Title: Social Intelligence and Leadership

Transcription

1 Title: Social Intelligence and Leadership Instructor: Daniel Goleman Institution: Learners TV Dictated: 조소영 [0:10] Hello, I am Dianne (? 0:13) senior editor of Harvard Business review and I am delighted to have as my guest, Daniel Goleman. [0:19] Dan is a psychologist known around the world for his (? 0:23) and social, emotional intelligence. [0:25] He is also a co-author of the Harvard Business Review article <Social Intelligence and The Biology of Leadership>. [0:33] Dan, welcome to the program. [0:34] Thanks, it is a real pleasure to be here. [0:35] Great to have you. [0:37] Dan, we have invited you because we want to talk about social and emotional intelligence, and how they affect organizations and leaders. [0:44] So, let's just start at the beginning. [0:46] Emotional intelligence, why is it important, what is it and why it's

2 important for us? [0:50] Emotional intelligence refers to how we handle ourselves or are we aware of our feelings or... passions in of the things that turns on, or the things that turns off, what makes this effective what gets in the way. [1:03] And also how we manage our emotions, how do we let things interrupt our ability to focus to get work effectively or not. [1:11] And empathy recognizing other people's emotions knowing how the other person sees things, how their feeling. [1:19] And using that all to interact with people effectively. [1:23] You know, your work has changed how leaders and businesses do their work around the world. [1:29] Can you think of the leader who's changed how he is done his work, how she's done her work based on your insight into emotional intelligence? [1:36] Well, you know, I hear about hundreds, but I can't just name any. [1:41] I can think of though very highly placed executive who was hearing from direct reports that things were not going so well. [1:50] Messages came, for example inform people leaving, as well as a lot of grumblings. [1:57] And it turned out that when he really faced what was going on, people were saying, "You just don't listen. You just tell us what you think, you say you want to hear what we know, and we know a lot. But you don't really seem to care about it." [2:12] What he had to do was to get better at the social intelligence ability of listening of tuning into other people. [2:20] And it's a real problem for many executives because, of course, you know a lot. [2:26] You don't know everything. But because you are the boss, people prefer to you. So they start listening. [2:31] But the really excellent, outstanding leaders we find are people who first listen, and get other people to say what they think and what they know, and then, to

3 put that all together for higher order integration. [2:46] That is real leadership. [2:47] That is what he had to learn and through coaching and he was able to change and his business performance of unit was much much better afterward than before. [2:56] So the level of leaders' emotional intelligence affects organizational performance. [3:01] We have so much data now about ten years of accumulated data from organizations of all kinds, showing that there is a direct co-relation between emotional intelligence of leadership at every level. [3:13] And how that organization performs by whatever performance (? 3:17) you want to use. [3:19] Well, but it seems to me that leaders often think that they have more emotional intelligence than they do. [3:24] How did you begin to assess your level of emotional intelligence? [3:27] Actually, I think, we all think we have more emotional intelligence than we do. [3:30] Uh, one of the most (? 3:32) ways is to ask to your teenage child. [3:36] But at work what you can do is ask other people because it turns out that we ourselves are not the best gauge of how we are impacting other people. [3:46] But other people, if you can get them to be candid to tell you what your strengths are, and we all have them, and what can get you better at, and that's the most interesting valuable information because that is where any leader can get a bump in improvement. [4:02] By getting better, say at listening as that executive did, you can become a more effective leader, and therefore, because you depend on other people for your success, by getting better at listening to them, helping them develop, helping them do their jobs well, the whole organization benefits. [4:18] Interesting Dan, you talk about emotional intelligence, and I'm very curious how you got from that to social intelligence.

