Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman

welcome back to franklin covey's on leadership podcast series my name is scott miller i serve as your weekly host and interviewer i'm also the author of the book master mentors 30 transformative insights from our greatest mind pulled from some of my 30 favorite interviews from this on leadership podcast available course on amazon where i've just released for pre-order master mentors volume 2 30 new transformative insights from 32 30 new master mentors from this podcast available now for pre-order on amazon available the first week in october on our way to 10 volumes in master mentor both

books are drawn from some of the most transformative insights from guests on our first 225 episodes on this podcast today we have a giant an intellectual emotional giant his name is dr daniel goldman he of course is the author of about a dozen books he is a two-time pulitzer prize winning nominee he is an author keynote speaker coach advisor his book of course emotional intelligence has changed the landscape for how hundreds of millions of us work and interact throughout our days i had the privilege of seeing him speak at the world business forum several years

ago several years ago and today we're honored that from uh just north of new york city daniel goldman is joining us from his home daniel welcome to on leadership thank you scott it's very kind of you to have me daniel it's an honor to have you on as you know this podcast is the world's largest weekly leadership podcast and people come to us every week for insights for transformational insights from best-selling authors business titans celebrities researchers or people who perhaps have no fame but have paid the price to perhaps recover from a trauma or learn

something from their own research and practice and today you are a fantastic addition to our now almost four year podcast series daniel will you take a few moments and of course the world knows you from being the author of numerous books including your seminal book emotional intelligence would you maybe rewind a couple of decades and talk a bit about what has been your professional journey to become what is now one of the most famous authors of our generation yes well i never set out to become a famous author it just happened i started in clinical

psychology i got a phd in that at harvard years and years ago and went into journalism at a time when that was looked at scants in the academic world and ended up working on the science desk of the new york times covering the brain and behavior which led me actually to write the book emotional intelligence a friend of mine peter salovey who's now the president of yale university had written an article called emotional intelligence in a rather obscure journal my job at the time was to read as many journals as i could find and see

if there was anything that was new interesting relevant to people's lives and i thought wow emotional intelligence what a great phrase it's an oxymoron you can't put intelligence together with emotions but then i realized it meant being intelligent about emotions and that led me to go circle around back to my psychology days and look at the brain science underneath emotional intelligence to develop my own model of emotional intelligence and then to look into the leadership literature and to understand the many many ways in which being emotionally intelligent helps you as a leader be more effective

and helps the people you lead have better performance daniel why do you think your work has been so transformative to you know millions of people and hundreds of thousands of organizations that teach the skills and have them as part of their competencies i mean i'm going to guess there isn't a company in the world that doesn't have emotional intelligence as a leadership competency whether you're an individual producer or you're just a a leader of people why do you think it's become so in vogue well i think there are few reasons actually scott first of all

it's intuitive everybody has known this yeah and i think i gave it i gave it words i gave it language people could use that are acceptable in a business setting i remember when i set out people told me you can't use the word emotion in a business but actually it's really a good idea because the brain doesn't distinguish between you know our work life and the rest of life we have emotions all the time and in fact they have a very powerful effect on how well you could we can use whatever talents we have you

know our intelligence or coding or whatever it may be whatever technical skill if you're in a bad mood if you're anxious if you're fearful if you're angry it's going to lower your ability to use whatever talent you have and if you're in an upbeat mood enthusiastic energized as you well know scott you're going to be at your best and the data now on business performance uh leadership is so strong showing that leaders need this skill set if they're going to be effective and if the people they lead are going to be effective to that point

daniel is our emotional intelligence fixed is there sort of a finite boundary of how we can grow it and we have to sort of dive deeper or do you think the majority of us can broaden that and develop that into a strength if you will an actual leadership competency for our own brands our own reputations scott that's a great question and actually it speaks to the old debate between nature and nurture which has been resolved now as both nature and nurture which is to say we're born with certain set points for key neurotransmitter systems that

determine for example how outgoing we are how agreeable we are but and this is the really key point iq is fixed it's really an index of how quickly you can learn new material and it pretty much doesn't change from childhood on emotional intelligence in contrast is learned and learnable and we learn it through life you know when when a parent picks up a crying baby and sues it that baby's brain is learning how to soothe itself you know parents are the first mentors in emotional intelligence if you're an executive if you're a manager and you

want to get better at emotional intelligence competencies which i recommend uh you can do it but there's a window of opportunity in childhood into the mid-20s when the emotional social circuitry of the brain is actually taking shape and after that time we just have to put more effort and time into learning because we have to overcome whatever habits we picked up maybe we're bad listeners and we want to learn to be a better listener well now we've got to first of all be mindful and notice there's a chance for me to practice being a good

