Outline
This is the first in a series of articles on emotional intelligence (EI). I begin the series with a quick review of the history of the development of the terms emotional intelligence. I say "terms" because there are two widely different definitions of EI. One is the popular corporate definition which includes almost everything which is not IQ. The other is the scientific definition which is much narrower in one sense, but broader in another sense, as I explain below. In this first article I compare the popular vs. scientific concepts of EI from three perspectives: 1. Claims 2. Definitions 3. Assumptions
While the differences in the claims and assumptions can be addressed relatively easily, I break the discussion of the definitional difference into two articles. In this article I open the definitional discussion by explaining the important difference between a competence and an intelligence. In the second article I focus on another important difference: that between a personality trait and an intelligence.
In the third article I discuss EI tests and in the final article(s) I offer practical suggestions on how to develop and how to use emotional intelligence at work and in your personal life. (+ possibly a review/summary article or section)
I'm making a few assumptions as I write these articles. First, that you are a human resource manager who reports to someone higher up in your organization. Second, that you originally got into the field of HR because you cared about people as humans, not just as resources. Third, that you want to feel good about the work you do; that you want to be able to honestly say to your children or friends that you enjoy the work you are doing.
In writing this series I have several goals.
First, I want you to know what you are talking about and to when your boss comes to you and says, "I am interested in this thing called emotional intelligence. I've been hearing a lot about it. What do you make of it all?"
Second, I want you to know what to do when he says, "Let's find out who the most emotionally intelligent people are in our organization." In other words I want you to know how to recognize true emotional intelligence and how to measure it.
Finally, I want you to know how to use it and how to develop it.
A brief history of the corporate definition of emotional intelligence
The popular corporate definition of EI is based on the 1995 book by Dan Goleman. In that book Goleman defined emotional intelligence so broadly and in so many different ways he paved the course for others to come up with their own creative definitions of the term. In his 1998 book he widened his definition of EI even further. Steven Pfeiffer, Ph.D. of Duke says that the term has now been "stretched to the breaking point." Robert Sternberg of Yale says that Goleman's definition "... includes a combination of abilities, personality traits, motivations, and emotional characteristics that seems to stretch even the most liberal definition of intelligence, and seems close to a conception of almost anything that matters beyond IQ".
My own view is that the term is now so overused it has become both trivialized and discredited to the point where it is in risk of becoming meaningless. If that were to happen, it would be a serious loss not only to business, but to society.
One root of the problem is that Goleman did not start out to write a book on emotional intelligence. Back in 1992-93 he was funded by the Fetzer Institute to study emotional literacy. When the book was nearly complete Goleman's publisher, Bantam, suggested he change the name to Emotional Intelligence to increase sales.
There appears to also have been a political agenda for re-naming the book. Goleman and Bantam wanted to discredit the importance of the intelligence research which had been presented the previous year in The Bell Curve. In the inside cover of the book, for example, the publisher wrote: " ..the true 'bell curve' for a democracy must measure emotional intelligence." Together Goleman and his publisher made sensational, misleading, and insupportable claims about the importance of emotional intelligence and the relative insignificance of traditional intelligence. I will address some of the consequences of these claims below.
Regrettably, Goleman has done little to discourage the over application and misuse of the term EI. In fact, with his 1998 book he widened his definition even further to include things like "leveraging diversity, conscientiousness, trustworthiness, service orientation, influence, and political awareness". Now the popular definition of EI seems to be have taken hold in the corporate world, having been uprooted from its origin in the garden of scientific inquiry.
By now you have surely seen the claims made about EI. These claims say things like EI is "more important than IQ", "twice as important as IQ and technical skills combined", and that it is the "best predictor of success in any endeavor". It is worth taking a look at the foundation (or lack of it) for some of these claims. In a carefully worded section of his article for the Harvard Business Review Goleman tells us how he came up with one of his astonishing claims. He tells us that he looked at "lists of ingredients for highly effective leaders" and then he says "when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels". What Goleman is doing, though, is equating the number of ingredients to their importance. An example from American football will show the problem with this faulty thinking.
Let's say we ask 50 coaches to list the ingredients of a successful quarterback. The list may include the ability to run fast, to change directions quickly, to resist being tackled, to jump, to throw far, to throw accurately, to hand off, to follow directions, to recover fumbles, to tackle (in case there is a fumble or an interception) and to use good judgment in making decisions about when to do all of these things.
