IQ Is A Commodity: Now What?

More futile ink has been spilled on the issue of "leadership" than, I would wager, any other topic in the managerial literature.

But the topic is irresistible.

Why?

Because deny it as you might, leadership matters. It consistently distinguishes the leading firms from the "chasing pack," it transforms firms over timeframes as short as a decade (yes, this is short), it destroys some firms in periods as short as a few years, and it leaves a gaping and almost unanswerable hole when an incumbent, powerful, visionary leader steps down.

Daniel Goleman, whose title is the business-card-filling Co-chairman of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (based at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology), and who is the author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (Bantam, 2006), has a new article out on Harvard Business Review about "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership." Here's the kickoff:

In 1998 one of us, Daniel Goleman, published in these pages his first article on emotional intelligence and leadership. The response to “What Makes a Leader?” was enthusiastic. People throughout and beyond the business community started talking about the vital role that empathy and self-knowledge play in effective leadership. The concept of emotional intelligence continues to occupy a prominent space in the leadership literature and in everyday coaching practices. But in the past five years, research in the emerging field of social neuroscience—the study of what happens in the brain while people interact—is beginning to reveal subtle new truths about what makes a good leader.

The salient discovery is that certain things leaders do—specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods—literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers.

What we have recently learned is that it's not just "leadership" in the abstract, but that there are neurological bases to what makes people respond:

Perhaps the most stunning recent discovery in behavioral neuroscience is the identification of mirror neurons in widely dispersed areas of the brain. Italian neuroscientists found them by accident while monitoring a particular cell in a monkey’s brain that fired only when the monkey raised its arm.

One day a lab assistant lifted an ice cream cone to his own mouth and triggered a reaction in the monkey’s cell. It was the first evidence that the brain is peppered with neurons that mimic, or mirror, what another being does.

This previously unknown class of brain cells operates as neural Wi-Fi, allowing us to navigate our social world. When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions. Collectively, these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience.

Mirror neurons have particular importance in organizations, because leaders’ emotions and actions prompt followers to mirror those feelings and deeds. The effects of activating neural circuitry in followers’ brains can be very powerful.

In a recent study, our colleague Marie Dasborough observed two groups: One received negative performance feedback accompanied by positive emotional signals—namely, nods and smiles; the other was given positive feedback that was delivered critically, with frowns and narrowed eyes.

In subsequent interviews conducted to compare the emotional states of the two groups, the people who had received positive feedback accompanied by negative emotional signals reported feeling worse about their performance than did the participants who had received good-natured negative feedback. In effect, the delivery was more important than the message itself. And everybody knows that when people feel better, they perform better.

Forgive me for repeating this finding, but it's striking: Positive performance reviews with negative body language are perceived as negative, while negative performance reviews with postive body language are perceived as reinforcing.

Here you have the key to something powerful indeed. You can lead, out of bad news, into improved performance and optimism on the part of your team, by evincing positive energy. Is this all smoke and mirrors? I think not.

Faced with a seemingly implacable challenge? Acknowledge it frankly, explore it thoroughly, discuss it openly, but proceed with optimism, candor, and energy.  This is where the sometimes misused and even more often simply confused notion of "emotional intelligence" comes in. 

If human beings were all about "IQ" and not about "EQ," the performance review tests would have had a different outcome:  You are evaluated in negative terms so you feel bad, positive terms and you feel good, period.  But that's not what happened.  This tells us that "EQ" is a powerful factor in human relations indeed—with the power, in fact, to override what our old-fashioned "IQ" should be picking up on. 

Given its power, the question is how to develop your "emotional intelligence"--and whether that's even possible.

Now, the bad news.

Lawyers are constitutionally predisposed, and through the law school and law firm selection process this predilection is reinforced and redistilled, to be analytic and rigorous, emotionally distant and frankly unfeeling. We are not, by and large, emotionally intelligent.

Here's a Cliff's Notes case study of a Fortune 500 exec seemingly suffering the same syndrome (emphasis supplied):

When Cavallo [the psychologist conducting the study] presented this performance feedback as a wake-up call to Janice [the executive under study], she was of course shaken to discover that her job might be in danger. What upset her more, though, was the realization that she was not having her desired impact on other people.

Cavallo initiated coaching sessions in which Janice would describe notable successes and failures from her day. The more time Janice spent reviewing these incidents, the better she became at recognizing the difference between expressing an idea with conviction and acting like a pit bull.

She began to anticipate how people might react to her in a meeting or during a negative performance review; she rehearsed more-astute ways to present her opinions; and she developed a personal vision for change. Such mental preparation activates the social circuitry of the brain, strengthening the neural connections you need to act effectively; that’s why Olympic athletes put hundreds of hours into mental review of their moves.

At one point, Cavallo asked Janice to name a leader in her organization who had excellent social intelligence skills. Janice identified a veteran senior manager who was masterly both in the art of the critique and at expressing disagreement in meetings without damaging relationships.

So this has been a longish detour into "emotional intelligence," but what again does it have to do with leadership?

Permit me to offer a brief excerpt from an interview with Allen & Overy's new senior partner, David Morley, from their just-published Annual Report:

Q: If that’s what it takes to be global, what else does it take to be part of the elite?

David Morley: It takes high levels of client trust and the most talented and motivated people, working together as one firm.

Q: No one would disagree with that, but how does Allen & Overy achieve that?

David Morley: For both our clients and our people it is the quality of Allen & Overy’s relationships with them, and the levels of trust we establish between us, which are critical.

A relationship is personal and unique. It cannot be replicated by a competitor.

Isn't this the distillation of "emotional intelligence?" A relationship which is personal and cannot be replicated?

Sorry that law school and your law firm's recruiting process didn't select you for this, but I have news for you:  Get over it.

As our industry becomes more competitive, more global, more client-centric, more focused on the war for talent, the winners will increasingly be those with charisma, drive, energy, and yes, those with "emotional intelligence." 

Face it:  Everybody in sight in your firm has nothing to apologize for on the IQ front.  That won't work as a distinction, either for you personally in your career or for your firm as a whole on the competitive landscape of the 21st Century.  But EQ, precisely because it's been so consistently selected-against in our profession, just might do the trick.