our global culture, it’s not only journalists and politicians who disseminate information and share views. People around the world watch dramas as they unfold moment to moment, empathize, and join an international conversation that sometimes changes minds and lives.
As a result, command-and-control forms of leadership are suddenly less relevant — and on their way to becoming impotent and, finally, obsolete.
Still, after five thousand years of hierarchical, conquest-oriented models, it takes time, imagination, and experimentation to change old patterns. Blocks to success arise daily when people lack the sophisticated interpersonal skills to collaborate with coworkers, employees, clients — and family members, for that matter.
But we’re on the right track. In the last twenty years, much has been written about the importance of emotional and social intelligence in the workplace — even in technical fields where geniuses proliferate. One ambitious study, undertaken by UC Berkeley, followed eighty-five PhD candidates in various scientific disciplines over a forty-year period. The results were surprising: High emotional intelligence (EQ) turned out to be four times more important in determining professional success than raw IQ and training.
As Bob Wall, author of Coaching for Emotional Intelligence and Working Relationships likes to say, “IQ and training get you in the arena; EQ helps you win the game.” Just as physical conditioning takes consistency and dedication, emotional fitness doesn’t happen overnight. But there’s another challenge that raises the stakes considerably: We are, as a species, charged with rewriting the playbook for a whole new era of egalitarian sports, and the rules are changing fast.
Glimpse
When I was promoted to a management position in the 1980s, there were no studies to legitimize what are still loosely, sometimes dismissively, referred to as “soft skills.” The term “emotional intelligence” didn’t emerge until 1990. It took another six years for Daniel Goleman to publish his influential book Emotional Intelligence. His equally important titles Primal Leadership (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee) and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships weren’t released until 2002 and 2006, respectively. These and other books by authorities in the field have since sold millions of copies. Their popularity is a testament to something significant that went unnamed for far too long.
It’s clear to me now, for instance, that a certain proficiency in emotional and social intelligence won me that first promotion to program director of a Florida public radio station. Three decades later, I asked my station manager, Pat Crawford, why he took a chance on me, a twenty-four-year-old classical music announcer. “You didn’t just get along with your colleagues, you supported them in developing their own talents and taking creative risks,” he told me. “You were out in the community, doing public presentations, making connections. You were constantly stretching yourself, encouraging others to stretch, and expanding awareness of the radio station in the process.”
The backlash I initially endured over that promotion was significant. For the first two months, I ran a gauntlet of skeptical, sometimes-hostile reactions from staff members who tested me every chance they got. It was painful at times, but I became stronger. By standing my ground and refusing to hold grudges, I eventually won over the majority of my staff with an inclination to encourage and empower rather than rein in and ride herd over them. In this respect, our station manager and I were kindred spirits — to a certain extent.
Though Pat preferred to motivate rather than intimidate, he had no qualms about wielding overt authority, unapologetically, if other tactics proved ineffective with certain people. I, on the other hand, avoided anything resembling dominance, in large part because I had seen it so profoundly misused. This occasionally resulted in my supervisor having to step in when my more congenial style wasn’t enough to handle conflicts between coworkers and to get uncooperative employees back on track.
I now recognize Pat’s thoughtful, conservative use of the Dominant role as one of the marks of a mature, well-rounded leader. But it took me years to acknowledge the part this sometimes-dangerous “power tool” plays in the optimal functioning of any organization.
The Elephant in the Room
Over the next twenty years, I worked in nonprofit, corporate, freelance, entrepreneurial, and even therapeutic contexts, sometimes as a manager, sometimes as an employee taking an unofficial leadership role, and sometimes as a collaborator, educator, board member, or consultant. Over time, I began to see a pattern. Brilliant, well-meaning people who were technically accomplished in all kinds of fields had trouble getting along. While most said they felt stifled by traditional hierarchical structures, debilitating conflict all too often ensued when these same professionals were given free rein to question the status quo, experiment, and create something new with others.
While I expected this in highly competitive business and political settings, I was most astonished by the behavior of people in the caring fields. I encountered several experienced psychologists, for instance, who would wreak havoc in innovative situations where there was no officially designated leader. They could only seem to function well when they were either clearly the authority figure or deferring to someone they perceived to be in charge. While their patients loved them, these accomplished therapists simply could not collaborate with peers.
As a result of witnessing all kinds of unproductive behavior in corporate and social service fields, I continually searched for more efficient interpersonal communication tools, and I began teaching these skills to organizations and individual clients. Growing research on emotional intelligence certainly helped. Still, what mystified me the most was power, which was something very few people, myself included initially, were willing — or able — to discuss.
Most professionals avoided the issue, silently enduring the myriad dysfunctional ways that otherwise well-adjusted adults struggled to negotiate their needs and gain influence. Power plays abounded in the most benign situations — sometimes overtly, but more often than not through covert, passive-aggressive moves. It seemed that no one knew how to talk about the unruly bull elephant in the room, let alone teach him how to play nicely with others. Leaders and followers alike instead chose to ignore the musky, slightly pungent smell of that primal presence as they calmly drew their attention to the next point on the agenda of so many more important things to do.
Horse Sense
Using power well is not a soft skill. Even so, it requires a sophisticated integration of leadership and social intelligence to channel potentially explosive forces into a focused and benevolent source of energy. I first experienced this delicate balance through working with horses, not people.
In the winter of 1993, I was living with my husband, musician Steve Roach, in Tucson, Arizona. Steve was away on an extended tour, and I had some extra time on my hands. After attending a few concerts and hiking down any number of cactus-lined paths, I decided to do something different: I took one of the many scenic-trail horse rides advertised around town. The experience was so serene, expansive, and invigorating that I bought my first horse, Nakia, the following weekend.
My intention was to ride into the desert to escape the sometimes-frustrating world of human affairs. Yet my beautiful, willful mare had something else in mind. Nakia, a striking Thoroughbred ex-racehorse, tested me every step of the way. Many of the tactics and strategies I had learned dealing with people didn’t work with her.
Yet a strange thing began to happen. As I became more adept at motivating my horse, focusing her attention, and gaining her respect, relationships at home and work improved. People commented on the change, yet no one could pinpoint what had shifted. The plot thickened as I gained more knowledge about instinctual horse behavior. Based on my observations of how leadership, dominance, and cooperation work together in high-functioning herds, I began
