Event reviews

Citation

Newman, M. (2012), "Event reviews", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2012.37211daa.012

Event reviews

Article Type: Resources From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 11, Issue 4

Leadership & Emotional Intelligence Summit, London, UK, 9 March, 2012

Martyn NewmanManaging Director at RocheMartin and author of Emotional Capitalists – The New Leaders

On 9 March, over 320 human resource professionals from around the world attended the Leadership & Emotional Intelligence Summit held in Covent Garden, London.

Headlining the event was Professor Paul Ekman who played a key role almost 40 years ago in challenging the dominant model in psychology by suggesting that emotions, not simply thoughts, had a major influence on behavior. Tired from his journey, Professor Ekman sat for his presentation and spoke slowly and deliberately, delivering each finding from his 40 year long career with simple conviction. Ekman found that contrary to the belief of some anthropologists, including Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin.

He then went on to explore the expressions he found to be universal, including those indicating anger, disgust, fear, shame, joy, sadness and surprise, and concluded his presentation by reporting on facial “microexpressions,”which could be used to assist in lie detection. After testing a total of 20,000 people from all walks of life, he found only 50 people that had the ability to spot deception without any formal training. These naturals he described as “Truth Wizards.” The audience sat enraptured, captured by the gravitas of the Ekman legend and the power of his findings to decode their experience.

Looking at the practicalities of EI

The summit was hosted by leadership consultants RocheMartin,which reviewed a decade of research since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s popular book on EI. After summarizing the findings, the audience was introduced to the Emotional Capital Report (ECR), the latest psychometric tool created by RocheMartin to measure emotional intelligence and leadership. Findings from research on 7,000 professional people from 11 separate geographic regions demonstrated the power of the ECR to measure EI and leadership in various cultures around the world.

Joining us for the afternoon sessions were HR directors from Optus/SingTel, Quiksilver and Ernst & Young, who all presented compelling case studies of how they have used EI to build successful leadership cultures in their organizations. We then looked to the future and considered how EI is being brought to the next generation via the UK education system and through the power of social enterprises such as the Attitude Academy.

A highlight of the day was the panel discussion that provided a rich opportunity to ask questions of a panel of experts. There was universal agreement that EI remains a powerful and practical framework for describing the competencies that separate outstanding leaders from the mediocre. The day was summed up by one of the delegates with a long track record of working in leadership development inside organizations who commented after the summit that “emotional intelligence had well and truly been put back on the map in the UK.”