Tag: emotional intelligence

Hard skills, soft skills, real skills

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

There’s a whole set of things that feel concrete and objective and are easiest to talk about: writing, financial modeling skills, project management, writing a decent PowerPoint deck, etc.

And then there a whole set of “softer” skills – skill in building relationships, how well you manage a meeting, whether or not you successfully deal with uncertainty.

And then the real biggies: Are you a great judge of talent? Do you consistently build trust?  Are you courageous?  Does your presence and do your actions make people better at their jobs?  Do you inspire people?

The challenge is that there’s an inverse relationship between how important a skill is for long-term success and how easy it feels to talk about it.

“You’re still not where you need to be in building a cash flow statement” feels safe.

“I’ve not seen you show consistent success in gaining a sense of shared ownership around your good ideas,” feels like emotional thin ice, so we don’t go there enough.

On some level we know that the second conversation is orders of magnitude more important than the first, but since it feels (inter)personal, less objective and harder to talk about, we avoid having it and stay in the safe (today) but dangerous (in the long-term) space of “stuff that you can learn in a textbook.”

Sooner or later, we have to learn how to talk about the real stuff.

Insight as a spectator sport

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I recently reread Daniel Goleman’s 1998 Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence .  Goleman’s research showed that as individuals get more senior in organizations, differentials in performance are a function not of intellect and technical skills but of emotional intelligence.

When I compared star performers with average ones in senior leadership positions, nearly 90% of the difference in profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than cognitive abilities.

Emotion intelligence, in Goleman’s definition, is comprised of:

Self-Awareness: the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others

Self-Regulation: the ability to control, or redirect, disruptive impulses and moods; the propensity to suspend judgment – to think before acting

Motivation: a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status; a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

Empathy: the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people; skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions

Social Skill: proficiency in managing relationships and building networks; an ability to find common ground and build rapport.

So what do I do when you come across something like this – a potentially powerful insight that turns your current thinking on its head?  Do I totally revamp my hiring process?  Do I do nothing?  Or do I tinker around the edges?

As someone who’s constantly on the lookout for these sorts of insights, I know I don’t adopt every great new idea I come across.  Sometimes that’s because I don’t fully believe in an idea, but often it’s because I don’t have the guts (or the willingness to take the social risk) to try it (e.g. conduct all meetings standing up).

There are four possible orientations to great ideas.

  1. Never find them in the first place (don’t read the books, the blogs, watch the TED talks, etc.)
  2. Consume them and ignore them
  3. Consume them and incorporate them a bit around the edges
  4. Embrace them, test them out, and be willing to incorporate them if they work for you

While option 1 (living heads down, actively hiding from all the amazing ideas that are spreading) is the most obvious thing to avoid, it’s options 2 and 3 that are more subtle and just as troublesome.  You come across something great, but you don’t actually do anything to make it yours.

As in, “That sounds great, but we can’t really do it that way because….” or, worse, “Well sure that might work for her but that would never work for us because…”

The moment we have a bias towards action, we read/act differently.  We’re no longer couch potatoes, waiting to be entertained, we’re active learners leaning forward, taking notes in the margins, sharing the bits we like the best, starting discussion groups, having five other people read the same book so all of us can test out new ideas together.

We come across too many great ideas to allow insight to be a spectator sport.

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p.s. Viewed through this lens, we understand a TED talk (or a TED book), a Domino book, a great manifesto or a focused, passionate blog differently.  They are optimized for idea transmission and action.  A 250 page book may be what it takes to wring every last drop out of an idea, but the 80 page version probably gives the reader enough to act on.