4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Emotional Intelligence

In the early 1990s, publishers told science journalist Daniel
Goleman not to use the word “emotion” in a business book. The
popular conception was that emotions had little role in the
workplace. When HBR was founded in October 1922, the practice of
management focused on workers’ physical productivity, not their
feelings. And while over the decades psychologists studied “social
intelligence” and “emotional strength,” businesses cultivated the
so-called hard skills that drove the bottom line. Until 1990, when
psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer published their landmark
journal article. It proposed “emotional intelligence” as the
ability to identify and manage one's own emotions as well as those
of others. Daniel Goleman popularized the idea in his 1995 book,
and companies came to hire for “EI” and teach it. It’s now widely
seen as a key ingredient in engaged teams, empathetic leadership,
and inclusive organizations. However, critics question whether
emotional intelligence operates can be meaningfully measured and
contend that it acts as a catchall term for personality traits and
values. 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World is a special series
from HBR IdeaCast. Each week, an HBR editor talks to world-class
scholars and experts on the most influential ideas of HBR’s first
100 years, such as disruptive innovation, shareholder value, and
scientific management. Discussing emotional intelligence with HBR
executive editor Alison Beard are: Daniel Goleman, psychologist and
author of Emotional Intelligence Susan David, psychologist at
Harvard Medical School and author of Emotional Agility Andy Parks,
management professor at Central Washington University Further
reading: HBR: Leading by Feel, with Daniel Goleman New Yorker: The
Repressive Politics of Emotional Intelligence, by Merve Emre HBR:
Emotional Agility, by Susan David and Christina Congleton Book:
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman