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00:00:00IQ predicts just 10 to 20% of life success, of career success.
00:00:10That leaves about 80 to 90% to everything from luck, to how much your parents made when you're growing up, to emotional intelligence.
00:00:30Funding for Emotional Intelligence with Daniel Goleman is provided by Barnes & Noble booksellers, offering books as far as the mind can reach.
00:00:43And BarnesandNoble.com, featuring out-of-print titles, online live chats with many authors, and more, BarnesandNoble.com.
00:00:52Support was also provided by the Fetzer Institute, supporting programs that explore the integral relationships among body, mind, and spirit.
00:01:00And by the annual financial support of PBS viewers like you.
00:01:10Dr. Daniel Goleman is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence.
00:01:17Please welcome Dr. Daniel Goleman.
00:01:26Welcome.
00:01:28In this program, we're going to explore what it means to bring intelligence to our emotions.
00:01:35We'll look at ways that we can become better parents and partners.
00:01:39Ways we can help our children cultivate these basic skills of the human heart.
00:01:44Ways that we can all improve the abilities that let us prosper in our work.
00:01:52By the end of this program, I'll share with you some basic steps that will help you improve your emotional intelligence,
00:01:59no matter where you are in life, no matter what your personal goals may be.
00:02:04A while ago, my wife and I were driving out of New York City.
00:02:09It was a very cold, late winter, dreary, drizzly day.
00:02:14We were on what's known as the West Side Highway.
00:02:17It was a Friday afternoon.
00:02:19Traffic was bumper to bumper, rush hour.
00:02:22That highway starts at ground level and goes up a ramp, becomes a four-lane freeway.
00:02:27Well, as I was driving through the gloom of this evening, I was amazed, just as I was about to get to that ramp,
00:02:34to see there, in between the lanes of traffic, there was a man in a wheelchair.
00:02:39He was there for money.
00:02:42He had a cup in his lap.
00:02:44I was so moved by his plight, I just reached into my pocket.
00:02:48I pulled out a bill as my car went by as a five-dollar bill.
00:02:52I put it in his cup.
00:02:54Then I saw out of the corner of my eye, a gust of wind caught that bill and it landed on the roadway.
00:03:01Now, I'm watching this drama unfold out of my rear-view mirror.
00:03:05And what do I see?
00:03:06I realize, all of a sudden, this man has no legs.
00:03:10That's why he's in the wheelchair.
00:03:13Then, to my amazement, I realized that even though this man can't bend down to pick up that bill,
00:03:22there's help because someone in the car behind me gets out of the back door,
00:03:29walks along so as not to slow up traffic, bends down, picks up the bill, puts it in the cup,
00:03:35gets back in the car, drives away.
00:03:38To this day, I don't know who that person was, but I'll tell you this, we need more like them.
00:03:47These are the people who care.
00:03:50These are the people who hold together our communities, our workplaces, our families.
00:03:57These are people who have a special aptitude for life.
00:04:02It's what I call emotional intelligence.
00:04:05And we can improve it at any point in life.
00:04:09Now, do any of you know what became of the valedictorian of your high school class?
00:04:16Good question, huh?
00:04:18How many of them ended up as outstanding successes at work?
00:04:23If IQ determined how we do in life, you'd expect no one but valedictorians would be running the companies we work for, right?
00:04:33It's not the case.
00:04:35It takes something beyond intellect to do well in life.
00:04:40I went to a large public high school in the Central Valley of California.
00:04:44My 15th high school reunion, I come back, and it's very interesting to see who's the most outstanding kid in my class.
00:04:51It wasn't the valedictorian.
00:04:54It wasn't the kid with the highest college entrance exam scores.
00:04:58It wasn't the editor of the school yearbook.
00:05:00It wasn't anyone like that.
00:05:02It was someone actually who I happen to have known pretty well.
00:05:05It was a kid who was, oh, he was pretty good academically, but he was a superb human being.
00:05:12He was someone who really listened.
00:05:15He was someone who made you feel comfortable, who was gracious, who cared.
