Up next in 10
Emotional intelligence: The 4 domains of high performance
465 views
Mar 29, 2025
“Self-awareness, it's the least visible part of emotional intelligence, but we find in our research that people low in self-awareness are unable to develop strengths very well in other parts of emotional intelligence.”
View Video Transcript
0:00
When I wrote the book, Emotional Intelligence, a lot of people had an aha experience like
0:23
oh, so that's what's going on. It was the first time that for a popular audience
0:29
emotional intelligence had become well known. I was a science journalist at the New York Times back then
0:35
and I'd been covering a decade of research on the brain and emotion
0:39
And I wanted to have a frame for that. I integrated it with the findings from research on outstanding performers
0:49
And I saw that people who emerge as outstanding performers or the best leaders have high emotional intelligence
0:59
So, from the get-go, I've seen emotional intelligence as having to do with leadership
1:04
And this was taken up by the Harvard Business Review. They've done a series of articles, starting with one which said, look, emotional intelligence
1:11
is the core of effective leadership. And now I talk about four domains of emotional intelligence and then 12 particular competencies
1:22
of people who are high in emotional intelligence. a combination of self-awareness, managing your emotions well
1:32
social awareness, empathy, tuning into other people, and putting that all together to have harmonious or effective relationships
1:46
Unlike IQ, which barely budges over the course of our life, emotional intelligence can change. It's learned and learnable
1:54
And it's learned and learnable at any point in life. Self means you know what you feeling you know how it shapes your perceptions and your
2:10
thoughts and your impulse to act. Emotional self-awareness is what I'm talking about
2:16
Emotion directs attention. So knowing what you're feeling and how strongly you're feeling it and
2:22
where it's driving you to attend is extremely important because your attention creates your
2:28
reality moment to moment. So self-awareness gives you a kind of diagnosis of where am I right now
2:40
Maturity is sometimes defined as widening the gap between impulse and action
2:48
Self-awareness, it's the least visible part of emotional intelligence, but we find in our
2:54
research that people low in self-awareness are unable to develop strengths very well
2:59
in other parts of emotional intelligence. People who are high in self-awareness, however, are able to develop excellence across the
3:09
board very often. Self-management in my model has four different components
3:24
One of them is handling upsetting emotions so they don't get in the way of what you have to do right now
3:34
Another aspect of emotional self-management is marshalling positive emotions, seeing the bright side of things, not just the glass is half empty
3:43
but feeling pretty good about what's happening no matter what happens. That lets you also be agile, another aspect, adjust to changing situations
3:54
You want to have a growth mindset, see yourself as able to improve and other people as able to improve
4:02
And finally you want to keep your eye on the goal that matters despite the distractions of the day So goal focus is an emotional self tool too
4:20
In my model of emotional intelligence, the third part is social awareness
4:25
which in one sense means sensing how your organization works. It's a kind of systems point of view
4:31
But I think as a leader, what matters more is empathy, how you tune into your people
4:39
the people around you, the people above you, to the side, below you
4:44
And tuning in has three parts. One is cognitive empathy, understanding how that person sees the situation, what their
4:54
perspective is. It's walking a mile in their shoes, as the proverb says
4:58
you're able to sense the language or mental models a person use as a frame on reality
5:07
What language do they use to explain what's going on to themselves? If you have high cognitive empathy, you can message quite well
5:18
You can hit the target with what you say to the person because you know the language that they understand
5:24
The second part is emotional empathy. This has to do with the design of the social circuitry in the human brain
5:34
The brain is designed to lock into the brain of the person in front of us
5:40
and to create a pathway that's instantaneous, automatic, and unconscious for what that person is doing, intending, and feeling
5:51
This lets us know what the person feels because we feel it too
5:56
We get an inner signal that tells us what's going on with the other person
6:03
And this helps us keep our interaction on the same page, on target, emotionally
6:09
The third part of empathy which I think is really important for leadership and all too often just ignored is caring It called technically empathic concern And it means I know what
6:21
you think, I know what you feel, but I also care about you. And so leaders have to have this ability
6:31
to communicate that they care about the person, they're concerned about them. This, by the way
6:36
builds huge trust, huge rapport between a leader and the people they lead
6:49
The fourth part of emotional intelligence is relationship management. It's what we see every day
7:00
It's what leaders display. Can you guide? Can you influence? you get worked on well through other people? Can you inspire? Can you get the best out
7:13
of people because you can articulate meaning here in what we're doing? Are you a good team
7:21
member? Not just on your team at the same level. If you're in the C-suite, that's a team
7:27
How are you as a team player? And then how are you as a team leader
7:33
Can you handle conflicts well? Can you keep yourself calm and listen to both sides
7:40
and come up with a good enough solution that both sides can accept? Do you realize that you are in a position to help the people you lead
7:50
become leaders of the future? Can you help them develop strengths? Can you coach them? Can you mentor them
7:59
Can you help them strengthen the leadership cadre of your organization going into the future