That is a list of 11 "competencies." Only one of them, though, specifically requires mental intelligence -- that of course is the ability to use judgment in making decisions. Would it be fair to claim, then, that the other non-intelligence based competencies were ten times more important than the ability to make good decisions?
Such ill-founded claims about the importance of emotional intelligence have alarmed and offended serious researchers who have devoted their professional careers to studying personality and intelligence. In what is normally a fairly polite and reserved community, academic experts have called these claims "ridiculous", "insupportable", and "embarrassing to the profession of psychology". The claims began with the release of Goleman's book in 1995, a book which has been called a mixture of science and sensationalism. For several years the claims about EI spread like wildfire in a world which was suffering from a type of emotional health drought. As Jack Mayer, co-developer of the scientific definition of EI, explains it, the popular version of EI has now become something of a zeitgeist, an "intellectual or passionate trend that characterizes the moment."
The rapid spread of exciting, but unsupportable claims, led inevitably to even more blatantly inaccurate statements. For example, Goleman widely reported that, "At best, IQ contributes about 20% to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80% to other forces." (source) The problem is that between Goleman mentioning these figures the way he did and all the other claims about EI, people began to get seriously confused and misled. One reporter who attended a Goleman presentation later wrote "...recent studies have shown that emotional intelligence predicts about 80 percent of a person's success in life." (source) Goleman himself knows this is far from true, but, perhaps somewhat intoxicated by his overnight fame, he has done very little to reign in such wild claims.
In the academic world however, researchers were much less impulsive. Instead, they were concerned, with methodically and scientifically establishing EI as a true form of intelligence. This process began in 1990 and it continues today. While there is still some disagreement about whether EI is actually an intelligence, the consensus seems to be building that it is. Of course, the scientific process moves at much slower pace than the field of popular and science journalism. In the scientific world theories have to be tested and articles must be accepted in peer-reviewed journals. Independent researchers need to verify claims and results from previous studies. Few such checks and balances exist in the fast and loose world of popular magazines and easily created web sites. I hope that my own site serves a useful purpose in this regard, but I leave you to decide.
Knowing that intelligence is too important to be treated lightly, respected researchers, to their credit, have been extremely cautious in making any premature claims about EI and its value to "success" or society. We are just now starting to see the results of legitimate scientific studies comparing EI and variables such as work performance. In one of these studies, for example, Jamen Graves, Ph.D. writes "...contrary to some findings (e.g., Goleman, 1998), emotional intelligence does not seem to overshadow cognitive ability in predicting performance. It appears that emotional intelligence and cognitive ability play equally important roles..."
It has also been popularly claimed that EI, unlike IQ, is easy to acquire and readily learned, which would imply that EI has no basis in genetic inheritance. The academic view, however, is summed up in this statement by Jack Mayer:
It doesn't make sense to me to talk about teaching an intelligence... If emotional intelligence is like most other abilities, it is shaped partly by genetics and partly by environment. I like to talk about teaching knowledge. And I think it makes sense to talk about teaching emotional knowledge. I use this analogy: We don't say, "Can you learn math intelligence?" We say, "Can you learn algebra?" because we don't make our kids derive algebra from basic principles. We teach them about math as we understand it. Source
Corp. vs Scientific - Differences in Definition
Since my first assumption is that you are in an organization where you report to someone above you, I encourage you to be very certain you know what you are talking about when you use the term "emotional intelligence". I want to help you avoid a scenario where your boss one day reads some of the academically-based research which starkly contradicts the popular version of EI which has been heavily promoted to the HR profession. I don't want you to feel personally embarrassed, nor do I want the HR profession to suffer any more assaults upon its credibility. I worked in HR myself and I remember the constant credibility problems we faced. We in HR are always (or so it seems) feeling a need to defend ourselves. Let's not give people any more reason to feel skeptical of us and our training programs.
There are several ways the corporate and the academic definitions of EI differ. First, the definitions differ in their scope. As stated earlier, the academic definition of EI is both narrower and broader than the corporate definition. It is narrower because it focuses exclusively on mental or cognitive abilities. In other words, according to the scientific definition, EI necessarily involves thinking, reasoning and information processing.
It is broader because as an intelligence (as opposed to a competence or personality trait) it is a flexible ability which helps us either adapt to or change our environment as needed for our health and happiness. It does not require that we are always one way or another. Rather, it gives us the ability to decide when to feel optimistic and when to feel more pessimistic, for example.
There are several other more specific ways the two definitions differ. These may be categorized into 1. personality vs intelligence and 2. intelligence & potential vs. competence. As mentioned, personality is covered in the next article in the series so here I will consider how intelligence and potential differ from competence.
