I
clearly have strong beliefs about what drives human behavior, and think there is
pretty strong evidence to support many of them. At the same time, I believe
equally strongly that there are no magical cures for organizational and
individual problems, or any one theory that explains all human behavior.
Behavioral scientists battle over these issues — and they should, it leads to
better evidence — over things like nature versus nurture, extrinsic versus
intrinsic rewards, cognition versus emotion, and on and on, and each of us —
me too — is probably unduly biased in favor of our pet theories. There
is a lot of evidence out there to fuel different arguments and I often am
bewildered about what causes human behavior (remember this research about how
the sawmill stopped theft….if you read this in combination with Salt Passage
Research, you can get completely confused). But, in reading so much of this
stuff over the years –while it is clear that some behavioral theories and
interventions work better than others — the thing I am most sure of is that
there no one golden theory that is by far the most powerful and effective, and
that provides the golden path to success.
The
corollary to this conclusion (which is evidence-based) is that when anyone
claims they are hocking a theory that explains 75% of success in life, it is
safe to assume they are selling you snake oil. To quote James March once again,
as I suggested in my post on Good to Great, “Most claims of originality are
testimony to ignorance and most claims of magic are testimonial to hubris.”
I
was reminded of this problem once again when I received an invitation for a
workshop on emotional intelligence (called "EQ" sometimes) that an
obviously well-meaning consultant was putting on at one of my kid's schools.
The advertisement for this event claimed that "EQ" was far more
powerful for explaining success in life than "IQ," in fact, the
advertisement claimed it explained 75% of success in life. I am a big fan
of the general idea behind emotional intelligence, and believe that more successful
human-beings — especially bosses –enjoy higher emotional intelligence, which
researchers (the one's who apparently coined the concept and published the
first studies) John Mayer and his colleagues define as "The ability to
engage in sophisticated information processing about one's own and others'
emotions, and the ability to use that information as a guide to thinking and
behavior." As I wrote to this consultant, I definitely think that the
schools in my area would be better-off if everyone — students, teachers, and
administrators– had higher EQ, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that
(despite debate about exactly what it is and how it works), that more EQ leads people to more success — and to have more civilized human exchanges
too.
Yet, much as the main popularizer of EQ apparently did, this
consultant undermines her legitimate message by making excessive claims — in
March's lingo, claims that she wielding magic. The case of EQ is interesting
because, while Goelman and his colleagues were selling it as nearly a cure all
(I went to one of his speeches, and he was making outrageous claims about the
amount of variance in organizational performance that were explained by
a leader's EQ), more careful research and more measured claims were emerging from
Mayer and other researchers. To this point, please read what Mayer and his
colleagues wrote in an article published in the American Psychologist in
2008 called "Emotional Intelligence: Now Ability or Eclectic
Traits." On page 504, they argue:
A journalistic rendering
of EI created and also complicated the popular understanding of it. Goleman’s
(1995) bestselling book Emotional Intelligence began with the early version of
our EI model but mixed in many other personality traits including persistence,
zeal, self-control, character as a whole, and other positive attributes. The
book received extensive coverage in the press, including a cover story in Time
magazine (Gibbs, 1995). Because the book included, in part, the theory we
developed, some investigators wrongly believed that we endorsed this complex
and, at times, haphazard composite of attributes as an interpretation of EI.
The journalistic version
became the public face of EI and attracted further attention, in part, perhaps,
owing to its extraordinary claims. Goleman (1995, p. 34) wrote of EI’s
importance that “what data exist, suggest it can be as powerful, and at times
more powerful, than IQ.” A few years later, Goleman (1998a, p. 94) remarked
that “nearly 90% of the difference” between star performers at work and average
ones was due to EI. …. Our own work never made such claims, and we actively
critiqued them (Mayer, 1999; Mayer & Cobb,2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997;
Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso,2000). More recently, Goleman (2005, p. xiii)
wrote that others who believed that EI predicts huge proportions of success had
misunderstood his 1995 book.
I suspect the consultant's claims
about the magical powers of EQ simply were repeating these widely accepted beliefs
— apparently first perpetuated (but now denied) by Goleman. In addition to
sending this consultant the Mayer paper, I also sent her an article (summarized
here) that analyzed
85 years worth of research and showed that, for better or worse, the strongest
evidence we have is that IQ is mighty powerful predictor of success. I
hope I didn't come across as arrogant or overbearing when I suggested to her:
"I am not an IQ freak at all, and in fact, I believe that it has a large
social and economic component – and although my ideology and values press to me
believe in EQ and related indicators of the ability to read and respond to
others, I try to be careful to stick to the data and avoid excessive
claims. I think what you are doing is wonderful, but please be careful
not to fall into the trap of making excessive claims to attract attention."
For me, all this raises an interesting
question, or I suppose challenge, that I wrestle with constantly. I
believe in evidence-based management and also have strong opinions that are grounded in evidence but are also shaped by my values (e.g., no matter how
much money you make, in my book you are still a loser if you are an asshole)
and by the quirks of my experience in this life. The challenge is
to walk the line between selling ideas that I firmly believe can make
organizations better places, without overselling them — it is hard to do both
because of the temptations (money and attention, for starters) and because, in
many cases, people yearn for simple, powerful, and complete solutions to their
problems (and keep asking for them even when you are careful to say that you
don't have them and neither does anyone else).
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