You don't feel that way when you're entrapped by a negative emotion. It helps you keep your eye on your goals, no matter what else is going on, because we all need to do it. Helps you adapt, helps you be agile. We absolutely need to do that. These are all competencies, by the way, of outstanding leaders. And they're based on emotional intelligence abilities. Because people, leaders need to first lead themselves. And that means manage your inner life. Then you can lead others. You can tune into them with empathy. And then, this is really important, it turns out that a leader's emotional state is contagious. It leaks out to the people around them. It's just very natural for people to pay most attention to and put most importance on what the most powerful people person in the room says and does. So the leader's emotions affect other people's emotions. And not only that, that in turn drives performance. So if the leader is in a negative state, people catch that negative state, their performance goes down. If they're in a, but the leader's in a positive state, pretty enthusiastic, energetic, people catch that, their performance goes up. So it, it's not just a private thing. Leaders should know that their state, their inner state, is going to leak. That's part of their leadership is managing themselves.
So can you just always fake being in a positive state? Can you just show up all the time like, "Hey, how's it going?" Like, "I'm great, everything's fine." Because there's also this talk of, um, wanting more transparency and more authenticity. And, you know, we want that from leaders, right? If you're upset, tell us. If you're frustrated, tell us. But that also seems counterintuitive to the whole idea of, if you're always positive and optimistic, it's going to improve performance. It rubs off onto others. So should I, as a leader, show my frustrations if I'm upset too?
I think authentic is the key word here. Uh, if you fake it, people might sense that pretty easily that you're always upbeat, even when you're really down. So I think it's better to clear the air and say, you know, "I really had a bad time with the kids this morning. They just wouldn't get ready for school, and I'm a little bummed about it." Because by naming it, this is really interesting, it turns out that the brain is arranged so that if you name a negative emotion, it already takes energy from that state and it shifts it to the prefrontal cortex, which is the brain's boss, the CEO of the brain. It helps you manage emotions. So if you talk about it, just by the act of talking about it, you're managing it.
I am terrible at that. I am not good at talking about my emotions at all. My wife, right here, should jump in and be like, "Yeah, he sucks at that." Um, so I'm trying to get better at, like, saying, "I'm tired. I'm stressed. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. I'm unhappy." Uh, yeah, I'm genuinely not good at those things at all. So I'm trying to, to work on those things because I agree, I think it's important. And when I say it, I feel a little bit better about myself and I can talk about these things with my wife or members of my team. So I, I think there's a lot of value in, like you said, naming that emotion. I also think it's interesting though, for a lot of, um, traditional things like IQ, it seems like in those areas, sometimes it's easier to manipulate or fake something. But when it comes to emotion, we're very good at picking up when somebody's faking it or being not authentic. It's, it's weird. It's like something is, as humans, has embedded us, or we can just pick up.
Yeah, I think that we have radar. For example, we read facial, we read emotions from facial expressions. Do you know the difference between a fake smile and a real smile? Is it the under the eyes? Is it the, it's the crow's, it's the crow's up because, yeah. So, uh, crow's feet. When, when we're really happy, at first you're gonna have the crow's feet. But then as you hold it, you're starting to fake it, and they disappear. I think that our brain is wired to notice these little subtle cues and to start wondering, does he really mean it? Does she, is she faking this or not?
Yeah, no, it's, it's crazy. It's like built into us. It's very weird. So what a lot of people think about emotional intelligence, you know, the two that come to mind, especially for leaders, is usually empathy and self-awareness, right? Uh, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and perspective and understanding your self-awareness and how other people perceive you. Besides those, I feel like maybe a lot of people might not be aware of some of the other important emotions, specifically for leaders. And you were talking about some of the things that great leaders do. So I thought maybe we could expand on that a little bit, going beyond just empathy and self-awareness to looking at some of the other things that are crucial too.
