Search Inside Yourself: Increase Productivity, Creativity and Happiness [ePub edition]. Daniel Goleman

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СКАЧАТЬ are not innate talents; they are learned abilities. In other words, emotional competencies are something you can deliberately acquire with practice.

      Goleman adds a very useful structure to emotional intelligence by classifying it into five domains. They are:

      1. Self-awareness: Knowledge of one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions

      2. Self-regulation: Management of one’s internal states, impulses, and resources

      3. Motivation: Emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals

      4. Empathy: Awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns

      5. Social skills: Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others

      Salovey and Mayer are not the only people whose work relates to social and emotional intelligence. Howard Gardner, for example, famously introduced the idea of multiple intelligences. Gardner argued that people can be intelligent in ways not measured by an IQ test. A child, for example, may not be strong in solving math problems, but he may be gifted in language arts or composing music, and therefore we should consider him intelligent. Gardner formulated a list of seven intelligences (later increased to eight). Two of them, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences, are especially relevant to emotional intelligence. Gardner called them “personal intelligences.” Goleman’s five domains of emotional intelligence map very nicely into Gardner’s personal intelligences: you can think of the first three domains of emotional intelligence as intrapersonal intelligence and the last two as interpersonal intelligence.

      Funny enough, for me, the best illustration of emotional intelligence as a learned ability did not come from a scholarly publication but from the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.² In the beginning of the story, Scrooge presents an example of low emotional intelligence. His intrapersonal intelligence is so low, he is incapable of creating emotional wellness for himself despite his wealth. In fact, his self-awareness is so bad, it takes three ghosts to help him figure himself out. His interpersonal intelligence is, of course, legendarily bad. Near the end of the story, however, Scrooge presents an example of elevated emotional intelligence. He develops strong self-awareness, he becomes capable of controlling his own emotional destiny, and his empathy and social skills blossom. Scrooge demonstrates that emotional intelligence is something that can be developed (in the version I saw, it happened in the space of a two-hour TV movie with enough time for commercials, but your mileage may vary).

      Later in this book, we will examine the development of each domain of emotional intelligence in detail. Thankfully, it will not involve visits by Christmas ghosts.

      Benefits of Emotional Intelligence

      There is an important question that my friends in the training business call the so-what? question, as in, “Yes, very nice, but what can emotional intelligence do for me?” In the context of the work environment, emotional intelligence enables three important skill sets: stellar work performance, outstanding leadership, and the ability to create the conditions for happiness.

      Stellar Work Performance

      The first thing emotional intelligence enables is stellar work performance. Studies have shown that emotional competencies are twice as important in contributing to excellence as pure intellect and expertise.³ A study by Martin Seligman, considered the father of modern positive psychology and the creator of the idea of learned optimism, showed that insurance agents who are optimists outsell their pessimist counterparts by 8 percent in their first year and 31 percent in their second year.⁴

      This was not surprising to me. After all, there are many jobs such as those in sales and customer service in which emotional competencies obviously make a big difference. We already know that intuitively. What surprised me was the report that this is true even for individual contributors in the tech sector, namely engineers like me whom you might expect to succeed purely on intellectual prowess. According to a study, the top six competencies that distinguish star performers from average performers in the tech sector are (in this order):

      1. Strong achievement drive and high achievement standards

      2. Ability to influence

      3. Conceptual thinking

      4. Analytical ability

      5. Initiative in taking on challenges

      6. Self-confidence⁵

      Of the top six, only two (conceptual thinking and analytical ability) are purely intellectual competencies. The other four, including the top two, are emotional competencies.

      Being strong in emotional intelligence can help everyone become outstanding at work, even engineers.

      Outstanding Leadership

      Emotional intelligence makes people better leaders. Most of us understand it intuitively based on our day-to-day experience interacting with those whom we lead and those who lead us. There are also studies that back up our intuition with scientific evidence. For example, Goleman reported an analysis that shows emotional competencies to make up to 80 to 100 percent of the distinguishing competencies of outstanding leaders.⁶ This is illustrated by the story of Gerald Grinstein, a CEO who had to go through the painful process of cutting costs. Grinstein was tough, but being a virtuoso at interpersonal skills, he earned the cooperation of his employees and managed to keep their loyalty and spirits high while turning around their once-ailing company, despite having to make very tough decisions. In fact, Grinstein performed his magic not once but twice, once as CEO of Western Airlines and again as CEO of Delta. When Grinstein took over Delta amid a crisis, he immediately went about restoring lines of communication and trust within the company. He understood the importance of creating a positive work environment and, using extraordinary leadership skills (emotional intelligence), he turned a toxic work environment into a more family-like atmosphere.

      Once again, I did not find any of this surprising, because we already intuitively understand the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership. What I found surprising was this is true even in the U.S. Navy. Another study by leadership expert Wallace Bachman showed that the most effective U.S. Navy commanders are “more positive and outgoing, more emotionally expressive and dramatic, warmer and more sociable (including smiling more), friendlier and more democratic, more cooperative, more likable and ‘fun to be with,’ more appreciative and trustful, and even gentler than those who were merely average.”⁷

      When I think of military leadership, I think of tough-as-nails people barking orders and expecting to be obeyed, so it is fascinating to me that even in a military environment, what distinguishes the best leaders from the merely average ones is emotional intelligence. The best military commanders are basically nice people who are fun to be with. Funny enough, the title of the Bachman study was “Nice Guys Finish First.”

      The Ability to Create the Conditions for Happiness

      Perhaps most importantly, emotional intelligence enables the skills that help us create conditions for our own sustainable happiness. Matthieu Ricard defines happiness as “a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind . . . not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being.”⁸ And that optimal state of being is “a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.”

      In Matthieu’s experience, happiness is a skill that can be trained. That training begins with deep insight into mind, emotion, and our experience of phenomena, which then facilitates practices that maximize our inner well-being at a deep level, СКАЧАТЬ