Leadership and Intelligence
12 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008
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Leadership and Intelligence
Abstract
This note introduces the notion of "Emotional Intelligence" as described in Daniel Goleman's book by the same name and extends that concept to include Social Quotient or Intelligence and Change Quotient or Intelligence. The general thrust is that IQ alone does not a good leader make, but that EQ, SQ, and CQ are also necessary to be an effective leader.
Excerpt
UVA-OB-0652
LEADERSHIP AND INTELLIGENCE
Much evidence testifies that people who are emotionally adept—who know and manage their own feelings well, and who read and deal effectively with other people's feelings—are at an advantage in any domain of life, whether romance and intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in organizational politics. —Daniel Goleman
Enhancing one's leadership impact is clearly much more than applying a recipe or following a list of steps. First, recipes may or may not fit one's style and personality. Second, if one is not skilled or genuine in using the recipe, potential followers will see through it in a New York minute. And third, formulaic approaches to managing people often run into the dilemma of what to do with the exceptions. People are so “organic,” they keep creating variations on themes. Even in surgery, for example, doctors know that every person's anatomy will be a little bit different. That said, most observers believe that intelligence is an important precursor to effective leadership. Smart people are generally considered to have the best potential for being the leaders of industry, nations, and institutions. Interestingly, a study of valedictorians, however, indicates that after twenty years, most of them are working for their classmates. This counter-intuitive result causes us to rethink our beliefs about intelligence and its relationship to effective leadership.
For more than a century, business leaders have, for the most part, tried to downplay emotions in business as unprofessional, undisciplined, and unrelated to good decision-making. This stems in part from the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment in western civilization. Knowledge, said Sir Francis Bacon, is power. Like the other philosophers of the Enlightenment, Bacon saw knowledge as the pathway to universal liberation and emotions and passions as obstacles to knowledge. Many of the leadership models taught in business schools have focused on rational decision making in which emotions are viewed as detriments or obstacles to making good decisions. Students are taught to search for the “right answer” and to do so in a rigorously analytical and logical way.
Further, American school systems have focused on the notion of rational intelligence in striving to educate millions of children. The concept of intelligence quotient (or IQ) has been the most prominent measure of intelligence. School systems designed curricula with the intent of utilizing more of students' IQs if not adding to them. While the validity of IQ tests and their general intelligence or aptitude substitutes have come into question in recent years, tests of purely rational thinking—the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the General Management Aptitude Test (GMAT), for example—still wield a great deal of influence over our individual academic opportunities and those of our children.
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Keywords: leadership, organizational change, alternative business issue or setting, diversity issues
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