Managing Leadership^®

The notion that raw intelligence alone might not only be insufficient to predict success, but also an insufficient indicator of a person’s overall ability, effectiveness, and influence has actually been around for a long time. It has been suspected, faintly perceived, and cautiously hinted at for millennia. But people would listen to pithy quotes on the topic, nod their heads in recognition, and then, when push came to shove, make selection and promotion decisions on the basis of traditional intelligence assessments.

For the past quarter of a century, though, the tide has been slowly but genuinely turning on this subject. While there remain somewhat conflicting definitions of what precisely is meant by the movement, it is becoming widely – and actionably – acknowledged that raw intelligence alone is not capable of serving the purposes to which we put it. We need to view a person’s capabilities along a broader array of human characteristics, or to accommodate ourselves to a more comprehensive definition of human intelligence.

It is not necessary to enter into the fray regarding how to depict these evolving ideas – or even to fully agree with them. It is enough to acknowledge the veracity of the very real concerns that gave rise to them, and to explore the literature and see how it promises to help us resolve those.

As it happens, it can do quite a lot for managers at every level, as long as you keep your feet on the ground while trying it on for size. For one thing, this way of thinking about human capabilities, interactions, collaboration, and influence can help managers understand much more clearly what composes corporate culture and how to work with it. This, in turn, helps managers to better perform a fundamental responsibility: establishing an organizational environment that facilitates and enhances – at the same time that it directs and disciplines – the doing of productive work.

As it happens, it is really only recently that observers have been turning from what this concept means to how it can appropriately be used at work. And as they’ve done so, it is only to be expected that some of them, swept away by their enthusiasm, have made of it yet another specially distinguishing and rare quality of the super-leader – a secret understanding from within which such a personage can do wondrous magic among the dim and uncomprehending material of which the workforce is supposedly composed. In fact, this sort of imagery has been taken beyond even that, describing the emotionally intelligent leader as someone who is specially armed to work undetected within the DNA, or the bloodstream, of an organization, weaving healing reinforcement here, organic change there, and robust cultural growth yonder.

In his book “Emotional Capitalists: the New Leaders,” author and consultant Martyn Newman also spends a good bit of time talking about leaders and how the concept of emotional intelligence can help them be more effective. However, he focuses less on grandiose concepts of what it makes the leader become, and more on how it can help the leader learn to understand and use it to do his or her job more effectively for all concerned.

In particular, Newman goes beyond mere proselytizing to examining the building blocks of emotional intelligence in practice, and how to incorporate these into your own approach to management. His aim is to help the manager use them to develop genuine, meaningful, and sustainable credibility – capital – within the organization. Like any capital, emotional capital is to be carefully developed and grown, and wisely distributed and re-invested, to make the investor a more influential and effective manager – an emotional capitalist.

This is an excellent addition to your management library, and will help you come to a personal appreciation of how to incorporate this important view of organizational and managerial behavior into your own work. Pick it up – you will enjoy and benefit from it.

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Today’s tip: The September Leadership Development Carnival is up at Great Leadership, and Dan McCarthy has put together an especially insightful and informative group of contributors this month – he has offered particularly helpful summaries and explanations of each author, as well. I spent a good bit of time this weekend discovering terrific new sources which are now firmly ensconced in my daily reading, and if you will take just a moment to click over to the Carnival, I’m sure you will happily do the same.

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