from the harvard business review onpointleadway.org/pdf/what makes a leader.pdfby daniel goleman...

A R T I C L E

What Makes a Leader?by Daniel Goleman

P R O D U C T N U M B E R 3 7 9 0

New sections to

guide you through

the article:

• The Idea in Brief

• The Idea at Work

• Exploring Further . . .

What distinguishes

the outstanding leader

from the merely adequate?

Emotional intelligence—

a powerful combination

of self-management skills

and the ability to work

with others.

HBROnPoint

F R O M T H E H A R V A R D B U S I N E S S R E V I E W

A to define the ideal leader, many

would emphasize traits such as intelligence,

toughness, determination, and vision. Often

left off the list are softer, more personal quali-

ties—but recent studies indicate that they are

also essential. Although a certain degree of

analytical and technical skill is a minimum

requirement for success, what is called

“emotional intelligence” may be the key

attribute that distinguishes outstanding per-

formers from those who are merely adequate.

For example, in a 1996 study of a global food

and beverage company, where senior managers

had a certain critical mass of emotional intelli-

gence, their divisions outperformed yearly

earnings goals by 20%. Division leaders without

that critical mass underperformed by almost

the same amount.

What Makes a Leader?T H E I D E A I N B R I E F

T are five components to emotional

intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation,

motivation, empathy, and social skill. All five

traits sound desirable to just about everyone.

But organizations too often implicitly discour-

age their people from developing them.

Self-management skills

1. Self-awareness. Emotional intelligence

begins with this trait. People with a high

degree of self-awareness know their weak-

nesses and aren’t afraid to talk about them.

Someone who understands that he works

poorly under tight deadlines, for example,

will work hard to plan his time carefully,

and will let his colleagues know why. Many

executives looking for potential leaders

mistake such candor for “wimpiness.”

2. Self-regulation. This attribute flows from

self-awareness, but runs in a different direc-

tion. People with this trait are able to con-

trol their impulses or even channel them

for good purposes.

3. Motivation. A passion for achievement for

its own sake—not simply the ability to

respond to whatever incentives a company

offers—is the kind of motivation that is

essential for leadership.

The ability to relate to others

4. Empathy. In addition to self-management

skills, emotional intelligence requires a

facility for dealing with others. And that

starts with empathy—taking into account

the feelings of others when making deci-

sions—as opposed to taking on everyone’s

troubles.

5. Social skill. All the preceding traits culmi-

nate in this fifth one: the ability to build

rapport with others, to get them to cooper-

ate, to move them in a direction you desire.

Managers who simply try to be sociable—

while lacking the other components of

emotional intelligence—are likely to fail.

Social skill, by contrast, is friendliness with

a purpose.

Can you boost your emotional intelligence?

Absolutely—but not with traditional training

programs that target the rational part of the

brain. Extended practice, feedback from col-

leagues, and your own enthusiasm for making

the change are essential to becoming an effec-

tive leader.

T H E I D E A A T W O R K

E X A M P L E :

Consider two division chiefs at a company forcedto make layoffs. One manager gave a hard-hitting speech emphasizing the number of people who would be fired. The other manager,while not hiding the bad news, took into accounthis people’s anxieties. He promised to keep theminformed and to treat everyone fairly. Many exec-utives would have refrained from such a show of consideration, lest they appear to lack tough-ness. But the tough manager demoralized his talented people—most of whom ended up leaving his division voluntarily.

HBR OnPoint © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

artwork by craig frazier Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

very businesspersonknows a story about a highly intelligent, highlyskilled executive who was promoted into a leader-ship position only to fail at the job. And they alsoknow a story about someone with solid – but notextraordinary – intellectual abilities and technicalskills who was promoted into a similar positionand then soared.

Such anecdotes support the widespread beliefthat identifying individuals with the “right stuff”to be leaders is more art than science. After all, thepersonal styles of superb leaders vary: some lead-ers are subdued and analytical; others shout theirmanifestos from the mountaintops. And just asimportant, different situations call for different

IQ and technical skills are important, but emotionalintelligence is the sine qua non of leadership.

What Makes a Leader?

by daniel goleman

Daniel Goleman is the author of Emotional Intelligence (Ban-tam, 1995) and Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam,1998). He is cochairman of the Consortium for Research onEmotional Intelligence in Organizations, which is based at Rut-gers University’s Graduate School of Applied and ProfessionalPsychology in Piscataway, New Jersey. He can be reached [email protected].

E

types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitivenegotiator at the helm, whereas many turnaroundsrequire a more forceful authority.

I have found, however, that the most effectiveleaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have ahigh degree of what has come to be known as emo-tional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technicalskills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as“threshold capabilities”; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But myresearch, along with other recent studies, clearlyshows that emotional intelligence is the sine quanon of leadership. Without it, aperson can have the best trainingin the world, an incisive, analyti-cal mind, and an endless supplyof smart ideas, but he still won’tmake a great leader.