4 [4:26] Well, emotional intelligence, when I first wrote it, was prompted for me by a new breakthrough in brain science and our understanding of emotional centers of the brain and how that affects ability to think well. [4:42] It turns out that, when we are upset, it hampers our ability to process information to think creatively. [4:48] We fall back on over-learnt primitive behaviors and it makes us dysfunctional. [4:53] But if we are passionate about what we are doing, if we are motivated or in the (? 4:58) of positive emotion, we think very, very clearly. [5:01] So it was an immediate, obvious implication for business there, and I wrote about that. [5:05] My new work on social intelligence has been stimulated by the same thing. [5:09] Big breakthrough in brain science. [5:10] Now they are studying not just one brain in one body on one person but two, the interaction. [5:16] We are finding out that this is the key to why, uh, a leader like Herb Kelleher, Southwest was so spectacularly successful in growing airline. [5:24] We have been looking at video of Herb Kelleher, but just walking down the hallway of field in Dallas, and it is as though there were a circle of good feeling radiating around him wherever he went, everyone, passengers, personnel, you know, passersby. [5:43] All of a sudden light up and beam because he was someone who can engage people, who was positive, and who let you know that he was tuning into you with such positivity that it was contagious for you. [5:55] Now, how about leaders who don't have that natural born instinct? How can they use your insights on emotional and social intelligence in order to improve their leadership expertise? [6:05] Well, first of all, for leadership, it's social intelligence that our data showing counts the most.

5 [6:10] Social intelligence is being able to tune into other people to read them to know how they are thinking about things, what they're feeling right now, and using that to communicate effectively with them. [6:20] And the good news is that even though we learned our habits, for example, what kind of the listener are you. [6:27] We learn those early in life, we can change them at any point, if we are motivated, if we know what to do, and if we have a little help. [6:35] So there is a easy five-step process basically for enhancing social intelligence abilities, You know, leader. [6:42] The first question to ask yourself is, "Do you care?", "Are you motivated?" [6:47] It's going to take a little effort. [6:48] Second, get some feedback. [6:51] It is not, you are actually probably the worst person to judge where you need to improve. [6:56] You need to ask people around you in a way where they can be candid, they can be honest and that's often with the three sixty device where they anonymously rate you. [7:05] You don't know who said it, but you're getting the truth. [7:07] You look at that profile, and you identify your strengths, your weaknesses. [7:12] "Where can I get better? Where can I get a 'bump'?" [7:15] Then you make a learning agreement yourself to do it, in a better way at every naturally occurring opportunity. [7:23] If you do that for few months, you will see a real change. [7:26] So how can a company use social intelligence in order to increase organizational performance? [7:32] So many companies are doing that now.

6 [7:34] I just spent the morning with uh... group where a national insurance company of global pharmaceutical company, or world-famous medical center. [7:41] Well all doing the same thing with the emotional intelligence. [7:44] They are using it to enhance the effectiveness of the leadership but also to change the culture And the way they're doing it is by integrating it into HR function. [7:53] They are trying to hire people who have these abilities already that was the strategy that Southwest used. [7:59] They look for people who are like little Herb Kelleher, and it worked great, you know, it worked beautifully for them. [8:07] They are promoting these abilities. [8:09] It becomes part of how you were evaluated and part of what is look for in taking people for the next level in the organization and they are also putting a lot of effort into individual development to help everybody grow these abilities to great strength. [8:27] So, if we would go back and sum up for our audience today, you would say the difference between the emotional and social intelligence is... [8:36] Emotional intelligence really has to do with self mastery how you handle yourself and it makes outstanding individual performance. [8:42] So many people in the world of work that are excellent, but they are excellent because of their own efforts and they have very good discipline, they have very good motivation, they have drive. [8:55] These are individual abilities. [8:57] But when it comes to leadership, your success depends on everyone else's being affected. [9:00] So, you need to be successful by influencing, persuading, developing, growing, inspiring, motivating other people. [9:10] That s the social intelligence ability, requires empathy, and requires skills interaction and that's what makes a great leader. [9:17] Dan, one of the problems companies really have is figuring out how to

7 hire people because it is so difficult to hire people and know what their emotional and social intelligence levels are. [9:28] So how do you go about trying to find out little Herb Kelleher? [9:31] Well, first of all, if you're looking for Herb Kelleher type, you have to expand the criterion because Herb was a unique individual. [9:39] He is extremely extroverted, extremely up, but social intelligence doesn't always look like that. [9:45] One of the sure signs of social intelligence is (? 9:48) [9:49] You feel comfortable with the person, you feel the painful attention, you feel they are really listening to you, they are really tuning, they are really empathizing, and we all know what that feels like. [9:58] We feel 'felt'. [9:59] When you are with someone like that, you have chemistry. [10:03] That is one of the sure signs. [10:05] Dan Goleman, thank you very much [10:07] Thank you too, it was a real pleasure. [10:10]