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Dear Judi and Colleagues,

I like Sternberg below was very surprised by the breadth of Goleman's definition and found it therefore rather meaningless.  I felt this after his first book and in my subsequent writing broke out Social Quotient from EQ long before he did.  I think the value here is in the broad strokes-that there is an emotional component to effective leadership and also a social component.  Maybe, Judi, you can find the specifics of those components.  But,  I also have seen over the years that most corporations hire companies and come up with their own "personalized" set of leadership competencies.  They all tend to think that they are unique, and they all tend to be rather similar.  I also remember the Ohio State Leadership studies looking at the trait theory/Great Man theory approach and believe they gave up on that approach after finding some 400+ relevant characteristics.  When does a competency become a characteristic/trait or vice verse? I fear that the search for specific competencies or traits or characteristics that will correlate, given measurement issues, with some dependent leadership outcomes (do you use a balanced scorecard or ....?) will turn into a quagmire as it did at OSU.  If you can do it though, more power to you.  Cameron and Whetten believe they've found the answer.  So do many others.  At the other extreme is the Big Five segment believing that all of personality and personal definition can be distilled down to five key characteristics.  I don't buy that either.  Best wishes.  I'll be eager to see what  conclusions you come up with.

Dear Judi:

I second Jon's advice.

With respect to Karl's post, I would pay close attention to what the research evidence shows. At this time Goleman's model has not been validated in large-scale studies where competing constructs (e.g., big-five personality factors, IQ) are controled for. In a recent meta-analysis (Rooy and Viswesvaran, 2004), which tested Goleman's models as well as other "Emotional Intelligence" models had this to say about the incremental validity of "Emotional Intelligence": "...EI did not evidence incremental validity over GMA [general mental ability, i.e., IQ]. However, GMA did significantly predict performance beyond that explained by EI. Thus, the claims that EI can be a more important predictor than cognitive ability (e.g., Goleman, 1995) are apparently more rhetoric than fact." Sternberg (1999, pp. 782-783), in a review of Goleman's (1998) book "Working with Emotional Intelligence" had suggested this several years earlier:

"When Goleman says that emotional intelligence counts more for success
in all jobs than does IQ, he is probably right according to his own
definition, in the sense that the residual unexplained reliable variance in
predicting job performance is virtually always more than 50% after IQ
is entered into a hierarchical regression equation. For Goleman, emotional
intelligence seems to be pretty close to nonchance individual factors
that might encompass whatever that residual might be. If Goleman
used a more serious standard, such as a statistical validation of his own
measure (a measure not presented in the book, but available from him
at an undisclosed cost) over and beyond variation predicted in job performance
by IQ, his claims might not, and very likely would not, hold up."

In the Rooy and Viswesvarn meta-analysis, the depedent variable was performance in a number of domains (and not leadership per se); however, a measure claiming to have strong predictive validity in a number of performance domains including leadership, work performance, academic performance and other areas (just take a look at any of Goleman's books to see what magic his model apparently works) should have shown something in validation studies. Note too that Goleman's data has never been peer reviewed in top scholarly journals.

Also, to my knowledge, I have never seen a paper authored by McClelland or any comments made by McClelland suggesting that there is something to the Goleman "Emotional Intelligence" model nor has he discussed "emotional intelligence." Perhaps Karl can show us where McClelland has actually commented on "Emotional Intelligence". 

Finally, rehashing and relabeling constructs as emotional intelligence (and defining EI by exclusion) like Goleman did is not good science. As noted by Sternberg:

"As someone who has supported the broadening of concepts of intelligence,
I am somewhat taken aback at how broad Goleman's conception
is. It includes, in Goleman's framework emotional awareness, accurate
self-assessment, self-confidence, self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness,
adaptability, innovation, achievement drive, commitment,
initiative, optimism, understanding others, developing others, service
orientation, leveraging diversity, political awareness, influence, communication,
conflict management, leadership, change catalyst, building
bonds, collaboration and cooperation, and team capabilities. In other
words, it includes a combination of abilities, personality traits, motivations,
and emotional characteristics that seems to stretch even the most
liberal definition of intelligence, and seems close to a conception of almost
anything that matters beyond IQ. Some of these traits even seem to
overlap with IQ. As Goleman uses the term, emotional intelligence comes
across as the residual after IQ and perhaps includes aspects of IQ as well."

So, rather than reading popular literature and practitioner journals like HBR, I would suggest you review work published in the scholarly literature.

References:

Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Review of D. Goleman, Working with emotional intelligence. Personnel Psychology, 52, 780-783.

Van Rooy, V. D., & Viswesvaran, C. (2004). Emotional intelligence: A meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, 71-95.

HTH,
John.

____________________________________________________

Prof. John Antonakis

Associate Dean, Development and Executive Education

Faculty of Business and Economics

University of Lausanne

Internef #527

CH-1015 Lausanne-Dorigny

Switzerland

Tel ++41 (0)21 692-3438

Fax ++41 (0)21 692-3305

http//www.hec.unil.ch/people/jantonakis&cl=en

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Karl Strandberg wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

Ivan's list below is interesting.  It doesn't match up with Jack's books of course, especially "Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will" written with Noel Tichy and Strat Sherman.  This points out what a moving target this effort is.  Jack and Suzy write an essay... and off we go.  Then there's Larry Bossidy's book, and another of his lieutenants, Bob Johnson (former CEO of Honeywell Aerospace and Dubai Aerospace) is writing another one.  And Marriott's book.  And Harold Geneen's book.  And Kouzes and Posner's book.  And my book.  And Gardner's book.  And Collins' book.  And the various books on military leadership (e.g. The West Point Way).  And so many books on what the key traits are.  Again, good luck, Judi.  Whatever you come up with, my sincere hope is that it will be YOUR list and that when you teach it, you'll be devoted to the concepts and not just passing on someone else's ideas.  I think that's critical in the classroom for creating energy and enthusiasm.

Cheers,