Working with Emotional Intelligence

In his 1998 business book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman presents research and anecdotal evidence to argue that emotional intelligence is more important to achieving career success than IQ. Goleman’s earlier book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ (1995), explores how emotional literacy can benefit every facet of one’s life. Working with Emotional Intelligence applies lessons from that 1995 bestseller to the workplace exclusively. Goleman examines five main categories of emotional competence and provides guidelines for training individuals to develop these competencies. He also explains how an organization can optimize its performance by improving its collective emotional intelligence.

The first section of the book, titled “Beyond Expertise,” gives the name “emotional intelligence” to what has formerly been called “soft skills.” This type of intelligence is critical to achieve one’s full potential. Research involving fifteen global companies and hundreds of executives concluded that what distinguishes excellent leaders from those that are average is not cognitive skills, but emotional competence. Goleman writes, “For star performance in all jobs, in every field, emotional competence is twice as important as purely cognitive abilities.” Moreover, the importance of emotional competence rises as one ascends the corporate ladder.

Emotional intelligence supports the acquisition of emotional competence. According to Goleman, there are twenty-five emotional competencies that can be learned. He groups them into five categories, three of which are “personal competencies,” while two are “social competencies.” The first personal competency category is “Self-Awareness.” The second is “Self-Regulation,” or controlling impulses that, in turn, influence one’s dependability, flexibility, and receptivity to new ideas. The final personal category is “Motivation.” The first social competency category is “Empathy,” or “an awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns.” The other social category is “Social skills,” which essentially determine one’s ability to elicit cooperative responses and behaviors from others.



“Self-Mastery,” the second section of the book, details the twelve personal competencies. Hunches, or “gut feelings,” arise from a deep, primordial area of the brain called the amygdala. The emotions that any given experience generate are stored in the amygdala. This reservoir of emotional information can guide the individual in judgment-making by means of gut feelings delivered along nerve pathways from the amygdala. Goleman argues that attention to gut feelings underlies self-awareness, the category that encompasses three personal competencies: emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence.

The brain’s working memory, situated in the prefrontal lobe, executes complex thought, long-term planning, reasoning, and comprehension. When individuals experience stress, the emotional centers of the brain tend to override the working memory, resulting in feelings such as anxiety, panic, or rage. While Goleman acknowledges the value of negative emotions, he maintains that self-regulation, which requires the emotional and executive brain centers to operate jointly, is vital for appropriately managing impulses and adverse circumstances. It is central to five personal competencies: self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, and innovation.

According to Goleman, the “most powerful motivators are internal, not external.” Exciting or enjoyable work inspires people to do their best, but enjoyment derives from a state of mind called “flow,” not from the work itself. Flow occurs when a task engages all of the individual’s skills – or even requires learning new ones – and it “is the ultimate motivator.” Three final personal competencies that most outstanding performers exhibit depend on motivation: achievement drive, commitment, and initiative/optimism (“twin competencies”).



The third section of the book, “People Skills,” examines the thirteen emotional competencies that fall into the social categories of empathy and social skills. Understanding others, service orientation, leveraging diversity, and political awareness are four important social competencies that build upon basic empathy. The most effective leaders and performers in the workplace use empathy, or “emotional radar,” to gauge the reactions of others, and then, artfully respond in a manner that steers the interaction toward the desired outcome. Such social skills are fundamental to five social competencies: influence, communication, conflict management, leadership, and change catalyst.

The final four social competencies that typify “star performers” – building bonds, collaboration, cooperation, and team capabilities – rely on skills in social coordination. Goleman notes that team performance can far surpass the sum of each member’s talents when the relationships among members create a synergy that maximizes everyone’s potential. This occurs when there is a high degree of social coordination.

The book’s fourth section offers “a new model for learning.” Goleman asserts that “millions of dollars are wasted” on training programs that ultimately fail to cultivate emotional competence in the workplace because they lack effective methods to change behavior. The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, co-founded by Goleman, developed “guidelines for the best practices in teaching emotional competencies.” These fifteen best practices, grounded in scientific research on behavior change, are most successful when used in combination with one another. Goleman uses anecdotes to illustrate the importance of practices such as assessing the job’s requirements and individuals’ existing competencies before starting training, making change self-directed, focusing on manageable goals, giving performance feedback, and encouraging practice.



“The Emotionally Intelligent Organization” is the book’s final section. Once again employing anecdotes, Goleman demonstrates the economic benefits of evaluating the emotional climate of an organization. This corresponds, at the organizational level, with the personal emotional competency of self-awareness. To foster collective emotional self-awareness, Goleman recommends organizations promote honest, respectful dialogue between team members. Emotion management is another emotional competency Goleman identifies at the organizational level. The degree to which an organization regulates the expression of feelings, as well as the collective emotions the organization itself may create, play into its emotion management. Finally, building trust and a spirit of cooperation in the workplace discourages power struggles in favor of collaborative efforts. Such collective emotional competencies reflect the organization’s emotional intelligence, which is positively correlated with profits.

In an interview with Forbes, Daniel Goleman succinctly summarizes the three key emotional intelligence competencies that set excellent leaders apart from others: “self-awareness, which both lets you know your strengths and limits, and strengthens your inner ethical radar; self-management, which lets you lead yourself effectively; and empathy […].” While the value of IQ cannot be dismissed, the best leaders are those with the highest EI, or emotional intelligence.