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Govan Brown was the name of the bus driver who, in the opening of Emotional Intelligence, I recounted encountering one hot day in New York City. Since then I’ve read articles about him – my uplifting encounter was no quirk: he was always friendly to his passengers, welcoming each with a warm smile and greeting. A history buff, he shared an ongoing stream of fascinating tidbits about the places the bus passed; passengers would chuckle, even applaud. Govan Brown driver would shake a child’s hand, answer questions in detail, sometimes recite a bit of poetry, and always give everyone a generous goodbye. During his 20-year career at the wheel, he received more then 1,400 letters of commendation—but not a single complaint.
Contrast his popularity with the plight of a single man whose tale I tell in Social Intelligence. He had been trying speed dating, a system where singles spend precisely five minutes talking with a prospect. After five minutes another bell rings and, if the woman is interested in seeing more of her partner, she gives him her email address. At the starting bell, this bachelor would launch into a non-stop discourse about himself, never asking one question about his partner. The poor guy has never had a woman give him her email address.
Mr. Brown seems appears to be a “natural,” the kind of person who always seems to know just what to do and what to say in any predicament. The lonely bachelor is interpersonally handicapped; though he happens to be a technical whiz, his self-absorption makes him a dating disaster. Govan Brown exemplified social intelligence – abilities like empathy and social ease that make people sparkle interpersonally — and which the bachelor desperately needs to improve.
People with social intelligence are gifted in the small acts that enrich relationships. They are the people who can get along in any group, who others like, and who you feel good talking with. By contrast, those who falter in this human ability may be quite intelligent in terms of IQ, but just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to people. They may talk in ways that make them seem cold, arrogant or abrasive, and miss seemingly obvious cues to how others react to them. They feel “off,” and make others uncomfortable.
The concept of social intelligence has been around since 1920. But only in the last few years has neuroscience begun to reveal the brain basis for interpersonal brilliance, the circuitry that orchestrates our relationships. This new science of human connections reveals surprising insights into what happens inside our brain and body as we interact with another person:
The brain’s areas for movement and emotion are peppered with “mirror neurons,” a newly discovered class of brain cells that act like neural WiFi. These neurons specialize in tuning into the person we are with and creating in our brain a replica of the other’s emotions, actions, and intentions – tuning us to their wavelength.
The “social brain” wires us to connect. This network of brain structures, neuroscientists are discovering, is dedicated to sensing, thinking about, and reacting to people, and navigates us through every encounter. Even when the brain is just idling, doing nothing in particular, three of four neural areas that remain most active are involved with social connection; it’s as though mulling over our relationships were the brain’s favorite TV channel.
The social brain connects powerfully to the circuits for handling stress and to the immune system. Being with our loved ones in a positive way boosts our secretion of soothing brain chemicals like oxytocin, which counters stress and improves our immune robustness. This means the people we love the most can be biological allies, especially when we suffer from chronic diseases or an impaired immune system.
This social circuitry appears crucial for our life happiness, health and success. Take happiness. Surveys find that it’s not the money we have, but the richness of our relationships, that more strongly predicts a person’s level of happiness. As for health, research shows that having ongoing personal conflicts is as strong a risk factor for getting a cold as low levels of vitamin C or sleeping poorly – and being socially isolated is even worse.
When it comes to doing our best at work – or in school – there are surprising consequences from our relationships. The brain has an optimal zone for mental efficiency, which lets us excel in whatever we do. But that zone turns out to be fragile – and our interactions can knock us out of it or keep us in. Emotions are contagious, and they flow most strongly from the more powerful person in a relationship. So a nasty boss or threatening teacher can create enough distress to keep us from that zone, while a supportive leader or encouraging teacher can help us stay in it.
Social intelligence makes people naturally attuned and helpful. If you remember the teacher who you learned the most from in school, he or she was almost certainly an example of this interpersonal aptitude.
Perhaps the main lesson from social intelligence is that we are all part of each other’s inner resources; the social brain links us inextricably. This suggests a new way of thinking about social responsibility: it begins in every interaction, from a casual encounter to being with those we love most dearly, when we act in ways that create beneficial states in the other person.
Likewise, we can take the measure of our main relationships in terms of the ratio of positive-to-negative interactions they offer us. The bottom line: nourish your social connections.
