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Emotional intelligence for career: only useful as long as it includes power & politics
In the last decades there was a lot of hypes around "Emotional Intelligence".
Supposedly, "EI accounts for 80% of success", said Goleman in his best-selling "Emotional Intelligence".
And Bradberry in "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" said that "one point of EQ meant an increase of salary of..." I don't remember how much money but it doesn't matter because it's nonsense.
Reading those books actually made me angry.
It made me angry because everywhere I looked, the evidence was pointing to the contrary.
Starting from Bradberry's own survey:
Those at the top didn't have higher EQ.
How could he write that adding EQ points added more salary?
Was he massaging the results? Picking smaller subsets to prove his point?
And there was plenty of evidence against emotional intelligence.
At least when we consider EI as in "caring" and "empathy", which is the angle they seemed to take.
Hare and Babiak in "Snakes in Suits", Dutton in "The Wisdom of Psychopaths", they all had plenty of research to prove that callousness could help people to the top.
So I had to dig deeper.
What matters more for career progression?
Is it emotional intelligence in the sense of "empathy", or is it ruthlessness in the sense of "maximum selfishness"?
Sadly, I don't have good news on this one.
Empathy does not feature high in the list of traits that help you get to the top -it doesn't feature at all-.
Callousness, and even psychopathy, do.
See more here:
Hi Lucio,
My name is Ali Scarlett, we've interacted a few times through your forum and via email, but I haven't formally introduced myself.
I love what you’re doing as an entrepreneur to help underdogs like myself understand the unwritten rules of the world and thrive in life and business! It seems we both share a genuine interest in researching social and power dynamics beyond just the information we need to know to gain freedom.
Your recent article about the effectiveness of psychopathy in comparison to emotional intelligence (empathy) in the workplace was inspirational for me because I can tell that empowering others with the knowledge they need to gain a happy and fulfilling life is important to you.
To be open, transparent, and honest enough to share the rewards of psychopathy over emotional intelligence must have been a difficult move to make. I appreciate your willingness to share the facts despite the possible consequences that may have come from people reading that article. It's a sign of your constant preparedness to accept such risks in the pursuit of the greater goal and motivates me to continue my own efforts to mindfully empower others.
I would love the opportunity to connect with you and see if there’s any way I can support you and your business even if it's simply reviewing your blog posts one by one for grammatical errors.
If that's something you would be open to, please let me know.
Warm regards,
Ali Scarlett
P.S. Email redacted for privacy. I sent you an email in addition to this post so you'll know where to reach me.
Thank you, Ali!
Yeah, it's not a happy conclusion in some ways.
On the other hand, as someone said, true positive change must always start from reality.
And there is nothing more damaging than telling good people to "just keep being good and keep on giving and serving". That's the best way to let them spin their wheels in their job -or in life-.
And that's why I think that, ultimately, sharing that type of information has a good net effect.
The more people know about it, the more the empathic folks will know how to avoid staying stuck at the bottom or at the middle. And the more of them will reach higher posts in life, the more society as a whole will gain.
A few more notes on this topic:
- Very high doses of psychopathy will almost invariably doom individuals to failure (prison or early death)
On this topic you can take a look at a recent book I reviewed called "The Wisdom of Psychopath" (but it's a long read :D, it was an important book for this website's topics so I had to go in-depth.
But the short of it, is that high level of psychopathy make it hard for psychopaths to truly be successful.
And some traits of psychopathy, including a difficulty to stick to things and "slippages of their mask", also make it difficult for them to climb the corporate ladder -especially in businesses with low tolerance for assholes-.
So it's not like all psychopaths always have an advantage -or even an easy time- at climbing corporate ladders.
- Empathic leaders who know how to be bad are more effective at life than psychopaths (albeit they're the minority, of course)
Psychopaths have an advantage over the stereotypical "too nice guys/girls" who end up being pushovers, plus on those who didn't take time to learn power dynamics and/or who refuse to learn and accept the darker side of human nature.
But they do not hold an advantage on more "complete package" leaders. Those are conscientious people who learned power dynamics and the darker side of human nature. And who can act ruthlessly when ruthlessness is in order, and then more effectively connect empathically and kindly with other kind and empathic players.
I'm talking about the good old "to be good, you must know how to be bad".
If you wish, a "good sociopath", who can take the best traits from both sides.
I think of Obama. He reached the top, but he remained largely true to his value and ideals, and mostly served the people.
In the past, Caesar might have been a "sociopath for good", taking the best traits from both sides.
A note on shades of grey (& on not suspending judgment)
We're simplifying here somewhat since of course there are shades of grey in life.
Good people can act mean sometimes (and the other way around).
Still... We shouldn't let that type of relativism stop us from the other obvious truth: some people, by nature, tend to act more pro-socially and empathically while some others less so.
And we can also safely say that psychopaths, by lacking a conscience and empathy, are far more likely to act in a way that will harm the people around than people who do have a conscience.
As Martha Stout says in "The Sociopath Next Door" too much relativism only helps the assholes. And it harms all the rest.