00:05:19He was someone who you would want to spend time with.
00:05:23He's the kind of person people liked.
00:05:25And today, 15 years out, he was the senior vice president of a Fortune 500 company.
00:05:31For my high school, that was pretty good.
00:05:34This guy didn't have the highest IQ in the class.
00:05:37He had something else, emotional intelligence.
00:05:40Here's the big secret.
00:05:47IQ predicts just 10 to 20% of life success, of career success.
00:05:55And IQ has just about nothing to do with how well we do in the rest of life.
00:06:02I mean, think about it.
00:06:03Our marriages, our relationships, our families, it's irrelevant.
00:06:06What makes all the difference is emotional intelligence.
00:06:10Now, this is a very important point.
00:06:13Unlike IQ, which is stable through life, emotional intelligence is not fixed at any point.
00:06:21It continues to improve through every decade of life, on average.
00:06:25You know, we learn to handle ourselves a little better, relationships a little better.
00:06:30It's what we used to call maturity.
00:06:32It's really that.
00:06:34So the good news is we can get better at it, and I'll show you how.
00:06:40First, let me review just a few recent discoveries in neuroscience.
00:06:45Now, consider how the brain grew.
00:06:48It grew from the bottom up.
00:06:50Early on in evolution, there was just a set of structures around the spinal cord.
00:06:54Today, it's the brain stem.
00:06:56This part of the brain just regulates automatic reactions.
00:06:59You know, the knee-jerk reflex, blinking, heart rate, things like that.
00:07:03It doesn't think.
00:07:04It doesn't learn.
00:07:05But the big breakthrough in evolution came when a series of structures grew around that.
00:07:10It's called the limbic system.
00:07:11Limbus means ring.
00:07:12It's a ring of structures, which today is our emotional brain.
00:07:16And it added to the brain a really crucial, crucial ability for survival.
00:07:22The ability to learn.
00:07:24I mean, in a primitive animal, it's probably safe to graze over here, dangerous over there.
00:07:28Very practical things that let you survive.
00:07:31Now, from these ancient centers, the emotional centers, grew the layers at the top of the brain.
00:07:40The neocortex, the thinking brain.
00:07:43So, in the basic structure of the brain, it's important to understand thoughts came after feelings.
00:07:52There were emotions before there were thoughts.
00:07:55Long before.
00:07:57These same emotional centers are also designed to be the brain's alarm system.
00:08:02They warn us of any threat to survival.
00:08:05Now, in prehistory, they probably had the job of answering the one key question for survival.
00:08:12Can you guess what that is?
00:08:14It's got to be something like, do I eat it or does it eat me?
00:08:18Right?
00:08:19Now, think about it.
00:08:20This is not a question you want to sit around and mull over.
00:08:23You're not going to, like, look it up on the Internet.
00:08:25Because if you did, if you waited, it just ate you.
00:08:29And you didn't pass on your genes to us, you design a brain.
00:08:33So, our ancient ancestors had really quick answers to do I eat it or does it eat me?
00:08:39They knew right away.
00:08:40Or they didn't survive.
00:08:41So, in the modern brain, these same emotional centers are able to take over the rest of the brain in a single moment.
00:08:48Because in ancient times, it was necessary for survival.
00:08:52Now, if there's an emergency, this decision that we've got to do something quick is made largely by a structure called the amygdala.
00:09:01Amygdala means almond in Greek.
00:09:03It's an almond-shaped structure.
00:09:05And the key thing about it is this is where the emotional part of a memory is stored.
00:09:11You know, the brain stores different parts of a memory in different places.
00:09:14The emotional part is here.
00:09:16So, everything that ever happened to us that made us angry, made us scared, made us really happy, is remembered in the amygdala.
00:09:26About five years ago, a neuroscientist at New York University, Joseph Ledoux, discovered what amounts to a dirty back alley in the brain.
00:09:36It's a one-neuron-long connection between the thalamus and the amygdala.
00:09:41Now, one-neuron-long is tiny and it's very quick.
