Daniel Goleman: Why emotional intelligence may be the number one indicator of organizational success

Ponder for a moment the ways people interact differently in today’s workplace when compared to historical norms. Remote and flexible work arrangements have become commonplace. Emails and text messages often replace real-time conversations — sometimes with the person visible across the room! The gig economy has normalized temporary, impersonal work relations. Throw in social media platforms, and these technologies allow people to connect and communicate across the world in both positive and detrimental ways.

Organizations can embrace or lament these changes, but either way, the trends continue their inexorable march onward. This leads to a crucial question that every successful organization must address: How do you drive and sustain excellence even as the environment evolves around you?

An ever-greater reliance on technology might be perceived as the best, and inevitable, path forward. However, even cutting-edge technology cannot deliver the qualities that truly differentiate high-performing organizations. Those being, compelling leadership, alignment around a shared vision, and a skilled, dedicated workforce. 

Even so, the impact of technology must be recognized. Employees may rarely be in the same space with other team members. Leaders may have employees spread across multiple states or continents. It becomes easy for misinformation or conflicts to surface and remain unresolved and out of leadership sight. And filtering our interpersonal interactions through these machines can often make it difficult to assess the emotional temperament of the workplace.

While organizations covet a means to manage these challenges, the fact remains that a large part of the solution resides within each employee and how they manage themselves. Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of Optimal, deems this emotional intelligence (EI), which he considers one of the most powerful and adaptive human capabilities. 

As Goleman told Big Think+ in an interview: “Emotional intelligence is a set of personal skills we learn in life. It’s a combination of self-awareness, managing your emotions well, empathy, tuning into other people, and putting that all together to have harmonious or effective relationships.”

This skill set has become even more essential as workplaces become increasingly decentralized, diverse, and technology-centered.

The four domains of emotional intelligence

Organizations typically have a workforce comprising a broad cross-section of ages, experiences, expertise, and motivations. Add to that how each person prefers, or has learned, to interact with others, and such social and emotional complexities mean there is no foolproof approach for building healthy, beneficial interpersonal relationships at work. But as those in any workplace can attest, some strategies are more effective than others. 

Goleman asserts that the “people who emerge as outstanding performers or the best leaders have high emotional intelligence.” Too often, those individuals are ascribed inherent talent, but Goleman doesn’t accept this premise. As he points out, emotional intelligence is “learned and learnable. And it’s learned and learnable at any point in life.” 

To set the stage for improving emotional intelligence capability, it’s useful to break it down into discrete components. Goleman describes these as four distinct but interdependent domains:

• Self-awareness. Understanding how you’re feeling.
• Self-management. Managing emotions when you’re upset, angry, or anxious.
• Social awareness. Employing empathy and caring for others.
• Relationship management. The ability to listen, handle conflict, and develop rapport.

Because of this, he emphasizes that emotional intelligence isn’t achieved by focusing on just one element. It’s “a set of abilities, and each of us has strengths and limitations across that spectrum. So if you want to improve your emotional intelligence, see where you need to improve first.”

For example, he posits that active listening and emotional intelligence are inextricably linked. “You know, we think about what we want to say, and we don’t really listen to the other person. We cut them off. We interrupt,” he says. Now consider how poor listening might manifest in technology meeting spaces, trying to meet a deadline while facing a flurry of text or email exchanges, or collaborating with a colleague three time zones away. 

Someone seeking to level up their listening skills would likely need to tap into multiple domains of emotional intelligence. The first step might be developing the self-awareness that interrupting has become a habit, followed by insight into the emotions or motivations that trigger their interruptions. Overlaying that could be a conscious desire to become more empathetic to others, which falls under the domain of social awareness.

The challenge of enhancing emotional intelligence throughout the workforce can be daunting. However, Goleman points to leaders as powerful influencers for change. As he notes, “Research at the Yale School of Management has found that emotions are contagious, and they’re most contagious from the leader outward.” He also observes that “the leader’s state is much more important on the ability of people to do good work than many people realize, particularly many leaders.”

Generate synergy between emotional intelligence and technology

Leaders are the linchpin for advancing emotional intelligence; however, that fact must be re-examined through the prism of a technology-fueled workplace. For example, leaders are expected to be role models for emotional intelligence, but what does that look like if in-person interactions are rare? Leaders aspire to build emotionally intelligent teams, but how does a leader do that when onboarding team members from cultures and work environments worldwide?

An important step is first seeking to understand how, and how effectively, technology supports interactions between and among leaders and employees. For instance, has technology facilitated the inclusion of remote or broadly dispersed team members into project planning, or has it made it easier to overlook those less visible or vocal? Proactively exploring potential benefits and pain points such as these can help pinpoint opportunities for improving emotional intelligence.

An important resource for helping leaders develop their emotional intelligence might be a readily accessible “library” of information and insights. This library would house resources to either introduce them to the concepts of emotional intelligence or provide a means to refresh their understanding as necessary. However, the real work occurs on the job through practice and repeated exposure to situations requiring EI.

As Goleman notes, “It all comes down to the basics of what we call neuroplasticity, how the brain changes with repeated experience, and that’s what underlies habit change.” As with most changes, new behaviors feel uncomfortable initially but become more automatic and accessible through repetition. (In other words, unconscious competence.)

There is no standard playbook for building or deploying emotional intelligence, particularly in the face of the ever-evolving technological landscape. Some actions to consider:

• Be upfront with emotional intelligence expectations and the types of expected behaviors. Tackle at the outset any skepticism by highlighting proven, tangible benefits from EI such as greater job satisfaction, better retention, and impact on high performance.
• Take advantage of in-person or virtual team meetings to model EI through joint problem-solving, eliciting contributions from each member, surfacing and addressing tensions, and reinforcing self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship management.
• Consistently provide informal and formal feedback on EI behaviors.
• Encourage team members to step back from a technology-driven mindset periodically. Create opportunities to help them actively engage with their thoughts and feelings, then use those to contribute ideas for strengthening EI in the workplace.

As Goleman points out, “Emotional intelligence is a human ability and will always remain so.” Consequently, regardless of the approach an organization pursues with its EI strategy, it is the people within that will determine its success or failure.

Final thoughts

The workplace has evolved in multiple ways in a relatively short time, and the pace of change seems only to be accelerating. It can be tempting to find stability in the comfort of people we like and the tools or technology we know. However, the price of inertia can be high.

Organizations are increasingly confronted with challenges to their status quo, with technology-driven disruption leading the way. Leaders are under tremendous pressure to navigate through the turbulence. Yet excellence is rarely achieved without stepping out of our comfort zone. 

One of the most powerful tools for expanding those boundaries is emotional intelligence. Active listening opens the door to different ideas and perspectives. Insight into anger or anxiety triggers can mitigate barriers and lead to more effective personal management. And practicing empathy can open the door to new, deep, and long-lasting relationships.

While technology continues its transformational onslaught, it pays to remember that emotional intelligence is a uniquely human capability that cannot be replicated or digitized. Organizations seeking to achieve and sustain excellence would do well to recognize its potential for profound and lasting impact.