In the course of the past year,my colleagues and I have focusedon how emotional intelligenceoperates at work. We have exam-ined the relationship betweenemotional intelligence and effec-tive performance, especially inleaders. And we have observedhow emotional intelligenceshows itself on the job. How canyou tell if someone has highemotional intelligence, for exam-ple, and how can you recognize itin yourself? In the followingpages, we’ll explore these questions, taking each ofthe components of emotional intelligence – self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy,and social skill – in turn.

Evaluating Emotional IntelligenceMost large companies today have employed trainedpsychologists to develop what are known as “com-petency models” to aid them in identifying, train-ing, and promoting likely stars in the leadership firmament. The psychologists have also developedsuch models for lower-level positions. And in re-cent years, I have analyzed competency modelsfrom 188 companies, most of which were large andglobal and included the likes of Lucent Technolo-gies, British Airways, and Credit Suisse.

In carrying out this work, my objective was to determine which personal capabilities drove out-standing performance within these organizations,and to what degree they did so. I grouped capabili-ties into three categories: purely technical skillslike accounting and business planning; cognitive

abilities like analytical reasoning; and competen-cies demonstrating emotional intelligence such asthe ability to work with others and effectiveness inleading change.

To create some of the competency models, psy-chologists asked senior managers at the companiesto identify the capabilities that typified the organi-zation’s most outstanding leaders. To create othermodels, the psychologists used objective criteriasuch as a division’s profitability to differentiate thestar performers at senior levels within their organi-zations from the average ones. Those individuals

were then extensively interviewedand tested, and their capabilitieswere compared. This process re-sulted in the creation of lists ofingredients for highly effectiveleaders. The lists ranged in lengthfrom 7 to 15 items and includedsuch ingredients as initiative andstrategic vision.

When I analyzed all this data, I found dramatic results. To besure, intellect was a driver of out-standing performance. Cognitiveskills such as big-picture think-ing and long-term vision wereparticularly important. But whenI calculated the ratio of technicalskills, IQ, and emotional intelli-gence as ingredients of excellentperformance, emotional intelli-

gence proved to be twice as important as the othersfor jobs at all levels.

Moreover, my analysis showed that emotionalintelligence played an increasingly important roleat the highest levels of the company, where differ-ences in technical skills are of negligible impor-tance. In other words, the higher the rank of a per-son considered to be a star performer, the moreemotional intelligence capabilities showed up asthe reason for his or her effectiveness. When I com-pared star performers with average ones in seniorleadership positions, nearly 90% of the differencein their profiles was attributable to emotional intel-ligence factors rather than cognitive abilities.

Other researchers have confirmed that emotionalintelligence not only distinguishes outstandingleaders but can also be linked to strong perfor-mance. The findings of the late David McClelland,the renowned researcher in human and organiza-tional behavior, are a good example. In a 1996 studyof a global food and beverage company, McClellandfound that when senior managers had a criticalmass of emotional intelligence capabilities, their

94 harvard business review November–December 1998

what makes a leader?

Effective leaders are alike

in one crucialway: they allhave a high

degree ofemotional

intelligence.

divisions outperformed yearly earnings goals by20%. Meanwhile, division leaders without thatcritical mass underperformed by almost the sameamount. McClelland’s findings, interestingly, heldas true in the company’s U.S. divisions as in its divi-sions in Asia and Europe.

In short, the numbers are beginning to tell us apersuasive story about the link between a compa-ny’s success and the emotional intelligence of itsleaders. And just as important, research is alsodemonstrating that people can, if they take the

right approach, develop their emotional intelli-gence. (See the insert “Can Emotional IntelligenceBe Learned?”)

Self-AwarenessSelf-awareness is the first component of emotionalintelligence – which makes sense when one con-siders that the Delphic oracle gave the advice to“know thyself” thousands of years ago. Self-aware-ness means having a deep understanding of one’s

harvard business review November–December 1998 95


Self-Awareness

Self-Regulation

Motivation

Empathy

Social Skill

Definition

the ability to recognize and understandyour moods, emotions, and drives, aswell as their effect on others

the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods

the propensity to suspend judgment –to think before acting

a passion to work for reasons that gobeyond money or status

a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

the ability to understand the emotionalmakeup of other people

skill in treating people according totheir emotional reactions

proficiency in managing relationshipsand building networks

an ability to find common ground andbuild rapport

Hallmarks

self-confidence

realistic self-assessment

self-deprecating sense of humor

trustworthiness and integrity

comfort with ambiguity

openness to change

strong drive to achieve

optimism, even in the face of failure

organizational commitment

expertise in building and retaining talent

cross-cultural sensitivity

service to clients and customers

effectiveness in leading change

persuasiveness

expertise in building and leading teams

The Five Components of Emotional Intelligence at Work

emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives.People with strong self-awareness are neither overlycritical nor unrealistically hopeful. Rather, they arehonest – with themselves and with others.