listener and then make the effort to do it and our data shows if you make that effort consistently in you know about six months you're you're going to do the new behavior listening well naturally without having to think about it and that means there's been a change in underlying brain circuitry that's going to stick with you for the rest of your life dan let's go deeper on that let's talk about the dimensions of emotional intelligence would you kind of maybe walk us through what those dimensions look like and are there some that are the most

prevalent in leaders and some that perhaps have the biggest deficit that we should be mindful of working on sure thank you for asking me there are four parts to my model there's self-awareness knowing what you're feeling and how it's affecting your uh your thinking your perception your impulses being able to master yourself to handle your emotions well keep your eye on the goal to stay positive to be adaptable that's the second part that's self-mastery the third is empathy knowing what other people are feeling tuning into them and the fourth is using all of that together

to have effective relationships and scott within each of those four domains are nested specific competencies of emotional intelligence so for example when it comes to self-mastery there's emotional balance keeping yourself from being overwhelmed by negative emotions and nurturing positive ones being optimistic no matter what happens being adaptable and nimble and handling new challenges and keeping your eyes on your goal each of those is a particular competence and each domain has these competencies and i think it's crucial for a leader to realize i was just talking to someone who does assessments of people in c-suites she

says everyone in his c-suite has the achievement competence in spades they keep their eye on their goal that's why they're in the ac suite but she said if they don't temper that with empathy and caring about the people they lead they're going to burn people out their most talented people are going to leave they're going to have a high turnover rate and in fact our data shows that in fact you've said that most ceos are hired for their intellect and their business competence but they're fired for their lack of emotional intelligence speak to the millions

of members that are watching this that are in the c-suite or on their way up and sort of what you know what shot across the bow might you give executive level leaders to make sure they're not part of that continuing statistic of high on intellect and business acumen but perhaps oftentimes low on the eq side not always but sometimes well yes and i don't think it's either or i think it's both and i think you do need the business skills no question you know that's baseline but what differentiates people who stand out from their peers

is emotional intelligence you know do you work toward your goals do you stay calm and clear when other people are going you know really upset and not thinking well do you uh are you able to influence people uh persuade them inspire them do you listen well do you communicate well these are all emotional intelligence abilities and these are the differentiators uh of people who are outstanding leaders from people who are just mediocre do you know talk about the power of self-regulation and are there some specific actions that everyone could take or remember or a process

to realize where they might be tripping up so talk about um why self-regulation is so important to emotional intelligence and for those of us who may not naturally self-regulate well what are some tips or tiny habits or tricks we could be thinking about to make it a skill make it a competency yeah that's a great question because i think it's crucial uh if you blow up at people if you feel panicked or anxious like two in the morning you wake up worrying about something at work uh you you're not managing your emotions well so self-regulation

really means to handling your own emotions so that they don't get in the way of your functioning and there are a number of ways to do that uh one way one method actually it's used by special forces i'm about to do a a webcast to the ukraine to help people there it's called the box breath of 444 and when you feel yourself losing it you take a deep breath in one two three four you hold it as long as you can one two three four longer and you exhale very long and this shifts your physiology

from the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system arousal to the relax and recover mode that's one quick trick there's another which is to be mindful of your emotions and notice what you're feeling not let it just sweep you up and in some frenetic response to the situation but to notice oh i'm getting angry i'm getting anxious and then to manage that emotion better and by the way the minute or the moment you sh you name the emotion you've already activated the prefrontal cortex which your emotional centers had paralyzed and you're shifting the energy so that

it becomes easier to get over that upset and then there's mindfulness mindfulness is a very powerful method many people in the business world now use it if you practice it every day like paying attention to your in-breath pure out breath you know you do it for five minutes 10 minutes in the morning it resets your metabolism so that when you do get that you know encounter the stressor at work you are triggered less often if you are triggered it's not as intense and you recover more quickly resilience is how long it takes you to from

the peak of upset to get back to relaxed and finally i'll recommend the personal sustainability index it's an inventory i developed with my colleague richard boyances who teaches management at case western and it's a way of assessing your own life in terms of how many sources of stress you have and how that's balanced or not with ways to recover with uplifts with things that get you into that recovery mode and we need a good balance in our day so there's a quick method scott and there's a longer term method and there's a zoom back and

look at your life when the world hears the term emotional intelligence and apologies to other authors who have written about it the world thinks of daniel goleman that you are equated worldwide with the ideology in my opinion behind the concept of emotional intelligence yes others have written about it in many other different valuable ways what is it like that your brand in many ways is as the guy that's the expert on emotional intelligence do people expect from you a more measured thoughtful self-regulated personality is this a natural talent of yours do you have to remind