Yes. So I look at it in terms of the competencies that you find in outstanding leaders and star performers. And it doesn't, it turns out it doesn't have to do with their emotions. We all have the full range of emotions, but how well you manage it. Self-management, emotional balance, turns out to be a competence of outstanding leaders. Uh, other self-management competencies, and self-management means handling disturbing emotions so they don't, what you're doing, and fostering positive emotions that help you do what you're doing. So others are, as I said, adaptability, being able to be flexible and meeting challenges as they come, being able to stay positive no matter what happens. And, you know, to look on the bright side about yourself, about other people, about situations. And these are, and then keeping your eye on the goal, no matter what the distractions. My God, there's so many distractions these days, infinite. But still, are you doing what's most important in the long term? This is a question to ask yourself. So those are the self-management competencies. And then empathy, knowing what other people are feeling, lets you, for example, be a good team member, team player, lead a team well, be able to influence people effectively, guide them, give them performance feedback as needed. Here's one that you may not think of: being able to inspire people, to articulate a shared sense of meaning or purpose in what we're doing here, that resonates with other people, that is, creates an extremely positive emotional climate, huge positive motivation. People feel their work is meaningful. And then being able to handle conflicts, to surface them before they explode, for example. These are all abilities of outstanding leaders. And by the way, no one leader is outstanding at all of them. We have profiles. We're better or worse at some of them. Richard Boyatzis, who I mentioned before, and I have designed, uh, an assessment. It's called the Emotional Social Competence Inventory, where people who know you well rate you on these competencies of outstanding leaders, and you get a profile. Then you can decide, oh, well, maybe I'll work on my influence, I'll work on managing my emotions. But that's up to you. But it's helpful to get, uh, authentic, real feedback from people who know you well and who you trust on what your strengths are and what you could be better at.
Why can't you just be really good at your job? Why do you need emotional intelligence? Because I think we've seen, you know, the last 10, 25 years, I feel like a lot of leaders have gotten into very successful positions that were not emotionally intelligent. And, you know, a lot of people work for these types of leaders. Our engagement scores are so low around the world. So somebody might say, well, you know, why do I need emotional intelligence? My leader's not emotionally intelligent. Look how successful he or she is. Why should I be doing this stuff?
Yeah, there's a huge problem with the fact that people got promoted to leadership positions because they were good at a task. Task. However, it turned out they were hollowing out the human capital. People hate those kinds of bosses. This is the problem. And now there's what they call the Great Resignation. People are resigning right and left. And one of the main reasons people leave is, "I can't stand my boss." So you may be good at a job in terms of the objective measures of the job, I'm really good at programming, I'm really good. But it turns out that it's all done with people. And if you're the leader of people, you need emotional intelligence to work well with the people you're leading. It's just a fact. And it's very interesting data. You say you're interested in new data. Yes. A study that showed that people, high-level executives said emotional intelligence is extremely important to leadership, like 90%. New hires, people new to their career, say, "Oh, no, it doesn't matter. It's all tech skills." In other words, there's a learning curve over the course of a career where you see, "Oh, you know what? It does matter." So people may think, particularly coming out of an academic situation, because in academics, it's all cognitive. It's all how well did you do on the test? You know, what was your GPA? How well did it was your, what were your GREs, whatever it may be? But once you get in the workplace, it's how well you work with other people. And no matter how smart you are, that's not going to help.
I know there's also this, this big debate between, uh, IQ and there was this big debate between IQ and EQ. And everybody, you know, we did IQ tests all the time. I, I remember I had to do an IQ test when I was very young, and it was like, "Well, if you want to get into a good school, what's your IQ?" Nobody ever tested me for EQ. Nobody talked about my emotions. It was just like, yeah, what's your IQ score? Um, and so there's always this big kind of debate, right? And it feels like these two things are oftentimes pitted against each other. Do you need IQ or EQ? What's more important? However, they operate differently. Um, you need a certain level of cognitive ability to be a lawyer, to be an accountant, to get an MBA or a master's degree. You need about a standard deviation above the norm, which is around 114, 15. But it's very interesting, there's a floor effect. Which means that everyone else who's in a position that you're in has about the same IQ. Yeah. And what distinguishes people is their emotional intelligence. Some people may have a lot, some people may have little. They may have critical elements of it. It turns out that over the course of your career, what's going to make the difference as to whether you're an outstanding leader, not just an average one or one who drives people away, is your emotional intelligence. I have a friend, Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, he used to be the head of research at Egon Zehnder, a big executive recruitment firm. And he said, "We looked at people we had hired who were then fired." They looked great on paper. They had real expertise, a lot of business experience. But we found invariably when they were fired, it was because of a lapse in emotional intelligence.
Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, can you have one and not the other? So, for example, can you be very high on EQ and low on IQ? And can you have very high IQ and very low EQ? And maybe you could talk about how that kind of a person would function in the world, depending on if you're very high on one or very high on the other.
Well, someone with high emotional intelligence and not very high IQ might still be very good in sales, for example. They might be very good in any situation that relies on relationships because their emotional intelligence would make them very gifted there. They may might need to work with someone else who knows the basics, you know, the specifics, but they could have very good relationships with clients and customers. Someone who had very high IQ and very low emotional intelligence might be very good in a position where they were working with numbers by themselves or coding by themselves. But more and more work is done these days on teams, and they would have a problem when it came to getting along with team members. I saw some data that suggested that people who had a very, very high IQ were not actually very good leaders because they didn't know how to talk to people. They didn't know how to communicate. They were too abstract because that's the way they think, and they assumed other people would be there with them. But so they, they had a breakdown in communication.
It's funny, I remember, oh man, when did I read this? This must have been three years ago, and it was on HBR, and I referenced this in in my book as well. And it said that one of the things that I think managers, it was either that, one of the things that they are not good at or felt most uncomfortable doing was having one-on-one conversations with their team members. Which I found to be weird, because if you are leading others, part of your role is to have one-on-one conversations with your team members. Exactly. And it said that that was one of the things that managers felt most uncomfortable doing, like they just did not want to have those conversations. Uh, so it's interesting that you mentioned conversation, because I think, I mean, part of being a, you need to be a good communicator, right? I'm sure emotional intelligence is a big part of it.
One of the competencies, excuse me, one of the competencies that we found in outstanding leaders, high-performing leaders, is being a coach or mentor, which means you have to have a one-on-one conversation. You have to get to know the person. Yeah. And it turns out that having that conversation creates a very positive feeling in the person you have it with. They have immense loyalty. They feel seen. They feel heard. So it makes a big difference. So the data that you saw in in HBR suggests to me that a lot of managers need to get better at the coaching of competence, because the people they're leading would really feel good about it. They would feel, "My manager cares about my career development. My manager cares about me." And that means that I'm going to care about my manager and I'm going to want to give my best, not just do just good enough.
You mentioned disengagement is very low. I see those two things as connected. Yep. Well, when I interviewed, so for my recent book, I was engaging in his highs, disengagement is high. Yeah. So I interviewed 140 CEOs from my recent book, The Future Leader. And I asked all of them about what are the most crucial mindsets and skill sets that you think current and aspiring leaders need to have. So there were four mindsets and five skills. And one of the skills they identified was actually the skill of the coach, like you mentioned, helping make other people more successful. So there's definitely a lot of alignment there. Um, you mentioned this idea of managing emotions. This is also something I am admittedly not that great at. So I thought we could give, um, listeners and viewers some guidance and feedback on on how to do that. Um, so where do you begin? And I suppose you also need to manage the bad emotions, but you also need to manage the good emotions. And I think of myself, for example, as an entrepreneur. And when I first became an entrepreneur, you know, you close your first project or your first deal, and you get that, you get that emotional high. But you need to manage that too, because it's very tempting to be like, "Oh my God, I got my first project. I'm gonna go spend all my money. I'm gonna, like, you know, party." So you have to manage the highs and also the lows. Interesting. So how do you go about managing your emotions, whether they're positive or negative, in the workplace?
It's interesting that we use the term emotional balance, yeah, or this ability, because you need to balance it. You know, you, you don't want to be manic. And when something good happens, you feel ecstatic, and you're going to like, blow all your money. You need to manage that, of course. But on the other hand, that is, I would say, a less common, far less common. The negative emotions, "Nothing's happening. This isn't working. I'm no good." This kind of thinking, which creates anxiety, it creates depression. I think people more often are challenged by handling their negative emotions. And I'll give you three methods, if you'd like.
Yes, please.
One is well-tested. It's actually used by special forces. It's used all over the place. It has to, it's a quick way to go from, uh, being upset, it's called sympathetic nervous system arousal, to be, to recovery mode, parasympathetic nervous system arousal. And it's a simple breathing technique where you inhale as long as you can, like a count of four, at least inhale deeply, hold it as long as you can, at least a count of four, and then you exhale as long as you can. And it turns out if you do that six to nine times, it actually shifts your physiology from being upset to being relaxed.