People who have a high degree of self-awarenessrecognize how their feelings affect them, other peo-ple, and their job performance. Thus a self-awareperson who knows that tight deadlines bring outthe worst in him plans his time carefully and getshis work done well in advance. Another personwith high self-awareness will be able to work witha demanding client. She will understand theclient’s impact on her moods and the deeper rea-sons for her frustration. “Their trivial demandstake us away from the real workthat needs to be done,” she mightexplain. And she will go one stepfurther and turn her anger intosomething constructive.

Self-awareness extends to aperson’s understanding of his orher values and goals. Someonewho is highly self-aware knowswhere he is headed and why; so,for example, he will be able to befirm in turning down a job offerthat is tempting financially butdoes not fit with his principles orlong-term goals. A person wholacks self-awareness is apt tomake decisions that bring on in-ner turmoil by treading on buriedvalues. “The money looked goodso I signed on,” someone mightsay two years into a job, “but the work means so lit-tle to me that I’m constantly bored.” The decisionsof self-aware people mesh with their values; conse-quently, they often find work to be energizing.

How can one recognize self-awareness? First andforemost, it shows itself as candor and an ability toassess oneself realistically. People with high self-awareness are able to speak accurately and openly –although not necessarily effusively or confession-ally – about their emotions and the impact theyhave on their work. For instance, one manager Iknow of was skeptical about a new personal-shopperservice that her company, a major department-storechain, was about to introduce. Without promptingfrom her team or her boss, she offered them an ex-planation: “It’s hard for me to get behind the rolloutof this service,” she admitted, “because I reallywanted to run the project, but I wasn’t selected.Bear with me while I deal with that.” The managerdid indeed examine her feelings; a week later, shewas supporting the project fully.

Such self-knowledge often shows itself in thehiring process. Ask a candidate to describe a timehe got carried away by his feelings and did some-thing he later regretted. Self-aware candidates willbe frank in admitting to failure – and will often telltheir tales with a smile. One of the hallmarks ofself-awareness is a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Self-awareness can also be identified during per-formance reviews. Self-aware people know – andare comfortable talking about – their limitationsand strengths, and they often demonstrate a thirstfor constructive criticism. By contrast, people withlow self-awareness interpret the message that theyneed to improve as a threat or a sign of failure.

Self-aware people can also berecognized by their self-confi-dence. They have a firm grasp oftheir capabilities and are lesslikely to set themselves up to failby, for example, overstretchingon assignments. They know, too,when to ask for help. And therisks they take on the job are cal-culated. They won’t ask for achallenge that they know theycan’t handle alone. They’ll playto their strengths.

Consider the actions of a mid-level employee who was invitedto sit in on a strategy meetingwith her company’s top execu-tives. Although she was the mostjunior person in the room, she didnot sit there quietly, listening in

awestruck or fearful silence. She knew she had ahead for clear logic and the skill to present ideaspersuasively, and she offered cogent suggestionsabout the company’s strategy. At the same time,her self-awareness stopped her from wandering intoterritory where she knew she was weak.

Despite the value of having self-aware people inthe workplace, my research indicates that seniorexecutives don’t often give self-awareness the creditit deserves when they look for potential leaders.Many executives mistake candor about feelings for“wimpiness” and fail to give due respect to employ-ees who openly acknowledge their shortcomings.Such people are too readily dismissed as “not toughenough” to lead others.

In fact, the opposite is true. In the first place, peo-ple generally admire and respect candor. Further,leaders are constantly required to make judgmentcalls that require a candid assessment of capa-bilities – their own and those of others. Do we havethe management expertise to acquire a competitor?



Self-aware job candidateswill be frank

in admitting tofailure – and will

often tell theirtales with a

smile.



For ages, people have debated if leaders are born ormade. So too goes the debate about emotional intel-ligence. Are people born with certain levels of em-pathy, for example, or do they acquire empathy as aresult of life’s experiences? The answer is both. Scien-tific inquiry strongly suggests that there is a geneticcomponent to emotional intelligence. Psychologicaland developmental research indicates that nurtureplays a role as well. How much of each perhaps willnever be known, but research and practice clearlydemonstrate that emotional intelligence can belearned.

One thing is certain: emotional intelligence in-creases with age. There is an old-fashioned word forthe phenomenon: maturity. Yet even with maturity,some people still need training to enhance their emo-tional intelligence. Unfortunately, far too many train-ing programs that intend to build leadership skills –including emotional intelligence – are a waste of timeand money. The problem is simple: they focus on thewrong part of the brain.

