Daniel Goleman: The 4 domains of emotional intelligence | Daniel Goleman for Big Think+

When I wrote the book "Emotional

Intelligence," a lot of people had an "aha" experience like, "Oh, so that's what's

going on." It was the first time that for a popular audience, emotional intelligence had become well

known. I was a science journalist at the New York Times back then, and I'd been

covering a decade of research on the brain and emotion. And I wanted to have a frame for that. I

integrated it with the, findings from research on

outstanding performers, and I saw that people who emerge as

outstanding performers or the best leaders have high emotional intelligence. So from the get-go, I've seen emotional

intelligence as having to do with leadership, and this was taken up by the

Harvard Business Review. They've done a series of articles starting with one which said, "Look.

Emotional intelligence is the core of effective leadership." And now I talk about four domains of

emotional intelligence and then twelve particular competencies of

people who are high in emotional intelligence. A combination of self-awareness, managing your emotions well, social awareness, empathy, tuning into other people, and putting that all together to have

harmonious or effective relationships. Unlike IQ, which barely budges over the

course of our life, emotional intelligence can change. It's learned and learnable. And it's learned and

learnable at any point in life. Self-awareness means you know what you're

feeling. You know how it shapes your perceptions and your thoughts and your

impulse to act. Emotional self-awareness is what I'm

talking about. Emotion directs attention. So knowing what you're feeling and how

strongly you're feeling it and where it's driving you to attend is extremely important because your

attention creates your reality moment to moment. So self-awareness gives you a kind

of diagnosis of where am I right now. Maturity is sometimes defined as widening

the gap between impulse and action. Self-awareness, it's the least visible

part of emotional intelligence, but we find in our research that people low in

self-awareness are unable to develop strengths very well

in other parts of emotional intelligence. People that are high in self-awareness,

however, are able to develop excellence across the board very often. Self-management in my model has four

different components. One of them is handling upsetting emotions

so they don't get in the way of what you have to do right now. Another aspect of emotional self

management is marshaling positive emotions, seeing the bright side of things, not just the

glass is half empty, but feeling pretty good about what's happening no matter

what happens. That lets you also be agile, another

aspect. Adjust to changing situations. You want to have a growth mindset, see yourself as

able to improve and other people as able to improve. And finally, you want to keep your eye on

the goal that matters despite the distractions of the day. So

goal focus is an emotional self management tool too. In my model of emotional intelligence, the third part is social awareness, which

in one sense means sensing how your organization works. It's

a kind of systems point of view. But I think as a leader, what matters more

is empathy, how you tune in to your people, the people

around you, the people above you, to the side, below you. And tuning in has three parts. One is cognitive empathy, understanding

how that person sees the situation, what their perspective is.

It's walking a mile in their shoes, as the the proverb says. You're able to sense the language or mental models a person uses as a frame

on reality. What language do they use to explain

what's going on to themselves? If you have high cognitive empathy, you

can message quite well. You can hit the target with

what you say to the person because you know the language that

they understand. The second part is emotional empathy, and

this has to do with the design of the social circuitry in the

human brain. The brain is designed to lock into the brain of the person in front of us and

to create a pathway that's instantaneous, automatic, and unconscious for what that person is doing, intending, and feeling. This lets us know what the person feels

because we feel it too. We get an inner signal that tells us what's going on with

the other person. And this helps us keep our interaction on

the same page, on target, emotionally. The third part of empathy, which I think is really important for

leadership and all too often just ignored, is caring. It's called technically

empathic concern, and it means, I know what you think, I know

what you feel, but I also care about you. And so leaders have to have this ability to communicate

that they care about the person, they're concerned about them. This, by the way,

builds huge trust, huge rapport between a leader and the people they lead. The fourth part of emotional intelligence is relationship management. It's what we see every day. It's what leaders display. Can you guide?

Can you influence? Can you get work done well through other people? Can you inspire? Can you get the best out of people because

you can articulate meaning here in what we're doing? Are you a good team member? Not just on your team at the same level.

If you're in the C-suite, that's a team. How are you as a team player? And then how are you as a team leader? Can you handle conflicts well? Can you keep yourself calm and listen to

both sides and come up with a good enough solution that both sides can accept? Do you realize that you are in a position

to help the people you lead become leaders of the future? Can you help them develop strengths? Can you coach them? Can you mentor them? Can you help them strengthen the

leadership cadre of your organization going into the future?