HBR's 10 must reads on emotional intelligence.
1. emotional intelligence.
2. work──psychological aspects.
BF576.H394 2015
152.4─dc23
2015
What makes a Leader? 1
by Daniel Goleman
pp.8-9
Scientific inquiry strongly suggests that there is a genetic component to emotional intelligence. Psychological and developmental research indicates that nurture plays a role as well. How much of each perhaps will never be known, but research and practice clearly demonstrate that emotional intelligence can be learned.
One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence increases with age. There is an old-fashioned word for the phenomenon: maturity. Yet even with maturity, some people still need training to enhance their emotional intelligence.
Unfortunately, far too many training programs that intend to build leadership skills ── including emotional intelligence ── are a waste of time and money.
The problem is simple: They focus on the wrong part of the brain.
Emotional inteligence is born largely in the neurotransmitters of the brain's limbic system, which governs feelings, impulses, and drives. Research indicates that the limbic system learns best through motivation, extended practice, and feedback. Compare this with the kind of learning that goes on in the neocortex, which governs analytical and technical ability.
The neocortex grasps concepts and logic. It is the part of the brain that figures out how to use a computer or make a sales call by reading book. Not surprisingly ── but mistakenly ── it is also the part of the brain targeted by most training programs aimed at enhancing emotional intelligence. When such programs take, in effect, a neocortical approach, my research with the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations has shown they can even have a negative impact on people's job performance.
To enhance emotional intelligence, organizations must refocus their training to include the limbic system. They must help people break old behavioral habits and establish new ones. That not only takes much more time than conventional training programs, it also requires an individualized approach.
p.9
It's important to emphasize that building one's emotional intelligence cannot ── and will not ── happen without sincere desire and concerted effort. A brief seminar won't help; nor can one buy a how-to manual. It is much harder to learn to empathize ── to internalize empathy as a natural response to people ── than it is to become adept at regression analysis. But it can be done. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. If your goal is to become a real leader, these words can serve as a guidepost in your efforts to develop high emotional intelligence.
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Why good leaders make bad decisions 59
by Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead, and Sydney Finkelstein
pp.59-60
Decision making lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Every day we make decisions. Some are small, domestic, and innocuous. Others are more important, affecting people's lives, livelihoods, and well-being. Inevitably, we make mistakes along the way. The daunting reality is that enormously important decisions made by intelligent, responsible people with the best information and intentions are sometimes hopelessly flawed.
Consider Jürgen Schrempp, CEO of Daimler-Benz. He led the merger of Chrysler and Daimler against internal opposition. Nine years later, Daimler was forced to virtually give Chrysler away in a private equity deal. Steve Russell, chief executive of Boots, the UK drugstore chain, launched a health care strategy designed to differentiate the stores from competitors and grows through new health care services such as dentistry. It turned out, though, that Boots managers did not have the skills needed to succeed in health care services, and many of these markets offered little profit potential. The strategy contributed to Russell's early departure from the top job. Brigadier General Matthew Broderick, chief of the Homeland Security Operation Center, who was responsible for alerting President Bush and other senior government officials if Hurricane Katrina breached the levees in New Orleans, when home on Monday, August 29, 2005, after reporting that they seemed to be holding, despite multiple reports of breaches.
p.60
All these executives were highly qualified for their jobs, and yet they made decisions that soon seemed clearly wrong. Why? And more important, how can we avoid making similar mistakes? This is the topic we've been exploring for the past four (4) years, and the journey has taken us deep into a field called decision neuroscience. We began by assembling a database of 83 decisions that we felt were flawed at the time they were made. From our analysis of these cases, we concluded that flawed decisions start with errors of judgment made by influential individuals. Hence we needed to understand how these errors of judgment occur.
p.60
To put all this in context, however, we first need to understand just how the human brain forms its judgments.
pp.60-64
How the Brain Trips Up
We depend primarily on two hardwired processes for decision making. Our brains assess what's going on using pattern recognition, and we react to that information ── or ignore it ── because of emotional tags that are stored in our memories. Both of these processes are normally reliable; they are part of our evolutionary advantage. But in certain circumstances, both can let us down.
Pattern recognition is a complex process that integrates information from as many as 30 different parts of the brain. Faced with a new situation, we make assumptions based on prior experiences and judgments. Thus a chess master can assess a chess game and choose a high-quality move in as little as six seconds by drawing on patterns he or she has seen before.
([ see Daniel Kahneman writing, and, talk on youtube.com about system 1, and, system 2 thinking/ decision making process ])
([ Malcolm Gladwell, Gary Klein, and an author which I do not recall, their writings and explanations about an expert or a novice who has studied a topic deeply for a period of time intensely, in contrast with someone who is learning and processing the subject for the first time, not ...; ... ])
([ see Gary Klein, Sources of power : how people make decision, 1998 ])
pp.60-61
But pattern recognition can also mislead us.
p.61
When we're dealing with seemingly familiar situations, our brains can cause us to think we understand them when we don't.
p.61
When happened to Matthew Broderick during Hurricane Katrina is instructive. Broderick had been involved in operations centers in Vietnam and in other military engagements, and he had led the Homeland Security Operations Center during previous hurricanes. These experiences had taught him that early reports surrounding a major event are often false: It's better to wait for the “ground truth” from a reliable source before acting. Unfortunately, he had no experience with a hurricane hitting a city built below sea level.
p.61
By late on August 29, some 12 hours after Katrina hit New Orleans, Broderick had received 17 reports of major flooding and levee breaches. But he also had gotten conflicting information. The Army Corps of Engineers had reported that it had no evidence of levee breaches, and a late afternoon CNN report from Bourbon Street in the French Quarter had shown city dwellers partying and claiming they had dodged the bullet. Brokerick's pattern-recognition process told him that these contrary reports were the ground truth he was looking for. So before going home for the night, he issued a situation report stating that the levees had not been breached, although he did add that further assessment would be needed the next day.
p.61
Idea in Brief
• Leaders make decisions largely through unconscious processes that neuroscientists call pattern recognition and emotional tagging. These processes usually make for quick, effective decisions, but they can be distorted by self-interest, emotional attachments, or misleading memories.