Emotional intelligence is born largely in the neuro-transmitters of the brain’s limbic system, which gov-erns feelings, impulses, and drives. Research indi-cates that the limbic system learns best throughmotivation, extended practice, and feedback. Com-pare this with the kind of learning that goes on in theneocortex, which governs analytical and technicalability. The neocortex grasps concepts and logic. It isthe part of the brain that figures out how to use a com-puter or make a sales call by reading a book. Not sur-prisingly – but mistakenly – it is also the part of thebrain targeted by most training programs aimed at en-hancing emotional intelligence. When such programstake, in effect, a neocortical approach, my researchwith the Consortium for Research on Emotional In-telligence in Organizations has shown they can evenhave a negative impact on people’s job performance.

To enhance emotional intelligence, organizationsmust refocus their training to include the limbic sys-tem. They must help people break old behavioralhabits and establish new ones. That not only takesmuch more time than conventional training pro-grams, it also requires an individualized approach.

Imagine an executive who is thought to be low onempathy by her colleagues. Part of that deficit showsitself as an inability to listen; she interrupts peopleand doesn’t pay close attention to what they’re say-ing. To fix the problem, the executive needs to be mo-tivated to change, and then she needs practice andfeedback from others in the company. A colleague or

coach could be tapped to let the executive know whenshe has been observed failing to listen. She wouldthen have to replay the incident and give a better re-sponse; that is, demonstrate her ability to absorb whatothers are saying. And the executive could be directedto observe certain executives who listen well and tomimic their behavior.

With persistence and practice, such a process canlead to lasting results. I know one Wall Street execu-tive who sought to improve his empathy – specificallyhis ability to read people’s reactions and see their per-spectives. Before beginning his quest, the executive’ssubordinates were terrified of working with him. Peo-ple even went so far as to hide bad news from him.Naturally, he was shocked when finally confrontedwith these facts. He went home and told his family –but they only confirmed what he had heard at work.When their opinions on any given subject did notmesh with his, they, too, were frightened of him.

Enlisting the help of a coach, the executive went towork to heighten his empathy through practice andfeedback. His first step was to take a vacation to a for-eign country where he did not speak the language.While there, he monitored his reactions to the unfa-miliar and his openness to people who were differentfrom him. When he returned home, humbled by hisweek abroad, the executive asked his coach to shadowhim for parts of the day, several times a week, in orderto critique how he treated people with new or differ-ent perspectives. At the same time, he consciouslyused on-the-job interactions as opportunities to prac-tice “hearing” ideas that differed from his. Finally, theexecutive had himself videotaped in meetings andasked those who worked for and with him to critiquehis ability to acknowledge and understand the feel-ings of others. It took several months, but the execu-tive’s emotional intelligence did ultimately rise, andthe improvement was reflected in his overall perfor-mance on the job.

It’s important to emphasize that building one’semotional intelligence cannot – will not – happenwithout sincere desire and concerted effort. A briefseminar won’t help; nor can one buy a how-to manual.It is much harder to learn to empathize – to internal-ize empathy as a natural response to people – than it isto become adept at regression analysis. But it can bedone. “Nothing great was ever achieved without en-thusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. If your goalis to become a real leader, these words can serve as aguidepost in your efforts to develop high emotionalintelligence.

Can Emotional Intelligence Be Learned?

Can we launch a new product within six months?People who assess themselves honestly – that is,self-aware people – are well suited to do the samefor the organizations they run.

Self-RegulationBiological impulses drive our emotions. We cannotdo away with them – but we can do much to man-age them. Self-regulation, which is like an ongoinginner conversation, is the component of emotionalintelligence that frees us from being prisoners ofour feelings. People engaged in such a conversationfeel bad moods and emotional impulses just aseveryone else does, but they findways to control them and even tochannel them in useful ways.

Imagine an executive who hasjust watched a team of his em-ployees present a botched analy-sis to the company’s board of directors. In the gloom that fol-lows, the executive might findhimself tempted to pound on thetable in anger or kick over a chair.He could leap up and scream atthe group. Or he might maintaina grim silence, glaring at every-one before stalking off.

But if he had a gift for self-regu-lation, he would choose a differ-ent approach. He would pick hiswords carefully, acknowledgingthe team’s poor performancewithout rushing to any hasty judgment. He wouldthen step back to consider the reasons for the fail-ure. Are they personal – a lack of effort? Are thereany mitigating factors? What was his role in the de-bacle? After considering these questions, he wouldcall the team together, lay out the incident’s conse-quences, and offer his feelings about it. He wouldthen present his analysis of the problem and a well-considered solution.

