How Do You Feel?

The study seemed initially to provide resounding evidence that emotional intelligence helps predict business success. But, as is often the case when psychological measures are used in business, the data were open to more than one interpretation: In developing a model for business, Goleman had widened his definition of emotional intelligence far beyond Mayer and Salovey's original model -- and even beyond the one that he had offered in his first book. The business version includes 25 separate "emotional" competencies -- among them, achievement drive, commitment, conscientiousness, influence, initiative, political awareness, self-confidence, service orientation, trustworthiness, and even something called "leveraging diversity." Goleman's new model of emotional intelligence comes dangerously close to including nearly any competency that isn't explicitly cognitive or technical. He and Boyatzis have pinpointed qualities that correlate with success but not necessarily with one another. "They have included many competencies that are not really part of emotional intelligence but probably are important in determining effectiveness," argues Bar-On.

Take, for example, the "drive to achieve," which Hay has found to be the single most important predictor of success. "What makes you smarter is understanding your own feelings better," argues John Mayer. "Goleman has broadened the definition of emotional intelligence to such an extent that it no longer has any scientific meaning or utility and is no longer a clear predictor of outcome."

And what about the different forms that a drive to succeed can take? Does, say, an executive exhibit the core qualities of emotional intelligence, such as self-awareness, self-control, and empathy? Goleman acknowledges that many top executives currently lack those competencies, which will, he argues, be increasingly more critical to success in the decade ahead, as the competition for talent escalates and hierarchical structures continue to break down. "A coercive style of leadership is a negative driver on every measure of climate in a company," he says. "Bosses who lead by coercion are the kinds of bosses whom people hate."

As a practical matter, the Goleman-Boyatzis-Hay approach has focused less on training emotional intelligence than on addressing specific deficiencies in those competencies. Boyatzis's work has been influential: At Case Western, he developed an elegant, comprehensive, highly successful approach to training competencies in graduate students, as well as in executives. His model blends work on deepening self-awareness ("the real self"), defining one's values ("the ideal self"), and implementing one's goals (changing specific behaviors to do that).

But adopting this competency model as the basis for emotional-intelligence training has proved complicated. Goleman has suggested that, broadly speaking, emotional intelligence is similar to character and virtue -- and that positive values go hand-in-hand with such qualities as self-awareness and self-control. In practice, however, it's simply not that neat. Used-car salesmen can just as easily use emotional-intelligence skills to sell defective cars as social activists can to inspire positive action. Intelligence -- emotional or intellectual -- is a value-free capacity that can be marshaled as effectively for good as for ill. "My statement might have been too unconditional," Goleman acknowledges. "This model is still evolving."

Finally, just how enthusiastically has the business community embraced offerings from consultants in emotional intelligence? Here, the evidence is mixed. Goleman has found companies that are willing to pay him as much as $40,000 for a one-hour lecture. But far fewer have been prepared to invest in a weeklong training program for top executives. "We're hearing a great deal of talk about emotional intelligence, but mostly it's at the inquiry stage," says Mark Van Buren, 35, director of research for the American Society for Training & Development, which monitors trends in corporate training. "It's not yet clear whether many companies have figured out how to put the concept to work so that it produces meaningful results." Annie McKee, 45, director of management-development services at the Hay Group, who heads the company's efforts in emotional-intelligence, insists that she is pleased with how things are going. "We have thousands of inquiries, many of which are from senior executives who want to introduce those concepts and practices into their organizations, and we're working steadily with dozens of clients," McKee says. Clients range from the Bank of Montreal to the Department of Defense's accounting office.