Is Emotional Intelligence a Worthwhile Metric?

I had a student when I was teaching English 101 who wrote a paper about the idea of multiple intelligences. This was ten years ago, but I still remember it because he was an intelligent student and the topic was novel. All I was aware of as a measure of intelligence was the IQ, and having a high IQ myself, I knew that that couldn’t be the end of personal quantification, nor a great indicator of success.

We’ve been talking about Emotional Intelligence in class and in the readings and it sound like a good concept, but if you unpack it a bit it feels troublesome.   

For me, the biggest issue is about self-reporting. On an IQ test, the whole bit is about pattern recognition. There is a right or wrong continuation to the pattern, and you’re timed. These tests are often given and scored by professionals. I was tested once I was a child and theoretically at the time it was a pretty fixed number.  All I was ever told that it was more than two standard deviations beyond average.  At the time I wanted a number, but it was quite obvious I was generally one of the smartest students in the room.  You lose this with self-reporting. First, there is no right answer. Secondly, it is bounded on a spectrum. Thirdly, people lie. The fact of taking a test allows your mind to think of what may be the right answer and what may be the best that will give you the highest score. It’s a Heisenberg thing, I suppose. I can’t give myself a 180 IQ even by guessing against the administrator.

Then there’s this. I took the tests. I was highly emotionally intelligent. I think I am good at naming the feelings I have, and being able to control them in the situations in which they arise. However, if you asked me, in general, how I was at reading people’s emotions and reacting to them, I’d say I was horrible. Specifically I didn’t have a problem with it. Am I less self-aware than I knew, or was I gaming the test on some level. The problem is that there is no right answer when it comes to emotions. It is a highly subjective thing that is given the illusion of exactness by drawing numbers from a spectrum and then averaged and averaged again. I think it might be fair to talk about someone being more or less emotionally intelligent, but the quantification is a bridge too far. 

Finally, the problem with numbering is that emotional intelligence can change within the person on a short time period depending on the subject’s cognitive load. Basically, the less you have going on with your own life can free up your mind for being open to other’s existences and what they have coursing through their limbic system. This brings me to mind of a thought I had in class: what is the EQ of a psychopath? They are able to get by in society by performing the emotions that they feel are supposed to feel, but have none of their own. Therefore their mind is clear and they can read people, but they lack empathy. 

Overall, I like the idea of multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence being one of many axes that we can use to judge ourselves and improve ourselves. However, I would not put too much stock into it until we can solve some of the glaring issues with it.

Quick thought on Charisma

Earlier when we were talking about trait theory, it came up that most traits can be taught to some extent. The exception being charisma.

Now, in readng about the transformational leader in our book, they emphasize the importance of charisma for a transformational leader, even saying that some people overlap the idea of the two things -- you can't be transformational without being chariamatic.
So the questions arises, can someone with charisma be a good leader? Do they become leaders at all, or if they rise to management positions, is their leadership role only based on their senority? That is will they be leaders or just followers?

Quick thought on Followers

 

I know this came up before in our reading, but what is the role of the follower? There will be more in any organization than leaders, but their traits seem absent from the discussion in the book. Leadership, as a relaional, process-based thing is dependent on the followers.
That said, what are the traits of a follower? How can you be a better follower for a leader you have chosen to follow.
Finally, how does the leader/follower dynamic work within the individual? I am both a leader and a follower in my organization (or I hope so), are both of these roles part of an ongoing process that dialectially feeds organically to each other, or are they distinct roles?
I, uh, have no answers for any of these; they are just the things that came to mind when reading. 

Does gender matter? Yes.

Thoughts – normative versus positive statements: After years of looking at existing gender roles, it was interesting to move from theorizing about the nature of gender in society, and to have a frank discussion in class about the practical nuances of gender in the work place (and to see that some people in a business class setting don’t have the PC cudgel over their heads).

However, for theorizing on a power gradient that doesn’t find me at the bottom I often feel as if those who are at society’s bottom are over-stating their case. Of course when I theorize from a position of weakness I myself feel empowered. Basically I see class and not race.  But gender does matter, in many ways.

The problem is, we can’t just solve everything by women leaning in – though I am attracted to the idea. The important thing is that in spite of years of feminism (You can date it to about 1848 in Saratoga Falls) there is still this divide. So it is not just women needing to lean in, but important for those who control the structure to stop thinking power and opportunity are a zero-sum game and that we can grow as a country better when women’s roles in both the workplace and the home are given value on par with what men see their own value. This is true for gender and sex and race.

The discouraging thing is that some recent studies have shown that even in egalitarian settings like Sweden, there is limited income mobility. Those born poor are going to stay poor, and those born rich will stay rich. We can point to several counter examples that might disprove that narrative, but the broad sweep of the numbers say that you probably won’t be the president if you were born poor or female or trans or of a darker shade of skin. 

You have to look at the history and see that there are two strands for the out group to try to gain power. There are assimilationists who try to come into the existing power structure, and there are revolutionaries of many stripes that want to overthrow the existing patriarchy / class structure / gender norms / etc. I am not one for chaos and revolution. I’d rather sit on my couch and read a book. However, the revolutionaries have long been marginalized as too extreme and the people who just want a seat at the table have been fed, but then ignored. I don’t know what the answer is but I have the feeling that outside of a revolution, the power structure will remain in place and only slowly be chipped at by minority groups of all stripes. They will continue to have to both conform to and break away from stereotypes. They will have to be twice as good for less pay. 