Why does self-regulation matter so much forleaders? First of all, people who are in control oftheir feelings and impulses – that is, people who arereasonable – are able to create an environment oftrust and fairness. In such an environment, politicsand infighting are sharply reduced and productivityis high. Talented people flock to the organizationand aren’t tempted to leave. And self-regulation hasa trickle-down effect. No one wants to be known as ahothead when the boss is known for her calm ap-proach. Fewer bad moods at the top mean fewerthroughout the organization.

Second, self-regulation is important for competi-tive reasons. Everyone knows that business today isrife with ambiguity and change. Companies mergeand break apart regularly. Technology transformswork at a dizzying pace. People who have masteredtheir emotions are able to roll with the changes.When a new change program is announced, theydon’t panic; instead, they are able to suspend judg-ment, seek out information, and listen to execu-tives explain the new program. As the initiativemoves forward, they are able to move with it.

Sometimes they even lead the way. Consider thecase of a manager at a large manufacturing com-pany. Like her colleagues, she had used a certain

software program for five years.The program drove how she col-lected and reported data and howshe thought about the company’sstrategy. One day, senior execu-tives announced that a new pro-gram was to be installed thatwould radically change how in-formation was gathered and as-sessed within the organization.While many people in the com-pany complained bitterly abouthow disruptive the change wouldbe, the manager mulled over thereasons for the new program andwas convinced of its potential toimprove performance. She eagerlyattended training sessions – someof her colleagues refused to doso – and was eventually promoted

to run several divisions, in part because she usedthe new technology so effectively.

I want to push the importance of self-regulationto leadership even further and make the case that itenhances integrity, which is not only a personalvirtue but also an organizational strength. Many ofthe bad things that happen in companies are a func-tion of impulsive behavior. People rarely plan to ex-aggerate profits, pad expense accounts, dip into thetill, or abuse power for selfish ends. Instead, an op-portunity presents itself, and people with low im-pulse control just say yes.

By contrast, consider the behavior of the seniorexecutive at a large food company. The executivewas scrupulously honest in his negotiations withlocal distributors. He would routinely lay out hiscost structure in detail, thereby giving the distribu-tors a realistic understanding of the company’s pric-ing. This approach meant the executive couldn’t al-ways drive a hard bargain. Now, on occasion, he feltthe urge to increase profits by withholding informa-



People who have masteredtheir emotions

are able to roll with the

changes. Theydon’t panic.

tion about the company’s costs. But he challengedthat impulse – he saw that it made more sense inthe long run to counteract it. His emotional self-regulation paid off in strong, lasting relationshipswith distributors that benefited the company morethan any short-term financial gains would have.

The signs of emotional self-regula-tion, therefore, are not hard to miss: apropensity for reflection and thought-fulness; comfort with ambiguity andchange; and integrity – an ability to sayno to impulsive urges.

Like self-awareness, self-regulationoften does not get its due. People whocan master their emotions are some-times seen as cold fish – their consid-ered responses are taken as a lack of passion. People with fiery tempera-ments are frequently thought of as“classic” leaders – their outbursts areconsidered hallmarks of charisma andpower. But when such people make it to the top, their impulsiveness oftenworks against them. In my research, extreme displays of negative emotionhave never emerged as a driver of goodleadership.

MotivationIf there is one trait that virtually all ef-fective leaders have, it is motivation.They are driven to achieve beyond ex-pectations – their own and everyoneelse’s. The key word here is achieve.Plenty of people are motivated by exter-nal factors such as a big salary or thestatus that comes from having an im-pressive title or being part of a presti-gious company. By contrast, those withleadership potential are motivated by adeeply embedded desire to achieve for the sake ofachievement.

If you are looking for leaders, how can you iden-tify people who are motivated by the drive toachieve rather than by external rewards? The firstsign is a passion for the work itself – such peopleseek out creative challenges, love to learn, andtake great pride in a job well done. They also dis-play an unflagging energy to do things better. Peo-ple with such energy often seem restless with thestatus quo. They are persistent with their ques-tions about why things are done one way ratherthan another; they are eager to explore new ap-proaches to their work.

A cosmetics company manager, for example,was frustrated that he had to wait two weeks to getsales results from people in the field. He finallytracked down an automated phone system thatwould beep each of his salespeople at 5 p.m. everyday. An automated message then prompted them

to punch in their numbers – how many calls andsales they had made that day. The system short-ened the feedback time on sales results from weeksto hours.

That story illustrates two other common traits ofpeople who are driven to achieve. They are foreverraising the performance bar, and they like to keepscore. Take the performance bar first. During per-formance reviews, people with high levels of motiva-tion might ask to be “stretched” by their superiors.Of course, an employee who combines self-aware-ness with internal motivation will recognize herlimits – but she won’t settle for objectives thatseem too easy to fulfill.



People who are in control of their feelings can tame their emo-tional impulses and redirect them in useful ways.