Intelligence and Potential vs Competence
The popular corporate definition of EI focuses heavily on competence as opposed to intelligence and potential. For example, in his 1995 book Goleman says "...the crucial emotional competencies can indeed be learned and improved upon..." (source) His 1998 book lists 25 "emotional competencies" which he says make up emotional intelligence. Also, the test he markets as a measure of emotional intelligence is actually called the "Emotional Competence Inventory".
The academic definition of EI, however, makes no mention of any specific competencies. Instead, it focuses on a person's general "ability to process emotional information, particularly as it involves the perception, assimilation, understanding, and management of emotion." (Mayer/Cobb). In this sense the word "ability" is perhaps best thought of as potential. Essentially, in fact, intelligence means potential. It means the potential for learning, for growing, and for development.
Let's use the math example again. If we were to talk about basic or "crucial" math competencies, we might say these would include addition and subtraction. Most people can learn these "competencies." But as any math teacher knows, some people have a progressively harder time when they get to multiplication, then division, then percentages and fractions. Here is where we start to see the difference between an intelligence and a competency. If we are intelligent in an area, we can learn the competencies much faster than someone of lesser potential or ability. If we have general intelligence, we will also know when and how to apply the competency in the real world.
For argument's sake, since we are talking about intelligence, let's take the example used in the book The Bell Curve. The authors talked about the difference between an intelligent waiter and a less intelligent one. The authors made the point that even in a job like working in a restaurant, intelligence matters; there are decisions to be made, priorities to be established moment by moment. Now let's think in terms of competencies vs. intelligence. On the first day, the less intelligent, but more experienced waiter might be more "competent". But by the end of the first day, the more intelligent waiter has already figured out better ways of doing things. He has already identified problems and generated alternatives or solutions. He has seen opportunities to improve things which seemed to be working okay. He might also want to set a higher standard of performance than what was expected of him, simply because he is intrinsically motivated. I suggest that in a similar way, a more emotionally intelligent person could soon outperform a person who appears to be emotionally competent as measured by one of the competence inventories.
If we return to the example of the football quarterback we see another important distinction between a competence and an intelligence. Coaches typically feel some desire for their quarterback to follow directions. The more intelligent quarterback, though, knows when to follow directions and when not to. Because he is more intelligent he can take in information more quickly, such as a last second change in the defense, and he can process this information using his own internal resources to make a smart call. I suspect it is this ability, above all else, that makes a good quarterback, a "star performer". In the same way, there are positions in your organization which demand a higher level of emotional intelligence, not just cookie cutter competence.
When you are recruiting, selecting, promoting and deciding who to develop, it may indeed be important to consider one's level of emotional competence. I suggest, though, that this is much different than their emotional intelligence. I discuss this issue further in the upcoming article on tests for emotional intelligence, but for now I simply want to say that while they both may be important to consider, I would not want you to mistake one for the other.
An underlying assumption of the corporate definition
To conclude this article I want draw attention to a key assumption present in the popular corporate definition of emotional intelligence. This assumption concerns the definition of the word success. From everything I have read it appears that the leading spokesperson of EI in the corporate world at the present time, Dan Goleman, along with most others, is increasingly is defining success only as financial success. I believe this is a fundamental shortcoming in the Goleman model. My personal belief is that many of you realize that there is more to life than money and profits. As I stated when I opened this article, I believe most HR managers care about people as humans and not just as resources to be used by the company in order to achieve higher profits.
There are times when you each have to make judgment calls about your personal priorities. At such times, I do not think the popular definition of emotional intelligence will be of much help to you. Instead, I suggest that you will have to look inside yourself; that you will have to call upon your own resources; that you will have to utilize your own emotional intelligence to help you access your very personal, individual feelings; and that you will make a better decision if you let your feelings be your guide.
Notes
Steven Pfeiffer quotes Roeper Review Vol 23, #3. p. 138
Sternberg Quote Personnel Psychology, Autumn 1999, Article begins on page 780
Mayer quote on teaching EI Psychology Today, July/August 1999, Vol. 32 Issue 4, p20.
Goleman quotes about crucial emot. competencies and about 20/80% Emotional Intelligence, 1995, p 34.
80% claim "...recent studies have
shown that emotional intelligence predicts about 80
percent of a person's success in life. Carolyn R. Pool,
Educational Leadership, May 1997 v54 n8 p12(3).