Emotional Intelligence: The #1 ability for leaders | Daniel Goleman — Transcript

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1. 0:07you know in the future I think emotional
2. 0:09intelligence will be one of several
3. 0:12abilities that we need another of course
4. 0:15is cognitive ability IQ and maybe AI
5. 0:18will take over more and more of that
6. 0:21however emotional intelligence is a
7. 0:24human ability and will always remain so
8. 0:28IQ predicts how well you'll do in your
9. 0:30school years and how much salary you can
10. 0:33make over the course of a career because
11. 0:35it says what job you can get into like
12. 0:38being a business executive or doctor or
13. 0:40lawyer but once you're in those
14. 0:43professions everybody else is about as
15. 0:45smart as you are that's where emotional
16. 0:47intelligence kicks in people who emerge
17. 0:50as outstanding performers or the best
18. 0:52leaders have high emotional intelligence
19. 0:56and their IQ is not that relevant at
20. 0:59that point
21. 1:00I'm Daniel Gman I've written many books
22. 1:02mostly on emotional intelligence that's
23. 1:05really my favorite topic the book
24. 1:07emotional intelligence many years ago
25. 1:09was an international bestseller I've
26. 1:11written now five books on the topic my
27. 1:14most recent is optimal how to sustain
28. 1:17personal and organizational Excellence
29. 1:19every
30. 1:27day emotional intelligence is a set of
31. 1:30personal skills that we learn in
32. 1:32life it's a combination of
33. 1:35self-awareness managing your emotions
34. 1:37well empathy tuning into other people
35. 1:41and putting that all together to have
36. 1:42harmonious or effective
37. 1:44relationships emotional intelligence has
38. 1:47been talked about for centuries
39. 1:48philosophers were talking about know
40. 1:50thyself that self-awareness but when I
41. 1:53wrote the emotional intelligence book in
42. 1:56'95 it was the first time that for a
43. 2:00popular audience emotional intelligence
44. 2:03had become well known I was a science
45. 2:05journalist at the New York Times back
46. 2:07then and I'd been covering a decade of
47. 2:10research on the brain and emotion and in
48. 2:13doing so I came across a very obscure
49. 2:16article called emotional intelligence
50. 2:18and I loved the title it was by Peter
51. 2:20salave who's just stepping down as the
52. 2:22president of Yale University and his
53. 2:25then graduate student John Mayer and I
54. 2:28thought wow what a great phrase It's
55. 2:30seems like an oxymoron you don't put
56. 2:32emotions together with intelligence but
57. 2:35actually it's being intelligent about
58. 2:39emotions when I wrote emotional
59. 2:41intelligence I was actually thinking of
60. 2:43bringing it to schools it seemed to me
61. 2:45that kids should learn from the get-go
62. 2:48how to manage themselves how to tune
63. 2:51into themselves how to tune into to
64. 2:52other people how to get along how to
65. 2:54behave well and so on I was a big
66. 2:57advocate of what's now called social
67. 2:58emotional learning
68. 3:00and from early on my view of emotional
69. 3:03intelligence hasn't really changed much
70. 3:06but I integrated it with findings from
71. 3:08research on outstanding performers and I
72. 3:12saw that different abilities of high
73. 3:14performers like being able to manage
74. 3:16your emotions fit well in the model and
75. 3:20now I talk about four domains of
76. 3:23emotional
77. 3:24intelligence and then 12 particular
78. 3:26competencies of people who are high in
79. 3:29emotional intelligence
80. 3:29[Music]
81. 3:33self-awareness means you know what
82. 3:35you're feeling you know how it shapes
83. 3:37your perceptions and your thoughts and
84. 3:39your impulse to act we find in our
85. 3:42research that people low in
86. 3:43self-awareness are unable to develop
87. 3:46strengths very well in other parts of
88. 3:48emotional intelligence people that are
89. 3:50high in self-awareness however are able
90. 3:52to develop Excellence across the
91. 3:56board self-management means when you're
92. 4:00upset when you're angry when you're