00:09:45So, this circuit allows the amygdala, our emotional memories, to scan everything happening to us from moment to moment to moment to moment to see if something happening now is anything like something that happened then that made us really angry or scared or happy.
00:10:02Right?
00:10:03Right?
00:10:04Now, if it gets a match, like there's something that was scary, something like something that happened then that's scary, it triggers what's called an amygdala hijack.
00:10:14It takes over the rest of the brain because it's an emergency.
00:10:17The signs of an amygdala hijack are three.
00:10:20First, you have a really quick, sudden reaction.
00:10:24Second, it's a very strong emotion.
00:10:28And third, when the dust settles, you realize you just did something really inappropriate.
00:10:35Whoops!
00:10:36Why did I say that?
00:10:38I wish I hadn't done that.
00:10:39I'm sure it's never happened to you folks.
00:10:42It did happen to me once in a while.
00:10:44I'll confess.
00:10:45In fact, by the end of our program, I'll share with you some ways that you can prevent amygdala hijacks.
00:10:51It's a very useful skill, I assure you.
00:10:54One key point.
00:10:56The amygdala learns its repertoire largely in childhood, and it thinks in a kind of childlike way.
00:11:03So you might get an amygdala hijack that's something like this.
00:11:06This guy is making me so mad, I'd like to slug him.
00:11:10Right?
00:11:11It's just like a little kid.
00:11:12Now, the good news is that impulse goes from the amygdala up to the prefrontal lobe, just behind the forehead.
00:11:19Now, this is the brain's executive center.
00:11:21This is where we bring it all together.
00:11:23This is where we make our decisions.
00:11:25It brings together info from all parts of the brain, then decides what to do.
00:11:30So, at that point, the prefrontal lobe might add one crucial piece of information.
00:11:35Oh, this is your boss.
00:11:37Oh, whoops!
00:11:39So we'll smile and change the subject, right?
00:11:42You know, you're not gonna...
00:11:43Okay.
00:11:44So, you see, there are neurons in the prefrontal areas that receive these emotional impulses from the amygdala,
00:11:51and they have the power to refuse to go along.
00:11:55These are inhibitory neurons are called.
00:11:58Actually, they're just say no neurons.
00:12:00This is where that response is in the brain.
00:12:02Just say no.
00:12:03If they don't work well, the results can be disastrous.
00:12:07Do you remember that boxing match with Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield?
00:12:11I mean, who could forget it, right?
00:12:13So, he took a bite out of Holyfield's ear.
00:12:15I mean, Tyson said in an interview, I just snapped.
00:12:19I mean, it was clearly an amygdala hijack.
00:12:21What he said was...
00:12:23He didn't use that phrase, of course.
00:12:26What he said was, I just snapped.
00:12:32He said...
00:12:33There was this headbutt, and it reminded him when that happened.
00:12:36Another fight, and he got an unfair call against him.
00:12:39And so, he just let him have it.
00:12:41But what's fascinating is a report from a psychiatrist that examined Tyson.
00:12:46This report says Tyson demonstrated so-called executive control deficits.
00:12:52Now, that psychiatric jargon for deficiency in these same prefrontal neurons,
00:12:57the just-say-no ones I was talking about a minute ago.
00:13:01These are the ones that let us reject an impulse.
00:13:04So, from a psychiatric point of view, he had a deficiency in these neurons that inhibit impulse.
00:13:10From another point of view, actually, you could think that,
00:13:13well, maybe his amygdala got the wrong answer to that old question.
00:13:17Do I eat it, or does it eat me?
00:13:21So, that's how the brain circuits that run between the amygdala and the prefrontal areas
00:13:26allow us to be intelligent about our emotions.
00:13:29When I talk about emotional intelligence, I'm referring to these brain circuits.
00:13:35Take self-awareness.
00:13:36That's the first part of emotional intelligence.
00:13:38Now, by self-awareness, what I actually mean is the ability to tell what we're feeling
00:13:45from moment to moment to moment.