We still remember Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire. The thing is Ginger did everything Fred did, only backwards and in heels. That sticks with me, and it remains true. I can see the inequity in the system, but I struggle because I feel weak and powerless to change such an entrenched edifice. 

Maybe I have to get off my couch.

Peirce and Newstrom's: Leaders and the Leadership Process

The thing that strikes me about the book is that a lot of the readings seem dated. For example, looking at a chapter on trait theory:

There has to have been a lot of studies furthering the standardization of trait description, maybe looking at active leadership while a participant is an fMRI machine, or something, but there is something else.  The first reading for today's classes are about the meaning (or absence of meaning) of various traits that disprove a "great man" theory of leadership. The thing is written in 1991.  That was in the middle of the first Bush recession that would lead to the Clinton / tech expansion (bubble). Here's the thing -- context matters in the proces. We've had at least two world-changing events in the almost 25 years since this was written: 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008. Traits matter, but are there traits that are more useful now than 20 years ago?  I can think that maybe consensus-building may be more important now than then. When they brought back Wall Street for a sequal, Gordon Gekko wasn't a figure to be emulated for his lone-wolf ways.  Maybe now is a time we need leadership more than ever.

Basically, my feeling is that I way over-paid for this book, and it is representative of the problems with the college text book industry as a whole.

Another case in point.  I spent the last two years clearing some classes to build a foundation for my MBA classes. In many cases, the book was almost as expensive as the tuition of the class. Granted, I was at a community college, but still. These were two or three hundred dollar books once you had the all-important access code to break down the door of the electronic problem sets and the like.  I think I want to see the MOOCs come and disrupt this paradigm, but I also like the face-to-face interaction  of a community of scholars.

Thankfully I have that in my current class, because this book doesn't feel like its adding much.

Derek Jeter and trait theory.

In our leadership class, we’re learning about the theories of leadership as it has grown as an academic discipline. It has shifted from a great man theory to looking at something more specific, identifying traits that make a great leader.  These can be better because instead of just hoping a great man stumbles along, you can search for, and then reinforce traits that are desirable in a leader.  This has issues, since trying to decide what trait is more desirable and which possible candidate has more of whatever you want may be hard to objectify.  We discussed a case study about who a manager should hire, and all three possible candidates had traits that you could argue for in saying why candidate A was better than candidate C.

Thinking about this earlier made me think of this morning, when I was tired. I like to think that my normal persona at work is charismatic and knowledgeable and honest and all those positive traits that you look for in an employee (and a leader). But being the first day back from a long weekend, I just wanted to put my head down and work through what I needed to do – and I still didn’t finish because it was a bit more complex than I thought it would be. 

Thus it lead me to a great weakness of looking solely at traits. They’re situational. Even if someone has all the traits you want, they need to display them when necessary. It made me think of this weekend. It was Jeter’s last games in Chicago, and the sports talkers were giving his career a fine tribute. He’s played for 20 years and have like five championships, and is known to be clutch in when it matters. Here’s the thing though. There is no such thing as clutch. The numbers nerds have broken down the stats, and when they look at people we call clutch what really happened is that they performed at their expected level based on their past results.  There is choking, but what we see as clutch in terms of baseball is just consistency.  I think that metaphor can easily be brought over to the study of leadership. It is not enough to just have positive traits, you have to show them at all times. Then you’ll be clutch in the office or the diamond.

First Day of Class: MBA

My first class of my MBA program wasn’t quite what I expected. I say that, but I may be lying a bit – I didn’t have fully formed expectations.

I was in grad school before, for English at Kansas State University.  One of the first classes I had to take there was English 801, Introduction to graduate studies in English.  The point of the course, though often unspoken, was to justify the existence of graduate study in English.  The secondary point was to establish skills that may have been lacking from undergrad in terms of research and argument.  It was a good class for me, mainly because I had gotten by my undergrad on brains and charisma, and had in fact only written one serious paper over the course of four years. I actually dropped two classes in part because I didn’t want to write “for real” papers.  I should have, since they were the only philosophy and history classes I ended up attempting.  I guess business has a way of not needing justification in a way that English would die for. 

I digress though.  My first class for my MBA at Concordia University – Chicago, was nice.  It wasn’t lecture and I talked to the people in my class but I remember no names. (That right there is my biggest social weakness, or at least the biggest one I am aware of.)  The structure was more informal than I was expecting. I’m glad I didn’t wear a suit.

The class is leadership, and in it we brainstormed in our groups  about the qualities that made a bad manager; many people shared their stories inefficient, indifferent, and ineffective managers.   We eventually shared that list with the class

But here’s the thing. We then turned that around and looked at the positive qualities a good manager has, and that was harder to put into words.  I have had some good managers, people who were kind and supportive and good at their jobs and who wanted to make me better at what I did, not just for the immediate need of the company, but because they cared about me as a person.  I normally don’t like starkly demarcated gradients of power, but sometimes the people who are your superiors are in charge of you are not there just because they have been marking time longer.  I think I often confuse the person with the position, and as a subordinate I don’t like that when the person is not a fit for the position.  However, take it for granted when they are.  I need to come back to this, as it feels like an egg that is slowly cracking.