Interview with Daniel Goleman

Citation

(2009), "Interview with Daniel Goleman", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 23 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2009.08123baf.001

Interview with Daniel Goleman

Article Type: Leading edge From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 23, Issue 2

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist and the world’s leading expert on emotional intelligence. His 1995 book on the subject sold more than 5,000,000 copies and was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half. His latest book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships looks at the interpersonal element of emotional intelligence and its implications for learning and leadership. Goleman is an award-winning writer, with a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association and has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his efforts to communicate the behavioral sciences to the public.

Firstly, could you explain to our readers what emotional intelligence is and why it is important within organizations?

Emotional intelligence refers to the ways in which we handle ourselves and our relationships. It is a more precise way of putting people skills into operation; those soft skills that actually catalyze and mobilize any other technical or cognitive abilities that we have. So if you want high-performing people or high-performing teams or a high-performing organization you need to realize it is not just the technical aptitude that you have or the collective expertise you have but how people are able to mobilize that, to work together and to motivate themselves, to communicate and to collaborate and to create new value and that is what is going to make a competitive difference. I would add that in today’s dire business climate people must be able to work effectively in high stress times and that means being able to manage their own anxiety, being able to handle their own fears, being able to stay clear and calm in the midst of turmoil so that their cognitive abilities can function effectively. This has to do with how the brain is designed and the way in which our emotional states either catalyze or interfere with our cognitive abilities.

How have these ideas developed in your latest book on social intelligence?

In the book Social Intelligence I look at two dimensions of new findings in brain science that are extremely relevant to leadership and performance. One has to do with the specific relationship between our centers for the fight or flight response, the emotional centers, the part of the brain that makes us anxious or makes us exuberant and engaged and how that circuitry in turn controls the cognitive circuitry. As a result there is an intimate relationship between our emotional states and our ability to think and function cognitively and this can either be for the better or for the worse. Ideally our emotional centers are operating in a manner in which we are very engaged, very enthused, we are in flow and our neo-cortex is in a state of optimal cognitive efficiency where we can take in information fully and understand it deeply and react most flexibly. The second dimension of neuroscience has to do with the social circuitry of the brain, which is the neural basis for social intelligence; this is our circuitry for empathy, for connection, for reading other people, for communicating, for influencing, for persuading, for motivating, for inspiring. In other words the active ingredients in highly effective leadership depend on this very circuitry. You can be superb as an individual performer because you have good self-mastery, you are motivated, you are persistent, you are disciplined, you are focused and you are flexible. But no matter how good you are as an individual performer if you lack social intelligence you will fail as a leader because it is your communication skills, it is your interpersonal interactions that determine how well other people will do under your leadership. So you put those two together and you have a highly effective leader.

The modern workplace has become one of rapid change and information overload. How is social intelligence affected by these types of environments?

The rate of change and the massive amount of information that we have to integrate, register and understand is itself stressful and I think that this creates two challenges for leaders. One is to wade through all of that in order to survive an atmosphere of rapid change, so that you yourself can stay calm and clear and the second is to communicate that state to the people you lead. In this situation leaders have a natural edge for two reasons; one is, emotions are highly contagious because of the social brain and the connecting brain-to-brain circuitry and the second is that people pay most attention to and put most importance on the most powerful person in a group and that is the leader. So emotions are most highly contagious from leader to follower to the extent that if you, as a leader, can be in a good place, your people can be in a good place too.

How can organizations use emotional intelligence for development purposes?

Many organizations are already using emotional intelligence for development purposes in any one of three ways. One is to look for these qualities in people you hire, the second is to promote people in part because they have these qualities over and above any other technical skill or expertise that may be required and the third is to help leaders develop further skills in these areas.

In recent years we have seen a trend for appointing what are termed “celebrity CEOs” as the answer to an organization’s problems. These approaches often fail despite the apparent charisma or reputation of the leader. Do you think this is down to a lack of emotional intelligence?

There was a very telling study done by Egon Zehnder International led by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a friend of mine who is a member of a research consortium that I co-direct at Rutgers University. Claudio is Director of Research at Egon Zehnder International and they wanted to know what accounted for the fact that even though most of the people they recruited they recruit at “C level”, so CFO, CEO, etc, what accounted for the failures when they did occur? And the way the question was asked was, “What does a great people decision look like at the CEO level?” And the answer was quite interesting, it was that people tended to get selected because of their business expertise, because of their intelligence and I suppose you could throw in perceived charisma, in the case of celebrity CEOs, but that when they failed it was because of a deficit in emotional intelligence that is they just were not effective with people in some way.

And finally, earlier you touched on the need to develop the emotional intelligence of leaders within organizations. What types of methods can be used?

Well since you are talking about relationship skills, it is important that this be learned within a relationship. Coaching, learning partners, hands-on shadowing of people and observing them and then giving them feedback on their actual workplace behavior, all of this is highly effective and is among the best practice for leadership development in this area.

This interview was conducted in connection with Leaders in London 2008, Europe’s Premier Leadership conference where Daniel Goleman presented a masterclass on: The New Science of Leadership: Building a Committed, Can Do & High Performing Organization in Challenging Times. For details of the 2009 conference and speakers visit: www.leadersinlondon.com