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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

If you want to know why practitioners of the hard sciences sometimes sneer at social scientists, look no farther than the popular book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. In it, Goleman presents a groundbreaking discovery: People who are socially graceful enjoy more success than people who are intellectually brilliant but socially inept. This unexpected insight was, until Goleman’s book, known only to high school nerds, IT professionals who report to “a suit,” and those who read Dilbert and actually get the joke.

I have a problem with Emotional Intelligence (measured by something Goleman calls “EQ”), not because it’s wrong, but because it’s dumb.

To be fair, my criticisms of this book are in the domain of the purely rational. As Goleman points out, we’ve overemphasized the importance of rationality, the trait that separates us from every other species on the planet, and underemphasized the importance of our emotional selves. I guess that means we ought to base our evaluation of this book on whether it makes us feel good.

But I just can’t bring myself to endorse a book that so hopelessly confuses description with prescription.

Goleman’s description is correct, although so obvious one wonders why anyone would bother buying a book to understand it. Put succinctly, it’s that if you want to succeed you have to get along with people. It’s an accurate statement; one made in this space many times. If you want a successful career, pay attention.

But Goleman takes it a step beyond, to the Panglossian conclusion that this is a good thing. Maybe it is, although I have a hard time agreeing that we should downplay facts and logic in favor of something any baboon can master … literally!

Here’s the point Emotional Intelligence should have made: We tend to hire and promote those with superior social graces over those who excel at their work, and buy from the sales representative with the best haircut, firmest handshake, most resonant voice and tasteful clothes. But that’s a very bad way to behave, and with training we can learn to overcome it.

Or as I once explained to a hiring manager who reported to me, I’d rather apologize for my technicians’ poor manners than for their lack of competence.

Of course, had Goleman made this point instead, Emotional Intelligence wouldn’t have become a best-seller and he wouldn’t have become as successful as he has.

Which just goes to show that if nothing else, Goleman eats his own cooking.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

When Hewlett Packard and Compaq first announced their plan to merge, one writer commented that both companies had spent several years searching for a strategy.

Ain’t that pathetic? I picture Carly Fiorina wandering around the desert, looking under rocks and behind the occasional saguaro like some National Geographic photographer hoping to capture a rare, elusive Strategis corporatus on film.

As if anyone ever doubted the inevitable result of a merger in which neither parent company had a viable strategy, it’s now official. Zero plus zero equals zero: The combined company also lacks direction.

It isn’t entirely Fiorina’s fault. In 1997, the Business Roundtable — an association of CEOs from “leading” American corporations — made it official: Shareholder value is the only responsibility of a company’s leadership. Translation: All that matters is the price of a share of stock.

The problem is, the “shareholder value” strategy is an obvious loser.

Imagine your company focuses on shareholder value. Meanwhile, competitors focus on designing and building the best products in the marketplace or on taking care of their customers better than anyone else.

Is there any doubt which company will come in dead last? It might seem paradoxical, but the surest way to make the price of a share of stock plummet is to try to push it up.

Career advisors have preached a similar message for years: Stop worrying about titles and salaries and instead do what you love and are good at. In this case, what’s true for individuals is also true for corporations. Concentrate on doing something exceptionally well … to choose a word, a mission.

This insight is equally valid at every level of an organization. Whether you lead a whole company, an IT division, or a project management team, your clearest route to success is to establish a goal for everyone who reports to you, make it clear why that goal is important, take away all the organizational obstacles that get in the way of achieving the goal, and reward and promote the people who do the most to help you achieve it.

Mission statements have fallen out of fashion, and that’s a good thing. Most leadership teams, faced with creating one, spent no time at all discussing ideas. Instead they word-smithed and group edited, never considering that mission statements don’t matter.

What matters is understanding the mission.

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