The hippocampus, wrapped around a ventricle in the lower brain, holds one key to learning. This structure enables us to store for the longterm what’s in our “working memory,” the holding in mind of new information as our mind connects new information with what we already know. Once these connections have been made, we have learned — and will be able to bring the new understanding to mind weeks or years later. Whatever a student hears in class, reads, or observes, travels these pathways as he masters yet another iota of understanding. Indeed, everything that happens to us in life, all the details that we will remember, depend on the hippocampus to stay with us.
This continual retention of memories demands a frenzy of activity in the neurons of the hippocampus. The vast majority of neurogenesis – the brain’s production of new neurons and laying down of connections to others – takes place in the hippocampus, at a rather furious rate. Destroying the hippocampus ends our ability to learn; neurological patients with damage there live every moment as though the last had not occurred. Some conditions – notably trauma and depression — actually shrink the hippocampus by killing off cells. As patients recover from these disorders, their hippocampus gradually grows back, neuron by neuron.
In terms of learning, the most sinister impact on the hippocampus comes from ongoing emotional distress, which releases high levels of stress hormones like cortisol. If stress becomes perpetual, cortisol can actually attack the neurons of the hippocampus, slowing the rate at which neurons are added or even reducing the total number, and so impairing our very ability to learn and remember. The killing off of hippocampal neurons occurs at extreme levels, during sustained cortisol floods induced, for example, by severe depression or intense trauma.
Even at lower levels, extended periods of high levels of the stress hormone cortisol seems to hamper the growth of these same neurons. Cortisol stimulates the amygdala while it impairs the hippocampus – with a disastrous impact on learning. This neurological dynamic forces our attentional focus on the emotions we feel, while restricting our ability to take in new information, and so learn. Instead we imprint what is upsetting us. After a day when a student gets panicked by a pop quiz, he’ll remember the details of that panic far more than any of the material in the quiz.
That neurological fact has profound implications for the kind of classroom atmosphere that fosters learning. The social environment, remember, impacts the rate and fate of newly created brain cells. It takes a month for new cells to mature, and four more for them to fully link to other neurons; during this window the environment determines the final shape and function of the cell. The new cells that facilitate memory during the course of a semester will encode in their links what has been learned during that time – and the more conducive the atmosphere for learning, the better that encoding will be.
The rules for work are changing. We’re being judged by a new yardstick: not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other. This yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who will be hired and who will not, who will be let go and who retained, who passed over and who promoted.
The new rules predict who is most likely to become a star performer and who is most prone to derailing. And, no matter what field we work in currently, they measure the traits that are crucial to our marketability for future jobs.
These rules have little to do with what we were told was important in school; academic abilities are largely irrelevant to this standard. The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness.
This is no passing fad, nor just the management nostrum of the moment. The data that argue for taking it seriously are based on studies of tens of thousands of working people, in callings of every kind. The research distills with unprecedented precision which qualities mark a star performer. And it demonstrates which human abilities make up the greater part of the ingredients for excellence at work – most especially for leadership.
If you work in a large organization, even now you are probably being evaluated in terms of these capabilities, though you may not know it. If you are applying for a job, you are likely to be scrutinized through this lens, though, again, no one will tell you so explicitly. Whatever your job, understanding how to cultivate these capabilities can be essential for success in your career.
If you are part of a management team, you need to consider whether your organization fosters these competences or discourages them. To the degree your organizational climate nourishes these competencies; your organization will be more effective and productive. You will maximize your group’s intelligence, the synergistic interaction of every person’s best talents.
If you work for a small organization or for yourself, your ability to perform at peak depends to a very great extent on your having these abilities – though almost certainly you were never taught them in school. Even so, your career will depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on how ell you have mastered these capacities.
In a time with no guarantees of job security, when the very concept of a “job” is rapidly being replaced by “portable skills,” these are prime qualities that make and keep us employable. Talked about loosely for decades under a variety of names, from “character” and “personality” to “soft skills” and “competence,” there is at last a more precise understanding of these human talents, and a new name for them: emotional intelligence.
— From Working With Emotional Intelligence
In 1995 when Emotional Intelligence was published, the field of social and emotional learning, or SEL, was just beginning to evolve. Only a handful of well-designed, school-based SEL programs could be found. In most cases schools had put those programs in place as part of a “war on…” a particular problem, such as reducing dropouts, substance abuse, unwanted teen pregnancies, or school violence. Some of those programs were quite effective. Others yielded disappointing results.