That's one interesting thing to do on the spot, just breathing. That's fascinating.
Another thing you can do on the spot, as I mentioned earlier, is name what's going on. "I'm getting anxious now," or to yourself, or to another person, "I'm getting angry now." The, the fact that you can name it suggests that you're shifting the energy from the part of the brain that feels it to the part of the brain that manages it. And the third thing you can do is, uh, kind of as a mindfulness practice. I don't know if you've talked about mindfulness on your show, Jacob.
I have.
Yeah, but it turns out, I, I just, I did a book recently with Richard Davidson, who's a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, where we reviewed all of the good studies, sound, the most sound studies on meditation and mindfulness. And we found that, you know what? It's, it's mind training. It's training the brain. It really works. And, uh, if you practice mindfulness, you know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes a day, what it does is strengthen the part of your brain that manages negative emotion, so that you are triggered less often. When you're triggered, it's less strong, and you recover more quickly. The actual definition of resilience in cognitive science is how long it takes you to go from the peak of upset back to calm. And the quicker that curve, the more resilient you are. So mindfulness enhances calmness. It also, it's a twofer, because the same circuitry helps you focus. It enhances concentration. So I, I recommend a simple breath meditation. I don't know if you want me to go through the instructions.
Please.
Yes, but here's what you do. It's really simple. There's no belief system required. It's just simple mind training. And bring your focus to your breath. You can close your eyes. Sit up so you're, you're in a relaxed but dignified posture. It helps you stay more attentive. You bring your attention to your breath and stay with the full in-breath and the full out breath, the space between breaths. And then start with the next breath, the full in-breath, the full out breath. It's that simple. You just keep your attention on your breath. If you, there's a place you can feel the sensation or the rise and fall of your belly with each breath. When your mind wanders, and it's going to wander, and you notice it wandered, bring it back to your breath and start again with the next breath. It's that simple. The real action here is when you notice that your mind wandered and you bring it back, because that strengthens the circuitry for staying focused and ignoring distractions. And that's going to be the first payoff for you. Very gradually, you'll notice, "I can focus on my work and I'm less distractible now." You'll also notice slowly and gradually that you're more calm. But there's a dose-response relationship here. The more you do it, the better the effects will be. So if you want to start with five minutes or ten minutes a day, great. Whatever you'll do. There's a saying, "The best meditation, the best mindfulness, is the one you'll do." Whatever that may be. And you may have to, you know, move around things in your daily schedule so to make this a priority. It's like going to the gym. Every time you bring your mind back, you strengthen the circuitry. It's, but it's exactly like going to the gym and lifting a weight. Every time you do a rep, yeah, you make that muscle that much stronger. So make time for it and give it priority in your day if you want to have the effect.
Yeah, my wife is very good at meditation and, um, and just breathing and just understanding that stuff. And one of the things I've always struggled with when I try to do that is my mind is just like a ping pong ball. It's like a, just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And as soon as I close my eyes, I'm just like, "Whoa, like a million thoughts popped into my head." I gotta open my eyes because otherwise I'm just like going nuts over here. Um, but I think you're right, it's like exercise, right? The first time you go to the gym, you're like, "Yeah, I can't do this. This is too hard." But it's the same with meditation, same with mindfulness.
The reason you think your mind is like that and I can't do this is because your mind's always like that. You just never noticed. So when you try to bring your mind to one place, the fact that it wanders all over, it becomes really stark. And many people get discouraged at the outset for exactly that reason, Jacob. They think, "Oh gosh, my mind's like a ping-pong ball. It's all over the joint." But the more you stay with it, the more you bring your mind back, the less true that becomes. But at the beginning, it's going to be like that. Don't let it down.
Okay, so it sounds like to manage negative emotions, let's say you're an employee at a company, you just had a terrible meeting with your manager or a client. Meeting didn't go well, you're feeling very upset, frustrated. Probably just take some time. You do that breathing exercise that we talked about in the beginning. Is step one? Step two, you would name that emotion, basically like, "I feel disappointed. I feel frustrated. My manager didn't have my back," or, you know, "The client chewed me out for not doing something the right way." And then number three is that kind of the, the mindfulness piece, you know, the meditation piece. If you want to call it that.