And it follows naturally that people who aredriven to do better also want a way of trackingprogress – their own, their team’s, and their com-pany’s. Whereas people with low achievement mo-tivation are often fuzzy about results, those withhigh achievement motivation often keep score bytracking such hard measures as profitability or mar-ket share. I know of a money manager who startsand ends his day on the Internet, gauging the perfor-mance of his stock fund against four industry-setbenchmarks.

Interestingly, people with high motivation re-main optimistic even when the score is againstthem. In such cases, self-regulation combines with achievement motivation to overcome thefrustration and depression that come after a set-back or failure. Take the case of an another portfo-lio manager at a large invest-ment company. After severalsuccessful years, her fund tum-bled for three consecutive quar-ters, leading three large insti-tutional clients to shift theirbusiness elsewhere.

Some executives would haveblamed the nosedive on cir-cumstances outside their con-trol; others might have seen thesetback as evidence of personalfailure. This portfolio manager,however, saw an opportunity to prove she could lead a turn-around. Two years later, whenshe was promoted to a very senior level in the com-pany, she described the experience as “the bestthing that ever happened to me; I learned so muchfrom it.”

Executives trying to recognize high levels ofachievement motivation in their people can lookfor one last piece of evidence: commitment to theorganization. When people love their job for thework itself, they often feel committed to the orga-nizations that make that work possible. Commit-ted employees are likely to stay with an organiza-tion even when they are pursued by headhunterswaving money.

It’s not difficult to understand how and why amotivation to achieve translates into strong leader-ship. If you set the performance bar high for your-self, you will do the same for the organization whenyou are in a position to do so. Likewise, a drive tosurpass goals and an interest in keeping score canbe contagious. Leaders with these traits can oftenbuild a team of managers around them with thesame traits. And of course, optimism and organiza-

tional commitment are fundamental to leader-ship – just try to imagine running a company with-out them.

EmpathyOf all the dimensions of emotional intelligence,empathy is the most easily recognized. We have allfelt the empathy of a sensitive teacher or friend; wehave all been struck by its absence in an unfeelingcoach or boss. But when it comes to business, werarely hear people praised, let alone rewarded, fortheir empathy. The very word seems unbusi-nesslike, out of place amid the tough realities of themarketplace.

But empathy doesn’t mean a kind of “I’m okay,you’re okay” mushiness. For a leader, that is, it

doesn’t mean adopting otherpeople’s emotions as one’s ownand trying to please everybody.That would be a nightmare – itwould make action impossi-ble. Rather, empathy meansthoughtfully considering em-ployees’ feelings – along withother factors – in the process ofmaking intelligent decisions.

For an example of empathyin action, consider what hap-pened when two giant broker-age companies merged, creat-ing redundant jobs in all theirdivisions. One division man-

ager called his people together and gave a gloomyspeech that emphasized the number of people whowould soon be fired. The manager of another divi-sion gave his people a different kind of speech. Hewas upfront about his own worry and confusion,and he promised to keep people informed and totreat everyone fairly.

The difference between these two managers wasempathy. The first manager was too worried abouthis own fate to consider the feelings of his anxiety-stricken colleagues. The second knew intuitivelywhat his people were feeling, and he acknowledgedtheir fears with his words. Is it any surprise that thefirst manager saw his division sink as many demor-alized people, especially the most talented, departed?By contrast, the second manager continued to be astrong leader, his best people stayed, and his divi-sion remained as productive as ever.

Empathy is particularly important today as acomponent of leadership for at least three reasons:the increasing use of teams; the rapid pace of global-ization; and the growing need to retain talent.

The very wordempathy seemsunbusinesslike,

out of place amidthe tough realities

of the marketplace.

Consider the challenge of leading a team. As any-one who has ever been a part of one can attest,teams are cauldrons of bubbling emotions. They areoften charged with reaching a consensus – hardenough with two people and much more difficult asthe numbers increase. Even in groups with as few as four or five members, alliances form and clash-ing agendas get set. A team’s leader must be able tosense and understand the viewpoints of everyonearound the table.

That’s exactly what a marketing manager at alarge information technology company was able todo when she was appointed to lead a troubled team.The group was in turmoil, overloaded by work andmissing deadlines. Tensions were high among themembers. Tinkering with procedures was notenough to bring the group together and make it aneffective part of the company.

So the manager took severalsteps. In a series of one-on-onesessions, she took the time to lis-ten to everyone in the group –what was frustrating them, howthey rated their colleagues,whether they felt they had beenignored. And then she directedthe team in a way that brought ittogether: she encouraged peopleto speak more openly about theirfrustrations, and she helped peo-ple raise constructive complaintsduring meetings. In short, herempathy allowed her to under-stand her team’s emotional makeup. The result wasnot just heightened collaboration among membersbut also added business, as the team was called onfor help by a wider range of internal clients.

