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Can I feign interest in my team and thus manage to lead it?
We are investigating this ability to be very good at perceiving other people's emotions and even pretending to empathize with them, but very bad at sharing them sincerely. Indeed, there are psychopaths and cynics who become leaders, but they are usually discovered.
I suppose they are part of the infinite diversity of humanity.
But we have also detected in tests people who can coldly decide whether they want – or not – to feel and share the feelings of others. And if they decide to share them, they are sincere in doing so.
Are there bosses who feel with you and others capable of simulating it and making you believe?
There are many who could decide to suffer when others suffer, but they prefer to feel very busy with their own affairs and easily forget and ignore the misfortune of their team.
Are they those of “I have enough with mine”?
We observe three degrees of emotional intelligence: feeling what the other does, feeling it with the other, and doing for the other by feeling it.
And the leader is the one who feels and does?
He is the one who empathizes sincerely, makes that empathy resonate with the team and thus achieves, by example, that they act together.
Is that emotional resonance?
Not only. The leader makes his team as good as the best of its members. And the leader himself does not have to be the best at everything – he usually isn't – but he is the one who gets each member of the team to put his personal quality in his specialty at the service of everyone. That is the resonant magic of emotional intelligence.
Is resonance valued in the company?
Much more than in 1996, when Daniel Goleman began to define it.
He explained it to me in La Contra as the talent of uniting other people's interests.
It is the ability to empathize, ergo lead as a team and, therefore, an appreciated predictor, because it usually anticipates the success of a leader. Emotional intelligence complements that measured by intelligence quotient (IQ).
Is it empathizing, motivating, setting an example?
Today we advance in several directions when investigating it and we understand it as a set of skills that are summarized in influencing the emotions of others, ergo the behavior of your team.
How is emotional intelligence measured today to select senior positions?
With tests that grade your reaction to different situations simulated or reproduced on video or in text. This is how we evaluate the ability to decipher the emotions of others in their face, gesture, attitude, language... and to act to connect with them.
Is emotional intelligence innate or can we learn it?
It is largely innate, but many people have it and do not cultivate it or ignore it, because they do not need it. We can all improve it; but it is easier to exercise it who already knows how to interact with others since childhood...
Is it the brown grammar of the kid who wakes up or is woken up on the street?
Emotional intelligence is like musical or mathematical intelligence: you can be a genius at it, but if you don't have the obligation or the opportunity to test yourself and demonstrate it, you will never know.
How do you discover the leader in you?
Many discover that they have it when they have to influence others to earn a living, because if not, they do not learn to read their emotions and, therefore, to influence them.
Is the best way to exercise your emotional intelligence to need it?
It's complex. There are children who, when another's father or mother or dog dies... they feel it with them innately, they empathize and know how to express it and console them and thus they will always have them by their side.
Does that child show leadership qualities?
That child can become a born leader of his town, company or by helping in a catastrophe; But there are others with less emotional intelligence and therefore do not feel the pain of others in the same way or do not know how to share it or do not know how to let them know that they share it or share theirs.
How to improve that intelligence?
It is not enough to feel the joy or pain of others, you also have to make it resonate – emotional resonance – in unison with those who feel it and this is the key to teamwork: you must make them feel that the successes and failures are everyone's. That's the leader.
Is the leader capable of synchronizing the feelings, ergo behaviors, of the team?
Indeed, but that ability can only be exercised by working as a team. If you work alone in front of the computer, you will never know that you were a genius at leading.
