vital and dynamic in the competitive marketplace of today - and the future . Working with Emotional Intelligence offers good news to the employee looking for advancement and a wake-up call to leaders , organizations and corporations .
The rules for work are changing . You are being judged by a new yardstick : not just by how smart we are or by our training and expertise , but also by how well we handle ourselves and others . This yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who is hired and who is not , who is let go and who is retained , who is passed over and who is promoted . The new rules predict who is most likely to become a star performer and who is most prone to derailing .
And no matter what field we work in currently , they measure the traits that are crucial to our marketability for future jobs . These rules have little to do with what we were told was important in school ; academic abilities are largely irrelevant to this standard . This new measure takes for granted we have enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs ; it focuses instead on personal qualities , such as initiative and empathy , adaptability and persuasiveness .
Research distills with unprecedented precision which qualities mark a star performer . And it demonstrates which human abilities make up the greater part of the ingredients for excellence at work - most especially for leadership . In a time with no guarantees of job security , when the very concept of a “ job ” is rapidly being replaced by “ portable skills ,” these are prime qualities that make and keep us employable .
Talked about loosely for decades under a variety of names , from “ character ” and “ personality ” to “ soft skills ” and “ competence ,” there is at last a more precise understanding of these human talents and a new name for them : Emotional Intelligence .
Emotional intelligence skills are synergistic with cognitive ones ; top performers have both . Take , for example , a Chief Executive Officer who had been brought in to run a Ksh . 6.5 billion family-owned business , the first managing director from outside the family . Shortly after the CEO was hired , a researcher , using an interview method to assess the executive ’ s ability to handle cognitive complexity , determined his capacity was
The rules for work are changing . You are being judged by a new yardstick : not just by how smart we are or by our training and expertise , but also by how well we handle ourselves and others . This yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who is hired and who is not , who is let go and who is retained , who is passed over and who is promoted .
the very highest - a “ level six ,” someone smart enough , theoretically , to be CEO of a global firm or head of a country .
But during that interview the conversation turned to why he had to leave his previous job : ‘ He had been fired because he had failed to confront subordinates and hold them responsible for their poor performance . It was an emotional trigger for him ’, the researcher said . “ His face got red and flushed , he started waving his hands , and he was clearly agitated . It turned out that his new boss , the patriarch of the company , had criticized him that very morning for the same thing , and he went on and on about how hard it was for him to confront low performing employees , especially when they had been with the company for a long time .” And , the researcher noted , “ while he was so upset , his ability to handle cognitive complexity - to reason - plummeted .”
The ability to read subjective currents has primordial roots in evolution . The brain areas involved in gut feelings are far more ancient than the thin layers of the neocortex , the centers for rational thought that enfold the very top of the brain . Hunches start much deeper in the brain . They are a function of the emotional centers that ring the brain stem atop the spinal cord - most particularly an almondshaped structure called the amygdala and its connected neural circuitry . This web of connectivity , sometimes called the extended amygdala , stretches up to the brain ’ s executive center in the prefrontal lobes , just behind the forehead .
The brain stores different aspects of an experience in different areas - the source of a memory is encoded in one zone , the sights and sounds and smells in other areas , and so on . The amygdala is the site where the emotions an experience evokes are stored . Every experience that we have an emotional reaction to , no matter how subtle , seems to be encoded in the amygdala .
May you be reminded that the source of gut feeling is the repository for everything we feel about what we experience , the amygdala constantly signals us with this information . Whenever we have a preference of any kind , whether for ordering risotto rather than the sea bass special , or a compelling sense that we should dump our shares in a stock , that is a message from the amygdala . And via the amygdala ’ s related circuitry , particularly nerve pathways that run into the viscera , we can have a somatic response - literally , a “ gut feeling ” - to the choices we face .
This capacity , like other elements of emotional intelligence , can grow stronger with the accumulating experiences life brings us . The classic term for this strengthening of our guiding sensibility is wisdom . And people who ignore or discount messages from this repository of life ’ s wisdom do so at their peril .
Amit Ray , concludes that “ As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world , more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership .”
Joe Nyutu is a marketing and strategy consultant who teaches marketing on part-time basis at a local leading university and can be reached via : Josephnyutu @ gmail . com .