Globalization is another reason for the rising im-portance of empathy for business leaders. Cross-cultural dialogue can easily lead to miscues andmisunderstandings. Empathy is an antidote. Peo-ple who have it are attuned to subtleties in bodylanguage; they can hear the message beneath thewords being spoken. Beyond that, they have a deepunderstanding of the existence and importance ofcultural and ethnic differences.

Consider the case of an American consultantwhose team had just pitched a project to a potentialJapanese client. In its dealings with Americans, theteam was accustomed to being bombarded withquestions after such a proposal, but this time it wasgreeted with a long silence. Other members of theteam, taking the silence as disapproval, were readyto pack and leave. The lead consultant gesturedthem to stop. Although he was not particularly fa-

miliar with Japanese culture, he read the client’sface and posture and sensed not rejection but inter-est – even deep consideration. He was right: whenthe client finally spoke, it was to give the consult-ing firm the job.

Finally, empathy plays a key role in the retentionof talent, particularly in today’s information econ-omy. Leaders have always needed empathy to de-velop and keep good people, but today the stakesare higher. When good people leave, they take thecompany’s knowledge with them.

That’s where coaching and mentoring come in. Ithas repeatedly been shown that coaching and men-toring pay off not just in better performance butalso in increased job satisfaction and decreasedturnover. But what makes coaching and mentoringwork best is the nature of the relationship. Out-

standing coaches and mentors getinside the heads of the peoplethey are helping. They sense howto give effective feedback. Theyknow when to push for betterperformance and when to holdback. In the way they motivatetheir protégés, they demonstrateempathy in action.

In what is probably soundinglike a refrain, let me repeat thatempathy doesn’t get much re-spect in business. People wonderhow leaders can make hard deci-sions if they are “feeling” for allthe people who will be affected.

But leaders with empathy do more than sympa-thize with people around them: they use theirknowledge to improve their companies in subtlebut important ways.

Social SkillThe first three components of emotional intelli-gence are all self-management skills. The last two,empathy and social skill, concern a person’s abilityto manage relationships with others. As a compo-nent of emotional intelligence, social skill is not assimple as it sounds. It’s not just a matter of friendli-ness, although people with high levels of socialskill are rarely mean-spirited. Social skill, rather, is friendliness with a purpose: moving people in thedirection you desire, whether that’s agreement on a new marketing strategy or enthusiasm about anew product.

Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circleof acquaintances, and they have a knack for findingcommon ground with people of all kinds – a knack



Social skill isfriendliness

with a purpose:moving peoplein the direction

you desire.

for building rapport. That doesn’t mean they social-ize continually; it means they work according tothe assumption that nothing important gets donealone. Such people have a network in place whenthe time for action comes.

Social skill is the culmination of the other di-mensions of emotional intelligence. People tend tobe very effective at managing relationships whenthey can understand and control their own emo-tions and can empathize with the feelings of others.Even motivation contributes to social skill. Re-member that people who are driven to achieve tendto be optimistic, even in the face of setbacks or fail-ure. When people are upbeat, their “glow” is castupon conversations and other so-cial encounters. They are popular,and for good reason.

Because it is the outcome of theother dimensions of emotionalintelligence, social skill is recog-nizable on the job in many waysthat will by now sound familiar.Socially skilled people, for in-stance, are adept at managingteams – that’s their empathy atwork. Likewise, they are expertpersuaders – a manifestation ofself-awareness, self-regulation,and empathy combined. Giventhose skills, good persuadersknow when to make an emotionalplea, for instance, and when anappeal to reason will work better.And motivation, when publiclyvisible, makes such people excellent collaborators;their passion for the work spreads to others, andthey are driven to find solutions.

But sometimes social skill shows itself in waysthe other emotional intelligence components donot. For instance, socially skilled people may attimes appear not to be working while at work. Theyseem to be idly schmoozing – chatting in the hall-ways with colleagues or joking around with peoplewho are not even connected to their “real” jobs. So-cially skilled people, however, don’t think it makessense to arbitrarily limit the scope of their relation-ships. They build bonds widely because they knowthat in these fluid times, they may need help some-day from people they are just getting to know today.

For example, consider the case of an executive inthe strategy department of a global computer man-ufacturer. By 1993, he was convinced that the com-pany’s future lay with the Internet. Over the courseof the next year, he found kindred spirits and usedhis social skill to stitch together a virtual commu-

nity that cut across levels, divisions, and nations.He then used this de facto team to put up a corpo-rate Web site, among the first by a major company.And, on his own initiative, with no budget or for-mal status, he signed up the company to participatein an annual Internet industry convention. Callingon his allies and persuading various divisions to donate funds, he recruited more than 50 peoplefrom a dozen different units to represent the com-pany at the convention.