I'll give you number four. Yes. It's, it's taken from cognitive therapy. You may be catastrophizing. Because you had that bad interaction, you may think, "Oh man, I'm no good at this. I'm going to lose my job." That's extra. And the good thing that cognitive therapy points out is you do not have to believe your thoughts.
Interesting.
You think it, but think, think twice about that, because you're going to an extreme. You're making assumptions. It may not be true. In fact, you may be very good at your job in most ways. Remind yourself of that at the moment that you're telling yourself you're no good at it. And talk back to the negative self-talk.
It's funny, you mentioned that, the first visual that popped into my head when you said, "You don't have to believe your thoughts," is, uh, uh, an episode from Seinfeld where, uh, George Costanza is trying to, or no, Jerry's trying to take a lie detector test. And, uh, George Costanza is trying to give him some advice. And he's like, "You know, it's not a lie if you believe it." So basically, you know, you can go against your thoughts if you believe it, it's not a lie. So it reminded me of that, where just because you think it doesn't mean you have to actually believe it.
As much as I admire George Costanza, he's a lovable character in some ways, harassable in others. I'm not sure that was really good advice that he gave his friend. No, I would, I would not want to emulate the life of George Costanza.
Um, okay, so those are, I think, four fantastic, uh, tips or strategies that people can use to kind of combat that, the negative emotions. Does that ever happen where those four don't work and you're just still just going nuts, um, and you're just up, you know, inconsolable, so to speak? Like, is there, like, a backup or a safety library if those things aren't working out for you?
You know, um, I mentioned Richard Boyatzis. He and I do a lot of work together. We just developed something called the Personal Sustainability Index, which is a way of looking at all the things in your life that stress you out, that upset you, and then all the things in your life that balance that, that help you recover. Because what you're saying is that the emergency methods didn't work for you, and you're staying pretty stressed out. The question is, what can you do that will counter that? I mean, uh, maybe you go for a walk in the woods, or maybe you talk to your best buddy, or maybe you, uh, play with a kid. In other words, there are lots of things you can do that put you in a positive state. Now, the critical question is, day in and day out, do you have enough of those to balance the times when you just can't take it anymore? Yeah. And so, we, we give people a menu of that. Maybe do you have show notes, Jacob? Maybe you can put that in the notes.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. We'll have a description when we put all this up. So yeah, I'll get some links for you to include.
It sounds like one of the biggest mistakes that leaders and maybe individuals can make is to try to power through things. You know, we've all kind of experienced that, right, when, um, things aren't going your way, when you, you feel bad or you're unhappy, and you're just like, "I just gotta power through it. I just gotta be that tank and act like nothing's bothering me." It seems like that is not a good way to go, um, when you're dealing with some unhappy emotions. You need to pause and reflect and take time to acknowledge them.
Yeah, I would agree with that. But I would also say, don't give up your goal. Keep your eye on the goal. Just because it didn't work this time doesn't mean it won't work the next time. Yeah. So acknowledge what happened. And, oh man, that felt so bad. But I still want to do this. I'm still working toward that. Okay, keep going.
What do you do if you work for a leader who's not emotionally intelligent? I get this question all the time. I'm sure you do. Um, lots of employees who are just like, "You know what? The stuff that Daniel's talking about is great. I wish my leader would practice these things, but they don't. And, you know, what am I going to do?"
So I'm often asked this question. I'll give you a couple of answers. One is, I, I, I'll give you a caution: do not tell your leader you have no EQ. Don't. They suck at this. Okay? Because that's going to backfire on you. However, if you have an ally who is able to talk to your boss, someone that your boss respects, who you can talk to openly, and who might suggest to your boss that they could do better in this realm and help them go ahead with that, if you have that situation, then there's kind of a flippant answer, but sometimes it works, which is, "Get your boss's resume and send it out to an executive recruiter. They might get a good job somewhere else." Yeah. And I think that's actually important because there's nothing that says you have to work for a leader who's not emotionally intelligent, because that can be very frustrating. It can be very disengaging. It can be, uh, toxic, actually. Yeah. And life is short, right? You, why would you want to spend time working for this kind of a person who doesn't acknowledge that this is how they are and doesn't want to change? But so you're saying not to tell your leader that they're not emotionally intelligent. But is it possible to have a conversation with them directly, in a in a certain way, or is it just like a typical?