As a William T. Grant Foundation study has revealed, the active ingredients in the programs that worked were largely the same, no matter their ostensible target problem. The best SEL programs were implemented throughout each year of schooling. They shaped the entire school climate, and they used developmentally appropriate lessons. They also taught children specific social-emotional skills like self-awareness, self-management, empathy, perspective taking, and cooperation. In short, they were lessons in emotional intelligence.
In the intervening years, scientific data demonstrating the effectiveness of SEL programs as interventions that help lower the risk of various problems young people face, and that increase their skills in addressing life’s challenges, have been accumulating steadily. But along with the case for SEL as a prevention and promotion strategy, another benefit has emerged: social and emotional learning facilitates academic learning. Thus, it offers a much-needed and very timely aid to schools in fulfilling their main mission.
Why should helping students in the social and emotional realms of their lives enhance their academic learning? If we think back to our school days and remember a teacher we enjoyed, we almost certainly will bring to mind also a classroom environment where we enjoyed learning. From the perspective of neuroscience, that optimal learning environment reflects an internal brain state well attuned for learning.
Most of us have assumed that the kind of academic learning that goes on in school has little or nothing to do with one’s emotions or social environment. Now neuroscience is telling us exactly the opposite. The emotional centers of the brain are intricately interwoven with the neurocortical areas involved in cognitive learning. When a child trying to learn is caught up in a distressing emotion, the centers for learning are temporarily hampered. The child’s attention becomes preoccupied with whatever may be the source of the trouble. Because attention is itself a limited capacity, the child has that much less ability to hear, understand, or remember what a teacher or a book is saying. In short, there is a direct link between emotions and learning.
Multiple research studies reported in this book demonstrate that social and emotional learning programs pave the way for better academic learning. They teach children social and emotional skills that are intimately linked with cognitive development. In the ideal learning environment, children are focused, fully attentive, motivated, and engaged, and enjoy their work. Such a classroom climate can be one benefit of SEL. Similarly, caring relationships with teachers and other students increase students’ desire to learn. School-family partnerships help students to do better. And, students who are more confident in their abilities try harder.
In short, Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning presents powerful evidence of the links between SEL and academic learning. It offers schools scientific evidence of the links between SEL and academic learning. It offers schools scientific evidence and pragmatic examples of how SEL programs can enhance students’ success in school and in life. At a time when so many students at so many ages are flooded with anxiety as they struggle to succeed on standardized tests, this is welcome news. Today’s growing emphasis on academic success and school accountability makes SEL programs more relevant— and useful- to schools than ever before. Thus, this groundbreaking book belongs on the shelves of all who are interested in giving students essential tools to succeed.
Primal Leadership
Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions.
No matter what leaders set out to do—whether it’s creating strategy or mobilizing teams to action—their success depends on how they do it. Even if they get everything else just right, if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should.
While most people recognize that a leader’s mood—and how he or she impacts the mood of others—plays a significant role in any organization, emotions are often seen as too personal or unquantifiable to talk about in a meaningful way. But research in the field of emotion has yielded keen insights into not only how to measure the impact of a leader’s emotions but also how the best leaders have found effective ways to understand and improve the way they handle their own and other people’s emotions. Understanding the powerful role of emotions in the workplace sets the best leaders apart from the rest—not just in tangibles such as better business results and the retention of talent, but also in the all-important intangibles, such as higher morale, motivation, and commitment.
This emotional task of the leader is primal—that is, first—in two senses: It is both the original and the most important act of leadership.
Leaders have always played a primordial emotional role. No doubt humankind’s original leaders—whether tribal chieftains or shamanesses—earned their place in large part because their leadership was emotionally compelling. Throughout history and in cultures everywhere, the leader in any human group has been the one to whom others look for assurance and clarity when facing uncertainty or threat, or when there’s a job to be done. The leader acts as the group’s emotional guide.
In the modern organization, this primordial emotional task—though by now largely invisible—remains foremost among the many jobs of leadership: driving the collective emotions in a positive direction and clearing the smog, created by toxic emotions. This task applies to leadership everywhere, from the boardroom to the shop floor.