93. 4:02anxious can you manage your emotions can
94. 4:05you keep them from disrupting your focus
95. 4:08on what you have to do right now we're
96. 4:11having more instance of road rage of
97. 4:14shootings of people blowing up at other
98. 4:17people there's a growing need for people
99. 4:21in general to get better at this
100. 4:24ability the third part is social
101. 4:26awareness which in one sense means
102. 4:29practicing
103. 4:30empathy you not only know how the person
104. 4:32thinks and how they feel you care about
105. 4:35them this is what you want in your
106. 4:37parents this is what you want in your
107. 4:39spouse this is what you want in your
108. 4:40lover this is what you want in your
109. 4:42friends and this is what you want in
110. 4:44your teachers doctors leaders of any
111. 4:48kind people who have
112. 4:50influence the fourth part of emotional
113. 4:52intelligence is relationship
114. 4:56management can you handle conflicts well
115. 4:58can you keep yourself calm and listen to
116. 5:02the other person are you being an
117. 5:04effective Communicator full Rapport
118. 5:07means that you feel close you feel you
119. 5:10can work with this person you can trust
120. 5:15them unlike IQ which barely budges over
121. 5:19the course of our life emotional
122. 5:21intelligence can change is learned and
123. 5:23learnable and it's learned and learnable
124. 5:26at any point in
125. 5:27life emotional intelligence is not one
126. 5:30thing it's like going to a doctor for
127. 5:33physical you get your lipids and your
128. 5:35good cholesterol bad cholesterol you get
129. 5:3715 data points emotional intelligence is
130. 5:41a set of abilities and each of us has
131. 5:44strengths and limitations across that
132. 5:46Spectrum so if you want to improve your
133. 5:48emotional intelligence see where you
134. 5:50need to improve first one of the common
135. 5:53colds of emotional intelligence is poor
136. 5:57listening you know we think about about
137. 5:59what we want to say and we don't really
138. 6:01listen to the other person and we cut
139. 6:02them off we interrupt let's say you
140. 6:04wanted to change that this is a basic of
141. 6:07empathy listening well so if you want to
142. 6:10learn to be better at empathy you might
143. 6:13say my habit and I've done it thousands
144. 6:16of times is cutting people off and
145. 6:18interrupting I'm going to make the
146. 6:20effort to do it differently I'm going to
147. 6:22listen to the person out say what I
148. 6:24think they mean and then say what I
149. 6:26think that is a different behavioral
150. 6:28sequence and it comes down to the basics
151. 6:31of what we call
152. 6:32neuroplasticity how the brain changes
153. 6:34with repeated experience and that's what
154. 6:37underlies habit change it's a little
155. 6:40like crossing your arms in a new way
156. 6:43Cross Your Arms in the old way please
157. 6:45now cross them with the other arm on top
158. 6:48that feels uncomfortable that's what
159. 6:50it's like to change a habit so with
160. 6:54listening you have to first make an
161. 6:56intentional effort might feel
162. 6:58uncomfortable but as you persist it gets
163. 7:01more and more comfortable until finally
164. 7:04it's an automatic habit that will stay
165. 7:07with you for
166. 7:10years you know I've gone around the
167. 7:12world talking to different audiences and
168. 7:15one of things I love to ask is tell me
169. 7:17about a leader you've loved and a leader
170. 7:19you hate and tell me one quality that
171. 7:23makes a leader so good or so bad
172. 7:25basically the leader you hate is low in
173. 7:28emotional intelligence
174. 7:29[Music]
175. 7:31they don't manage their emotions very
176. 7:33well they blow up at people don't
177. 7:35empathize they don't tune in they don't
178. 7:37understand how clueless they are the
179. 7:39leader you love is high in
180. 7:41it having a boss with high emotional
181. 7:45intelligence means you feel not only
182. 7:47inspired not only motivated you feel
183. 7:50supported you feel guided you feel you
184. 7:53have clarity about what's expected from
185. 7:55you you give your best in your best
186. 7:58state in the optim State not in a
187. 8:01desperate stressed out State research at
188. 8:04the Yale School of Management has found
189. 8:06that emotions are contagious and they're
190. 8:09most contagious from the leader outward
191. 8:12the leader is most often the center of
192. 8:15strong emotions either negative or
193. 8:17positive and the this very research by
194. 8:20Seagal barsade has shown that if the
195. 8:23leader is in a negative mood very
196. 8:26anxious for example people on that team
197. 8:29will catch that mood and performance
198. 8:31goes down if the leader is in a very
199. 8:34positive mood I feel really good I feel
200. 8:38enthusiastic then people catch that
201. 8:40positive mood and their performance as a
202. 8:43team or as a group goes up so the leader
203. 8:46state is actually much more important on
204. 8:50the ability of people to do good work
205. 8:52than many people realize particularly
206. 8:54many leaders actually but if you have a
207. 8:57leader that you hate for example and
208. 9:00sadly too many people do then you really
209. 9:04don't give your best in fact you're more
210. 9:06likely to leave as soon as you can
211. 9:08particularly if you're talented so a
212. 9:11leader with low emotional intelligence
213. 9:13is actually draining the organization in
214. 9:17the long term they may get results for
215. 9:19the quarter by driving people by
216. 9:22stressing them out but they're burning
217. 9:24them out and they're going to lose good
218. 9:26people so in the short term they may
219. 9:28look good in the long term it's a
220. 9:33disaster I once took a bus up Madison
221. 9:36Avenue in New York City on a very hot
222. 9:38humid day people had a kind of bubble
223. 9:42around them like don't touch me don't
224. 9:44talk to me I had the bubble too I got on
225. 9:46the bus and the bus driver shocked me he
226. 9:48looked at me and very warmly said
227. 9:51welcome to the bus how's your day going
228. 9:54and then I realized sitting on the bus
229. 9:56that he was carrying on a conversation
230. 9:58with everyone on the bus you're looking
231. 10:00for suits are you well there's a great
232. 10:01sale up here on the right at this
233. 10:03department store did you see the exhibit
234. 10:05in the museum on the left on and on and
235. 10:07on then people would get off that bus
236. 10:09and they've been transformed from kind
237. 10:11of grumpy to pretty upbeat it was kind
238. 10:14of magical and years later I saw an
239. 10:18article in the New York Times about that
240. 10:20bus
241. 10:21driver his name it turned out was Goen
242. 10:23Brown he had fans people would wait for
243. 10:26his bus he got 3,000 letters saying what
244. 10:29a a great bus driver he was not one
245. 10:31complaint and he it turned out was the
246. 10:34pastor of a church and he saw the people
247. 10:37on his bus as part of his flock he was
248. 10:41tending to his flock he had a purpose
249. 10:44that was far greater than that of the
250. 10:47New York Transit Authority which is
251. 10:49something like getting as many people to
252. 10:51where they want to go on time as we can
253. 10:54he had a splendid sense of what he was
254. 10:57doing it gave a greater meaning
255. 10:59to what he did and he did it
256. 11:03superbly I've always felt that the more
257. 11:06emotional intelligence in society the
258. 11:09better I think we would have parents who
259. 11:12are more effective in raising kids who
260. 11:14are Kinder we'd have more compassion for
261. 11:17each other in our interaction with
262. 11:20friends and loved ones as well as with
263. 11:22strangers I think we would care more
264. 11:24about the environment which is why I've
265. 11:27been happy to be a kind of evangelist
266. 11:30for emotional intelligence if you will
267. 11:33I'm not the originator of the phrase I
268. 11:35think I made it more
269. 11:37famous I just think it would make a
270. 11:39better
271. 11:41world to learn even more from the
272. 11:43world's biggest thinkers get big think
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