Let me restate that. If you're skilled, if you have enough of a relationship with the boss where the boss will listen to you and respect what you say, uh, actually, I think that boss is probably emotionally intelligent. I have a stereotype of people who aren't, which in my mind makes them closed to that kind of conversation. But if you have the possibility and you're good at how you put things and you don't do it in an accusatory way, but you say, "You know, you might be better at X if you did Y," and your boss would listen to you, sure, go ahead.
How do you create emotional intelligence in others? So maybe you're a leader and you want members of your team to be emotionally intelligent, or your peers. I'm just doing an article for the Harvard Business Review on how to create an emotionally intelligent organization. And it turns out that the biggest, uh, biggest improvement in emotional intelligence doesn't come in trying to hire for it, that's very dicey, but rather in helping people develop it. And there's a lot of methodologies for developing emotional intelligence that are used in corporations and organizations now. So I would say, uh, to help people find a program that works for them, or a coach, if you're at a certain level in the organization, that may work out too from a payback point of view. But as I said, it's all learned and learnable. There are four or five basic steps. One is, you ask yourself, or ask the person, "Do you really care?" Because if the answer is no, you can stop right there. Yeah, because it's going to take a little effort. It's going to take some time. The next thing is to get a good evaluation, whether it's from, you know, talking to people or this Emotional Social Competence Inventory, something like that, a 360, where people evaluate you anonymously, and you get the information aggregated, so you don't know who said what. Then people can be much more open with you. Yeah. And then, uh, have someone you can work with who's going to help you, whether it's a coach or someone leading this development effort, someone you can talk to when you have a bad day, having having learning partners, but also someone to support you. And also practicing at every naturally occurring opportunity. That's really going to make a difference.
You mentioned there were some methodologies that organizations use to instill emotional intelligence. Can you share maybe what some of those are?
Well, as I mentioned, some organizations at the top of the house will have people coached, and a coach can work with you. There's a, I'm starting a group, the Goldman Consulting Group, to help corporations bring learning teams, really, help people get better, but do it with a group. You select for yourself people who give you feedback, people you work with, people you like, who will form a team to help you improve. Is it to help your talents get better? Those are two methodologies. There are some methodologies that are proven not to work. One is called spray and pray, where you have an expert come in for two hours and talk about this, and you know how great it is, and then leave, and then you get no support. Because it takes ongoing practice. However, you can do it. Yeah.
How do you tell if someone has emotional intelligence, or if you have emotional intelligence? Are there specific signs that you look out for?
One of them, uh, is pretty intuitive, which is, is this person liked? People who are most intelligent tend to be likeable. You know, people get along with them. They get along with people. Does this person, you know, vent constantly? Vent negative emotions? That suggests they're not very good at it. Uh, does this person seem to know how other people see them? It's another sign of emotional intelligence. Uh, in other words, you look for signs. Does it, when I'm with this person and talking to this person, do they care about me? Do I feel seen and heard? That's another one.
Okay. Well, we only have a couple minutes left, so just a few more questions for you. Um, and one of them is, can you show too much emotion at work? There's a lot of talk about emotional intelligence, but some people believe, well, if you know, if you just walk around work all day just showing all your emotions, that's probably also not that great either. So how do you balance, uh, how authentic or transparent or emotional you are?
I talked about managing emotions. One of the ways someone who's authentic might manage emotions is by saying what they're feeling, but not venting, not going around like tearing their hair all day or upsetting other people. That's someone who is, I would say, overly emotional in the wrong way. Someone who feels very upbeat and very enthusiastic and shares that with people, I think that's fine. I think that's good. I think it helps the emotional atmosphere, the emotional climate of the workplace. So I would say it depends what emotion you're showing all the time. If it's a downbeat emotion, not so great. Manage that internally. Manage it yourself. Manage it with someone you can talk to. But if it's a positive emotion, let it out. And it's interesting that emotional intelligence is not about showing your emotions, as you said, it's about being intelligent about your emotions. That's a big difference between just showing versus being intelligent about them.
