How Emotional Intelligence Can Improve The Future of Work: Day 19

A point to know the days have been renumbered by my new book where you can now find all past entries of this newsletter:

As most of us know, I am a former teacher, and I have been researching how leaders can enhance their EQ for a better future. A difficult one indeed where through covid most of us went through quite traumatic mental health issues. The word lockdown even now sends shivers down most folks. 

And to kind of grasp a new frontier for emotional intelligence and teaching practice, I want to focus on academic intelligence.

Before I get stuck into this topic I want to ask you the following question:

How does a student with a high IQ want to stab and cause harm to their teacher?

Daniel Goleman's Goleman's book-entry "When Smart is Dumb" (chapter 3). If you have not read the book, I will attempt to fill in the blanks for you. 

The story goes a little like this:

"Exactly why David Pologruto, a high-school physics teacher, was stabbed with a kitchen knife by one of his students is still debatable. But the facts as widely reported are these:

Jason H., a sophomore and straight-A student at a Coral Springs, Florida, high school, was fixated on getting into medical school. Not just any medical school-he dreamt of Harvard. But, Pologruto, his physics had given Jason an 80 on an quiz. Believing the grade - a mere B - put his dream in jeopardy, Jason took a butcher knife to school and, in a confrontation with Pologruto in the physics lab, stabbed his teacher in the collarbone before being subdued in a struggle.

A judge found Jason innocent, temporarily insane during the incident-a panel of four psychologists and psychiatrists swore he was psychotic during the fight. Jason claimed he had been planning to commit suicide because of the test score, and had gone to Pologruto to tell him he was killing himself because of the bad grade. Pologruto told a different story; "I think he tried to completely do me in with the knife" because he was infuriated over the bad grade." Source: Daniel Goleman Working with Emotional intelligence.

Relevance From The Story To Emotional Intelligence & The Future of Work

The Story depicts that educational intelligence has little to do with emotional life, as illustrated by Goleman`s work. Now, if we as management appreciate the learning agenda here, how can we avoid entries of toxic leadership deriving from IQ individuals? So, again, the Story is perhaps very relevant. 

Some organisations and major universities work hard to recruit lecturers and enrol students with higher IQs. However, even though Goleman's work and the case study demonstrate emotional intelligence is the right path for management, not IQ, we still practice poor leadership behaviours. Further, there is still a growing concern of cases like the one above happening in workplaces where employees start fighting back against toxic leadership and choose violence, leading to killings in the modern office environment. 

The Hollywood Scene of wanting to Kill your Boss

Hollywood has done a brilliant job in bringing the comedy side of wanting to kill your boss to a cinema near you. However, after the great resignation, I feel that the real truth is about to explode even further amongst our faces. 

The Threat of Continuous Burnout in the Global Office

I would also argue that we as humans and management of today have not learned much about modern mental wellbeing. We are simply too harsh on others, which has ultimately contributed to a global confusion on working better together. We know burnout is real, and now with the war in Ukraine and global economic disasters looming - it could be time that we all meditate on how our emotional intelligence skills are mastered.

Modern Psychology and Emotional Intelligence

The combined effort of Dr Carol s. Dweck - Dr Steve Peters plus Goleman's work in their entries from:

1) The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme for Confidence, Success and Happiness.

2) Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential.

All offer excellent analyses that are welcomed to the management of today. I have even cross-referenced their research with how Emotional Intelligence stands in Business, and I can honestly say there`s a big mismatch. And that is not to say that their research and theories do not stand well - because they do - it just us management along with humans are not catching up to what we need to practice.

Conclusions

As a humble thought leader, I am here to effectively share my research, analysis, and thoughts to help inspire better EQ in the new future of work. I feel that the conversation and the reality of the practice of understanding our emotions more - to allow us to become better humans are more than just a worthwhile cause. Further, failure to pinpoint how we do it to create more enhanced emotional intelligence training is another question I am looking into.

P.S. End The War in Ukraine Now Russia - What your doing is wrong.