00:13:47Now, it may seem pretty self-evident.
00:13:50We always know what we're feeling, right?
00:13:51But, actually, we don't always know what we're feeling.
00:13:54Usually, we're caught in the stream of thought.
00:13:57We're thinking about what we're going to do tonight,
00:13:59all of the plans we have to make, what's on our to-do list,
00:14:02what we wish we had done that we haven't done,
00:14:04what to have on and on and on and on, right?
00:14:07But, there's a stream of feeling that runs in perfect parallel to the stream of thoughts.
00:14:12We're always feeling something, always feeling something, right?
00:14:16Usually, we don't notice it, though, until it kind of bubbles up
00:14:20and it crosses some threshold of perception.
00:14:23And then you see, oh, I'm getting a little nervous here.
00:14:25I'm getting a little irritated, whatever it may be.
00:14:27So, we wait for our feelings to come to us.
00:14:29We don't go to them.
00:14:31So, why should it matter that we notice what we're feeling from moment to moment?
00:14:35Well, for one, it's a basis for making sound decisions, surprisingly.
00:14:39Making decisions we can live with, things we're not going to regret down the road.
00:14:44I've got a friend, he was a physician, and a guy came to him with a business deal.
00:14:50Looked pretty good.
00:14:51It said, if he'd give up his medical practice, invest $100,000 of his own money
00:14:56in this new business, a health resort, and become the medical director,
00:15:00in three years, he would have $4 million.
00:15:05Looked really good, so he went for it.
00:15:08Well, one day, he's driving down the road to his new job,
00:15:12and all of a sudden, out of the blue, he finds himself smashing the dashboard of his car,
00:15:18and he's yelling, I can't do this!
00:15:20I can't do this!
00:15:23And he pulls over to the side, calms himself down, gets composed, drives on to work.
00:15:30A year later, that business is bankrupt.
00:15:33So is he.
00:15:35When he told me about it later, he said, you know, I knew in my heart there was something wrong with that deal,
00:15:40but my head overruled my feelings.
00:15:43So, listen to your gut feelings as well as your rational mind.
00:15:49Your intuitions are valuable information.
00:15:52Science tells us so.
00:15:54See, it has to do with how the brain is wired.
00:15:58Consider the case of a brilliant corporate lawyer.
00:16:02This is a man who unfortunately had a small prefrontal tumor, was operated on successfully,
00:16:09but during the course of the operation, they cut that connection between the amygdala,
00:16:13the emotional center, and the prefrontal lobes.
00:16:16Afterward, he seemed to be okay.
00:16:20There was no problem, no deficiency in his IQ or his memory or his attention,
00:16:25but something was wrong.
00:16:27He couldn't do his job anymore.
00:16:29He lost his job.
00:16:30He ended up out of work.
00:16:31His marriage fell apart.
00:16:33He lost his house.
00:16:35Ends up living in his brother's spare bedroom.
00:16:38So, what does he do?
00:16:40He goes to this famous neurologist, Antonio Damasio, and he says,
00:16:44Doctor, what's wrong with me?
00:16:46And at first, this neurologist is completely puzzled,
00:16:49but because on all the tests, there's nothing wrong with the guy.
00:16:52Then, one day, he gets a clue.
00:16:56He asks this lawyer, he says, when should we have our next appointment?
00:17:00And he realizes this lawyer can give him the rational pros and cons of every hour
00:17:07for the next two weeks, but he doesn't know which is best.
00:17:13In other words, this lawyer had no feelings about his thoughts, so he had no preferences.
00:17:19It was all the same to him.
00:17:21Now, Damasio argues that when we face a decision in life,
00:17:25should I marry this guy?
00:17:27Should I buy this house?
00:17:29Should I leave my job for another job?
00:17:31Damasio says the emotional brain summarizes the emotional bottom line,
00:17:37and it gives it to us as a gut feeling.
00:17:39It's actually a feeling in the body, in the gut.
00:17:43The neural tracks for this run into the intestines,
00:17:46so you get this felt body sense.
00:17:48It feels right, it doesn't feel right.
00:17:50That expression, this feels right, is literally true.
00:17:54In other words, hunches are important data.
00:17:58Now, it's not that we should throw out the facts.
00:18:00I'm not saying that.
00:18:02But we should give our hunches and intuitions their due.
00:18:06Remember, the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe, that is our emotions and our intellect,
00:18:12they're partners in piloting us through life.
00:18:15About 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote,
00:18:20So, anyone can get angry, that's easy.
00:18:24But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose,
00:18:37and in the right way, not so easy, right?
00:18:41No easier now than it was then, because the design of the brain is the same.
00:18:45We have the amygdala, we have the prefrontal lobes, we've got hijacks.
00:18:49It's happening just like it was back then.
00:18:52Now, the root meaning of emote, emotion.
00:18:57Emote means to move toward.
00:18:59Every emotion is an action plan for the body.
00:19:02It's an impulse to do something.
00:19:05You know, maybe to run in fear, or to fight in anger, or attack, or cry when you're sad.
00:19:11So, at the root of every emotion is an impulse.
00:19:15After self-awareness, the second emotional intelligence ability is handling our emotions.
00:19:22Controlling these impulses.
00:19:25Now, the best study of this was actually done with four-year-old kids.
00:19:29Let me tell you about it.
00:19:31It's called the marshmallow test.
00:19:33These are kids who were the children of professors and graduate students at Stanford.
00:19:39They're from the preschool.
00:19:41They're brought into a room, one by one.
00:19:43They sit down at a table, and a big, juicy marshmallow is put right in front of them, right?
00:19:50And the experimenter says to them,
00:19:52you can have this marshmallow now if you want,
00:19:55but if you'll wait till I run an errand and you don't eat it till I get back,
00:19:58you can have too thin.
00:20:01Well, imagine.
00:20:06This is a predicament that tries the soul of any four-year-old.
00:20:10I assure you.
00:20:12You know, I mean, sometimes, like, they'll look away and try to pretend, you know, this isn't happening.
00:20:18Or they'll go off and sing and dance and try to distract themselves.
00:20:22One kid I saw went up to the marshmallow, smelled it, and then jumped back like it was some dangerous object.
00:20:28So they come up with stuff to try not to grab that marshmallow.
00:20:32Now, about a third of the kids did grab the marshmallow.
00:20:36They grabbed it right away and they ate it.
00:20:38Couldn't help it.
00:20:39You know, mmm, this is good, right?
00:20:41On the other hand, about a third of kids waited out the endless seven or eight minutes until the experimenter gets back.
00:20:48You can imagine what that's like for a four-year-old.
00:20:50They get two marshmallows.
00:20:51But the payoff from this experiment comes 14 years later when these kids are tracked down just as they're graduating from high school.
00:20:59Amazing differences between the two groups.
00:21:02It's really surprising.
00:21:03If you compare the kids who grabbed to the kids who waited.
00:21:07Now, the ones who grabbed, by comparison, fall apart under stress.
00:21:12They're more easily irritated, more likely to get angry at friends, not very popular.
00:21:16Still can't resist gratification in pursuit of their goals.
00:21:20The ones who waited, quite the opposite.
00:21:24They still are really stable under stress, pretty calm and collected, very popular, get along with people much better.
00:21:31Still can keep their eye on the goal.
00:21:34But the really surprising, shocking finding came when they compared their college entrance exam scores.
00:21:42It turns out that the kids who waited, compared to the kids who grabbed, had a 210 point advantage on their SATs, on the college entrance exam.
00:21:54Now, that's 210 points out of 1,600.
00:21:57That is a staggering difference.
00:22:01It's whopping.
00:22:02Now, I had a chance to go to Princeton and talk to the folks at the Educational Testing Service who make up that test.
00:22:08They were stunned.
00:22:10They said, 210 points is as much as the difference between, that we find in kids who come from families where parents have no high school education and families where the parents have a master's degree or better.
00:22:24It's enormous.