Management took notice: within a year of theconference, the executive’s team formed the basisfor the company’s first Internet division, and hewas formally put in charge of it. To get there, the

executive had ignored conven-tional boundaries, forging andmaintaining connections withpeople in every corner of the or-ganization.

Is social skill considered a keyleadership capability in mostcompanies? The answer is yes,especially when compared withthe other components of emo-tional intelligence. People seemto know intuitively that leadersneed to manage relationships effectively; no leader is an island.After all, the leader’s task is to getwork done through other people,and social skill makes that possi-ble. A leader who cannot expressher empathy may as well nothave it at all. And a leader’s moti-

vation will be useless if he cannot communicate hispassion to the organization. Social skill allows lead-ers to put their emotional intelligence to work.

It would be foolish to assert that good-old-fash-ioned IQ and technical ability are not important ingredients in strong leadership. But the recipewould not be complete without emotional intelli-gence. It was once thought that the components ofemotional intelligence were “nice to have” in busi-ness leaders. But now we know that, for the sake ofperformance, these are ingredients that leaders“need to have.”

It is fortunate, then, that emotional intelligencecan be learned. The process is not easy. It takestime and, most of all, commitment. But the bene-fits that come from having a well-developed emo-tional intelligence, both for the individual and forthe organization, make it worth the effort.

Product no. 3790 To place an order, call 1-800-988-0886.



Emotionalintelligence

can be learned.The process is

not easy. It takes time andcommitment.

ARTICLES

“The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact” byHenry Mintzberg (Harvard Business Review,March–April 1990, Product no. 90210)

Whereas Goleman emphasizes emotional

intelligence, Mintzberg focuses on specific

skills. In this HBR Classic, Mintzberg uses his

and other research to debunk myths about

the manager’s role. Managerial work involves

interpersonal roles, informational roles, and

decisional roles, he notes. These in turn

require the ability to develop peer relation-

ships, carry out negotiations, motivate subor-

dinates, resolve conflicts, establish informa-

tion networks and disseminate information,

make decisions with little or ambiguous

information, and allocate resources. Good

self-management skills are characteristic of

most leaders; outstanding leaders also have

the ability to empathize with others and to

use social skills to advance an agenda.

“The Work of Leadership” by Ronald A.Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie (Harvard Business Review, January–February 1997,Product no. 4150)

Successfully leading an organization through

an adaptive challenge calls for leaders with a

high degree of emotional intelligence. But

Heifetz and Laurie focus on the requirements

of adaptive work, not on emotional maturity.

The principles for leading adaptive work

include: “getting on the balcony,” forming a

picture of the entire pattern of activity; iden-

tifying the key challenge; regulating distress;

maintaining disciplined attention; giving the

work back to the people; and protecting

voices of leadership from below.

“The Ways Chief Executive Officers Lead”by Charles M. Farkas and Suzy Wetlaufer(Harvard Business Review, May–June 1996,Product no. 96303)

CEOs inspire a variety of sentiments ranging

from awe to wrath, but there’s little debate

over CEOs’ importance in the business world.

The authors conducted 160 interviews with

executives around the world. Instead of find-

ing 160 different approaches, they found five,

each with a singular focus: strategy, people,

expertise, controls, or change. The five com-

ponents of emotional intelligence, singly or in

combination, have a great effect on how each

focus is expressed in an organization.

BOOKS

John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do by John P. Kotter (1999, Harvard BusinessSchool Press, Product no. 8974)

In this collection of six articles, Kotter shares

his observations on the nature of leadership

gained over the past 30 years. Without leader-

ship that can deal successfully with today’s

increasingly fast-moving and competitive

business environment, he warns, organiza-

tions will slow down, stagnate, and lose their

way. He presents his views on the current

state of leadership through ten observations

and revisits his now famous eight-step

process for organizational transformation. In

contrast to Goleman’s article on emotional

intelligence, which is about leadership quali-

ties, Kotter’s work focuses on action: What

does a leader do to lead? And how will leader-

ship need to be different in the future?

What Makes a Leader?B I B L I O G R A P H YE X P L O R I N G F U R T H E R . . .E X P L O R I N G F U R T H E R . . .

H A R V A R D B U S I N E S S S C H O O L P U B L I S H I N G

www.hbsp.harvard.edu

U.S. and Canada: 800-988-0886

617-783-7500 • Fax: 617-783-7555

To learn about other products from HBR OnPoint, please visit:

www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/articles/hbronpoint.html

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/carry_through.asp?sc=4320&sri=&type=session&link=/hbsp/prod_detail.asp?90210.html




http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/articles/hbronpoint.html

from the harvard business review onpointleadway.org/pdf/what makes a leader.pdfby daniel goleman...

Documents