Results tagged “emotional intelligence” from VANTAN.ORG

If you watched the US Open ladies’ semifinals match between Kim Clijsters and Serena Williams, you’d have witnessed a stark contrast in mindsets. At some points, it was a close match. But what won in the end was emotional intelligence.

After blogging earlier about Daniel Goleman’s book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, I re-read the chapter on Self-Control and watched a replay of the match, which Serena lost due to unsportsmanlike conduct. It was “unfortunate”, as Kim put it, but she herself stayed focused and didn’t lose her cool.

According to Daniel Goleman, self-regulation is one of the personal competencies of emotional intelligence. Self-regulation is defined as ‘managing impulse as well as distressing feelings’. These form the core of five emotional competencies, one of which is self-control - ‘managing disruptive emotions and impulses effectively’.

People with this competence:

• Manage their impulsive feelings and distressing emotions well
• Stay composed, positive, and unflappable even in trying moments
• Think clearly and stay focused under pressure

Kim was amazingly calm, whether or not she won or lost a point. Serena on the other hand lost her cool, broke a racquet and confronted a linesman who had called her out on a foot-fault. This resulted in her being penalised and losing the match.

Worse, this emotional fallout occurred in a very public setting. Serena’s angry words were reported (albeit with some variations) by news media. Her aggressive stance was captured and replayed repeatedly on TV and discussed on forums and Twitter, making the incident stand out even more. Hopefully she will cool off, reflect on this and come out mentally stronger. IMHO she should apologise for her behaviour too.

Let’s see this as a good lesson given by both players on how, and how not, to react under pressure.

And before we all forget the quality of the match itself - Kim, you did play a great game.

[Update: Kim wins the US Open!]

Currently I’m reading ‘Working with Emotional Intelligence’, which is Daniel Goleman’s follow-up to his hugely successful book, ‘Emotional Intelligence’.

Here’s an excerpt which is relevant to the work I’m currently handling. As we endeavour to improve information flow, we must remember it’s not just having a knowledge repository (systems/infrastructure) but building a sharing culture (people):

When it comes to technical skill and the core competencies that make a company competitive, the ability to outperform others depends on the relationships of the people involved. In [John Seely] Brown’s words, “You can’t divorce competencies from the social fabric that supports them.”

Just as maximising the IQ of a small working group depends on the effective knitting together of the people within the group, so with organizations as a whole: Emotional, social, and political realities can enhance or degrade what the organization potentially can do. If the people in the organization cannot work well together, if they lack initiative, connection, or any of the other emotional competencies, the collective intelligence suffers as a result.

This need for smooth coordination of widely distributed knowledge and technical expertise has led some corporations to create a new role: that of “chief learning officer,” or CLO, whose job it is to direct knowledge and information within an organization. But it’s all too easy to reduce an organization’s “intelligence” to its databases and technical expertise. Despite the ever greater reliance on information technology in organizations, it’s put to use by people. Organizations that have such learning officers might do well to expand the CLO’s (or someone’s) duties to include maximizing the collective emotional intelligence.