yourself like dr covey would always say that of his seven habits habit five the listening habit was his biggest struggle how do you how do you live your life recognizing that the spotlight is on you to always be exhibiting some level of emotional intelligence well i always say you write about what you need to learn because i think it's really humble uh and wonderful of stephen covey to say that she he actually was learning himself and i say i'm a lifelong learner too there's a mini industry in emotional intelligence as you say there's countless books

on it there's many uh consultants who are coaches who specialize in it i just myself i just started something called the the goldman consulting group to help companies create an emotionally intelligent culture so i am identified with it but i i don't look to myself as the model of it i see myself as someone who is still learning i'll tell you my personal model is actually the dalai lama who i've come to know over the years and i've seen him in many different situations and i think he is as far as i know the most

well-balanced person i've met and also the kindest which i think is another index by the way being kind is not the same as being nice being nice is often mistaken is the same as emotional intelligence i don't think so being nice you you may just do whatever it takes to get along with people being kind you may bring up that one thing that's unpleasant but needs to be dealt with that's a kindness that was a gift right there daniel this might sound like a cliche but i'm guessing that emotional intelligence post-pandemic is a competency that's

more desperately needed than ever before we've all been through different levels of trauma right this cliche of we've all been in the same storm but different boats what do you say to the highly competent leader with business acumen and process skills and perhaps in a high iq that says i just want to do the work i just want to get the work done i don't want to spend my time dealing with all the emotions of my people and individualized leadership and i just here to work and get stuff done where do you meet that leader

and help she or he move forward scott let me share some research that speaks to that this is work done at the yale school of management and it shows that if the head of a team a leader is in a really negative mood very angry and anxious whatever people on that team catch that mood performance goes down if the leader's in a positive mood people on the team catch that performance goes up your emotions mr leader or mrs leader matter because they're contagious they're most powerfully contagious from the most powerful person in the room outward

and you are often that person in the room so you may think it doesn't matter but actually it does it matters not just for your own performance but for the performance of the people you connect with and how well you connect and how well you support those people is going to determine how well they can do for you and your success depends on the work of everyone around you do you think there are certain industries that discourage or don't accommodate the value the implicit value behind emotional intelligence and if so what do you do if

you work in one of those industries or that kind of company where it's kind of dismissed or not safe to talk about uh there are certain industries like that they often tend to be quant uh focused finance technology those types of things yeah technology finance and so on where you know your uh iq skills are very valued but our data shows that that gets you in the door but now you're competing with people who are as smart as you are or as good as you are and what's going to differentiate your performance is how well

you manage yourself and how well you can lead a group and that's all emotional intelligence what would you say to someone who's down the level in the organization and they work with a leader that doesn't exhibit any of the dimensions of emotional intelligence perhaps they're you know perhaps this person is on the spectrum perhaps this person is very left brain perhaps this person doesn't do well managing their emotions any tips you would give just to rank and file person like me that might want to lead up using the concepts we've learned from you in your

writing in the writings of the industry that would help us broaden our circle of influence so to speak well a couple of things here one is if you're motivated and if you want to try to get better at this it's it's definitely doable it takes some effort takes some time uh helps to have a coach and if for some reason it doesn't appeal to you or it's just something you can't do then there are many many tracks and corporations for example to a successful career there are many career ladders and you can climb the one

that works best for you when we open you talked about the power of self-awareness right as one of the components of of uh emotional agility it's a word we hear a lot about it's a world where that few of us have actually adopted into our repertoire of being a good leader or a colleague or parent or spouse or partner what would you like our listeners and viewers to be reminded of about how important the connection between self-awareness is and developing our emotional intelligence uh it turns out to be crucial uh to be able to tune

into your own feelings it's interesting because this is the least visible competence but it may be the most important our data shows uh for example if you do a self-assessment and then people who know you well whose opinions you trust who you choose assess you on the same variables but do it anonymously you're going to get a self-rating versus how others see me rating the bigger the gap between yourself rating and how others see you that is the poor your self-awareness uh it turns out the less likely you can develop strengths across the board in

emotional intelligence if you have a very small gap if you see yourself pretty much the way others do if you have good self-awareness then you're much much better at developing any of the emotional intelligence competencies when you were 10 years old 12 years old what did you think your career would focus on perhaps being a fireman i don't really remember well so move forward 18 years old when you first were maybe coming into college what did you think your natural strengths and talents would have lent your career towards well you know i probably wanted to