• Managers need to find systematic ways to recognize the source of bias ── what the authors call “red flag conditions” ── and then design safeguards that introduce more analysis, greater debate, or stronger governance.
• By using the approach described in this article, companies will avoid many flawed decisions that are caused by the way our brains operate.
pp.62-63
Emotional tagging is the process by which emotional information attaches itself to the thoughts and experiences stored in our memories. This emotional information tells us whether to pay attention to something or not, and it tell us what sort of action we should be contemplating (immediate or postponed, fight or flight [or freeze] [or play dead]). When the parts of the brains controlling emotions are damaged, we can see how important emotional tagging is: Neurological research shows that we become slow and incompetent decision makers even though we can retain the capacity for objective analysis.
Like pattern recognition, emotional tagging helps us reach sensible decisions most of the time. But it, too, can mislead us. Take the case of Wang Laboratories, the top company in the word-processing industry in the early 1980s.
p.63
These feelings made him reject a software platform linked to an IBM product even though the platform was provided by a third party, Microsoft.
p.63
Why doesn't the brain pick up on such errors and correct them? The most obvious reason is that much of the mental work we do is unconscious. This makes it hard to check the data and logic we use when we make a decision. Typically, we spot bugs in our personal software only when we see the results of ours errors in judgment. Matthew Broderick found out that his ground-truth rule of thumb was an inappropriate reponse to Hurricane Katrina only after it was too late. An Wang found out that his preference for proprietary software was flawed only after Wang's personal computer failed in the market.
p.63
Compounding the problem of high levels of unconscious thinking is the lack of checks and balances in our decision making. Our brains do not naturally follow the classical textbook model: Lay out the options, define the objectives, and assess each option against each objective. Instead, we analyze the situation using pattern recognition and arrive at a decision to act or not by using emotional tags. The two processes happen almost instantaneously.
pp.63-64
Indeed, as the research of psychologist Gary Klein shows, our brains leap to conclusions and are reluctant to consider alternatives. Moreover, we are particularly bad at revisiting our initial assessment of a situation ── our initial frame.
p.64
An exercise we frequently run at Ashridge Business School shows how hard it is to challenge the initial frame.
p.65
That's what happened to William Smithburg, former chairman of Quaker Oats. He acquired Snapple because of his vivid memories of Gatorade, Quaker's most successful deal. Snapple, like Gatorade, appeared to be a new drinks company that could be improved with Quaker's marketing and management skills. Unfortunately, the similarities between Snapple and Gatorade proved to be superficial, which meant that Quaker ended up destroying rather than creating value. In fact, Snapple was Smithburg's worst deal.
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Emotional agility
how effective leaders manage their negative thoughts and feelings.
by Susan David and Christina Congleton
p.122
what are your values?
This list is drawn fromthe Personal Values Card Sort (2001), developed by W. R. Miller, J. C'de Baca, D. B. Matthews, and P. L. Wilbourne, of the University of New Mexico. You can use it to quickly identify the values you hold that might inform a challenging situation at work. When you next make a decision, ask yourself whether it s consistent with these values.
accuracy
achievement
adventure
authority
autonomy
caring
challenge
change
comfort
compassion
contribution
courtesy
creativity
dependability
duty
family
forgiveness
friend
fun
generosity
genuineness
growth
health
helpfulness
honesty
humility
humor
justice
knowledge
leisure
mastery
moderation
nonconformity
openness
order
passion
popularity
power
purpose
rationality
realism
responsibility
risk
safety
self-knowledge
service
simplicity
stability
tolerance
tradition
wealth
“”─“”‘’•
on emotional intelligence
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HBR guide to coaching employees
HBR guide to finance basics for managers
HBR guide to getting the mentoring you need
HBR guide to getting the right work done
HBR guide to leading teams
HBR guide to managing stress at work
HBR guide to managing up and across
HBR guide to office politics
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HBR guide to project management
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• HBR's 10 must reads on Teams
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Del Coates, Watches tell more than time, ????
pp.215-216
semantic differential scales:
rational――emotional
static――dynamic
calm――busy
smooth――rough
clean――dirty
organized――chaotic
unified――disparate
integrated――disintegrated
cold――hot
simple――complex
plain――ornate
neat――messy
passive――active
boring――interesting
(‘Watches tell more than time : product design, information, and the quest for elegance’, written by Del Coates, publisher McGraw-Hill, pp.215-216)
pp.232-233
...Although their left-right orientations were randomized during the survey, the graph shown here was adjusted so that the more active or potent term of each pair lies to the right. In other words, moving a score to the right is tantamount to moving the design farther out along the activity and potency axes of semantic space. Generally, the designer moves scores to the right by increasing information.
Adding information moves scores to the right on the following scales:
slow――fast
passive――active
calm――excitable
cold――hot
intentional――unintentional
simple――complex
straight――curved
blunt――sharp
boring――interesting
bland――pungent
plain――ornate
still――vibrant
ordered――chaotic
smooth――rough
relaxed――tense
gentle――violent
static――dynamic
rational――emotional
(‘Watches tell more than time : product design, information, and the quest for elegance’, written by Del Coates, publisher McGraw-Hill, pp.232-233)
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