Um, maybe one of the last questions for you. I think there are a lot of myths about emotional intelligence, you know, what they are, how to practice them. Are there some common myths that you keep hearing about emotional intelligence that you want people to not believe?
Yeah, one of them is that IQ doesn't matter, only emotional intelligence. IQ matters to a degree, but you need both. It's not either or. The other big myth is that emotional intelligence matters and IQ or cognitive abilities or cognitive talents don't. That's a myth. They both matter.
Um, okay. Um, and are there any particular leaders that you can point to that you think are emotionally intelligent that maybe our viewers or listeners might wanna emulate or learn more about?
You know, I think the Dalai Lama is a great example of someone who's mostly intelligent. He's not a business leader, but he's definitely a world leader. I think that, uh, there probably are some, uh, CEOs who might be emotionally intelligent, but I don't know any of them well enough to say for sure.
Yeah. And last question for you, just because, uh, this is something you talked about in one of your recent books, the concept of the resonant leader. And I know that's a whole big topic, but I thought we could just tease a tiny little bit of it so that people can learn more about what that means and who that kind of a leader is.
The resonant leader is one that people feel connected to, who articulates, as I said, a shared mission that really moves people, so that they resonate with with what the leader says and does. A leader who is influential in an easy way, who gives feedback in an ongoing way that people can actually use. It's like news to use, not just an attack on a person. People who manage themselves well, and who empathize, who tune in to other people, who know how other people are are feeling and can respond accordingly. There's a set of primers, by the way, on all these competencies. It's called Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence. If you want to learn more about empathy or about influence, about inspiring, or emotional balance, you might want to get some of these.
And I'm assuming that's just something somebody can Google? Just "Building Blocks Emotional Intelligence" from Key Step Media?
Okay. All right. I'll try to link to that too.
Okay. Um, well, and then it sounds like to practice emotional intelligence, we're not talking about crazy commitments here, right? Small things that people can do on a regular basis to become more emotionally intelligent, which it sounds like, um, that's what you're advocating for. It's like life, it's a work in progress.
Yeah. I love it.
Uh, well, Daniel, where can people go to learn more about you and your work? I know you have a podcast with your son, which is amazing. So anything that you want to mention for people to check out?
Sure. The podcast is called First Person Singular, and it's on all the podcast venues. First Person Singular: Emotional Intelligence and Beyond is the full name. I have a newsletter at LinkedIn, which is free to subscribe to. And one of the things I'm, I'm talking about these days is misconceptions about emotional intelligence, as well as latest kind of breaking news on emotional intelligence. So there's a LinkedIn newsletter. We're going to be setting up Goldman Consulting Group. I don't think there's a website yet, but there's about to be. And I have my own website, DanielGoldman.info. W-W-W-dot-DanielGome and oneword.info. And you just Google me. I'm, I'm on the web.
You're pretty easy to find. Are you working on another book by any chance?
Yes, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to say yet. So it will be related to this article I'm doing for Harvard Business Review on building an emotionally intelligent organization.
All right, very cool. We will stay tuned to that. Daniel, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I love the tips, and this is such an important topic. So appreciate you sharing your insights with us.
Jacob, you're very easy to talk to. I suspect you have more emotional intelligence than you allow or that you know.
I'm gonna cut that clip and I'm gonna, I'm gonna play that to everybody. So when somebody says anything, yeah, I'll say, "You know what? Daniel Goldman actually said I have some."
Well, thank you again so much for taking time out of your day. And thanks everyone for tuning in. My guest again, Daniel Goldman. All you gotta do is Google his name, you'll find out pretty much anything that you need to know about him. Check out his books and check out his podcast. And I will see all of you next time. Thanks again for tuning in to the show. And don't forget to go to sixleadershiptrends.com to grab a copy of my brand new PDF, which is going to walk you through the six trends that are shaping leadership and what it means to be a leader. And it will also give you action items for what you should be doing for each one of these six trends to adapt and evolve so that you can be a better leader in the future of work. Again, that is sixleadershiptrends.com. You can either spell out the number six in the URL or just use the number six in the URL. They will both take you to the same place. Thanks again for tuning in.