be a physician but the truth is i loved writing and i didn't think of that as a career but it turned out to be my career and as you look back on your contribution your legacy what are you most proud of well i actually value the fact that people around the world take emotional intelligence seriously and that people in so many different places and so many different callings so many different roles in organizations of all kinds have taken this to heart and are using self-awareness to handle themselves better to be a better person if you

will and that they're handling people in a more nurturing nourishing and kinder way daniel you've written about a dozen books uh emotional agility has been in print how many decades uh emotional agility is actually susan david sorry emotional intelligence thank you sorry yes uh emotional intelligence uh has been in print since 1995. yeah recently came out with the 25th anniversary edition 25 years if you were and you and you've like you said you re-released a new edition of it anything missing anything that you've realized in your research and experience all the speeches the consulting that

you'd say you know the next edition i'm going to add this to because i want to give more gravitas to that well you know i'm actually writing a follow-up book now because we have 25 years of data showing that yes emotional intelligence actually enhances leaders performance hard metrics it makes people lessens turnover people employees have better performance they like their work better they like their boss better organizations have better profit and growth if they have an emotionally intelligent culture so that's a very very pleasing to me but the one thing that i would emphasize that

i hadn't is the importance of a sense of belonging and i think an emotionally intelligent leader and team members can provide this google called it psychological safety they found it in their top performing teams and i think that that sense of belonging is critical to these new initiatives and diversity and uh equity and so on so i i would have emphasized that more if i had it yeah it makes sense i misspoke when i mentioned the book emotional agility was on my mind i'm a big fan by the way of dr susan david and her

work she spoke i believe the same year you did at the world business forum it's on my mind because there's a connection is there not between how your emotional intelligence leads you to be an emotionally agile leader in fact we're hearing now with some frequency that instead of talking about change management we're talking about sort of agility management speak to if there are any other than my misspeaking what are the connections between being an emotionally agile and emotionally intelligent leader there's a very strong connection i have 12 competencies of leaders based on you know top

10 performers in organizations of all kinds one of them is what i call adaptability it's actually the same as agility it means that whatever comes down the pike whatever the crisis of the day is you're able to manage it well you can handle whatever challenge comes along because you are agile because you are adaptable uh so i i think that uh the two concepts largely overlap it's like uh achievement which is one of the companses i talk about that you find in top executives is very similar to what's been called grit being positivity is very

similar to what's being called now a growth mindset where you see yourself and other people as able to develop further and to improve and emotional balance which is another key competence in my set has been called resilience which is just emphasizing one part of that ability so yes scott in the short answer we're talking about the same thing yeah daniel let's end on this topic let's bring it personal let's bring it into the house into the home whether we're talking to people that their roles outside of the work are as a partner or spouse or

a significant other whether they're a parent or a guardian or just a friend going on a thursday morning 5 a.m walk with their walking buddy and they want to improve their emotional intelligence whether or not to dominate the conversation or to ask smart questions or be aware of what it's like to be my friend what what tips would you send us off for those of us who want to become more emotionally intelligent in our lives not as leaders but as friends parents spouses lovers colleagues what are some things you see are the biggest gaps the

biggest deficiencies that would help us build better friendships better relationships outside the workplace you know it's interesting to me that stephen covey said listening was hard for him i think listening is the common cold of emotional intelligence that it's just uh you know we're in a conversation with a teenager or our spouse or our walking buddy whomever very often we're just thinking of what we're going to say and not really listening to what they're saying so i think it takes two things it takes that self-awareness that mindful moment where is my attention right now am

i really listening to the other person i think that itself is something we can use anywhere in our life yeah you just described my entire life including my hour-long parent teacher conference this morning with my middle son as you were saying that i was thinking i i should have been interviewing him before that parent-teacher conference i would have been less dominant dino goldman thanks your time today you are a giant in the industry the gift you've given literally millions of leaders organizations making it safer to talk about this as a competency the number of careers

you probably have saved right by allowing people to either read your book or enroll in a course or see a webinar a speech your work is a huge gift you mentioned the goldman group as is consulting what's next for you sir well two things i'm writing the follow-up book which pulls together all the data which we now have 25 years of it showing the power of emotional intelligence in leadership and organizations and also applying that leveraging that data in the goldman consulting group so that's those are my next steps daniel goldman thanks for investing your

time in our audience today we appreciate you joining the on leadership series that's a success to you thanks so much scott it's been a pleasure and thanks to each of you the guests keep getting better and better we're excited to bring you a new guest on a new topic next week on leadership [Music] [Applause] [Music] you