Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com
A few more words on Dan’s belated clarification about EI being 80% of success
First, I am wondering how Dan
actually feels about what he wrote in his 1995 book when he said
that IQ accounts for at best 20 percent of success and therefore
leaves 80% to other things. And I wonder how he feels about the
fact that for about 10 years he has remained silent, to the best
of my knowledge, about this.
I would guess that Dan feels guilty and defensive about what he
did, both in 1995 and since then. But I don’t think he
really feels regret or repentant. If he did he might have
apologized by saying something like this.
When I wrote those lines in my 1995 book I never thought so many people would conclude from them that EI accounts for 80% of success in anything. Then when I started seeing people writing this and spreading it around, I felt guilty for unintentionally misleading them in that way. For years I have felt guilty about this and not saying anything about it, so I finally am going to publicly apologize and clear this up as best I can.
Instead, what Goleman seems to do is blame the readers for “misinterpreting” what he wrote. Goleman, in other words, takes no responsibility for what happened.
I suspect that Dan made a conscious decision to let people continue to spread this “preposterous” claim because it was helping him sell more books and consulting services. Had Dan wanted to clear this up years ago he could have done any one or more of several things which he did not. One is he could have had Rob Emmerling post a “clarification” on the EI Consortium site. Another is he could have asked me to post a clarification on my site, since it has been one of the top sites on EI for years and Dan definitely knows I exist. Another is he could have asked David Caruso or Jack Mayer to post something on their sites. Yet Dan did none of these things. Why is that?
And now Dan says the claim is “preposterous.” This reminds me of the quote from Shakespeare which goes “Methinks thou dost protest too much.” By saying it is “preposterous” he makes it sound like would never even imply such a thing and that instead his readers are quite stupid and can’t accurately interpret what he writes. If this is the case, then we might all be worried about what else the Dan Goleman readers have misinterpreted, or have been misled into believing.
S. Hein
October 11, 2006