00:22:27So, why should something as seemingly trivial as whether a kid can wait a few minutes for a marshmallow make such an immense difference in how they do intellectually?
00:22:38You know, the entrance exam, after all, is a test of how well children have learned.
00:22:43It goes back to how the brain is set up.
00:22:48Remember that link between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe I was talking about a moment or two ago?
00:22:53The executive center and the emotional center?
00:22:56Well, the amygdala is a source of all emotional impulse.
00:23:00If you're a kid who's constantly in the grip of upsetting emotions, constantly antsy, you're preoccupied by distracting thoughts.
00:23:11Now, this is stuff you just can't keep off your mind.
00:23:14They're intrusive thoughts.
00:23:16And where they intrude is into your capacity for attention.
00:23:20And that happens to be based in the prefrontal lobes, the executive center.
00:23:24Now, the same thing is true, by the way, for adults in a high-stress job.
00:23:29This is why stress makes people do dumb things.
00:23:33These are things I regret later, right?
00:23:36Like little amygdala hijacks, sometimes big amygdala hijacks.
00:23:39But we can also change how we react.
00:23:42And we can change at any point in life.
00:23:44Okay, now we're at number three, motivation.
00:23:47It's our emotions that move us toward our goals in life.
00:23:51Motivation is all about emotion.
00:23:54In reaching our goals, whatever they may be, optimism is extremely important.
00:24:00And that's because, you know, things never go smoothly in life.
00:24:04There's always a bump in the road, some obstacle, setback.
00:24:08Optimism comes into play when we have a setback or face some obstacle.
00:24:13The main difference between an optimist and a pessimist lies in what they tell themselves at these moments of setback.
00:24:23Like, okay, take a kid who gets a bad grade in math.
00:24:27The pessimist will tell themselves, gee, I guess this means I'm dumb at math.
00:24:31So they'll give up, right?
00:24:33Now, an optimistic kid gets this same bad grade, he'll tell himself something completely different.
00:24:38He'll say, oh, I guess I should have studied harder for the test, right?
00:24:42In other words, the optimist sees it as due to something in the circumstance that they can change for the better.
00:24:49The pessimist sees it as a fatal flaw in themselves that just can't be changed.
00:24:54So being an optimist matters immensely for how we do in life.
00:24:59The good news about emotional intelligence is that it's all learned, too.
00:25:05If you're a pessimist, you don't have to stay that way.
00:25:08You can learn to think like an optimist.
00:25:11The fourth emotional intelligence ability is empathy.
00:25:15And by empathy, I mean knowing what someone is feeling without their telling you in words.
00:25:21Because you know what?
00:25:22People don't tell us in words what they're feeling, do they?
00:25:25They tell us in their tone of voice, facial expression, their movements, all these nonverbal cues.
00:25:30Empathy is crucial to getting along with people.
00:25:35And it's the basis of caring and compassion.
00:25:39You see, you can spot the roots of empathy very early in life, even in infants.
00:25:45Sometimes you'll be holding a baby who hears another baby crying and starts crying in sympathy.
00:25:50It's called sympathetic distress.
00:25:51That's already empathy.
00:25:53The baby is responding to how someone else is feeling.
00:25:57And if you pick her up when she's crying and you soothe her, you're teaching her that one person can know how another one feels.
00:26:05That's a lesson in empathy.
00:26:06You know how you feel and you respond appropriately.
00:26:09So kids start to learn this very early.
00:26:12And the more the brain experiences something, the stronger that circuitry becomes.
00:26:17So when you pick up a crying baby and soothe her, that's an important lesson in empathy.
00:26:22It seems like such a simple thing, but it really matters.
00:26:25Now, a childhood of lessons like that strengthens the child's brain circuitry for sensing how other people are feeling ordinarily.
00:26:34If a kid is well-loved and well-nurtured by age three, a toddler, you see if they're playing with another kid and that friend falls down and hurts himself,
00:26:44most three-year-olds will just spontaneously try to make them feel better.
00:26:47They'll go bring them their blankie or go get their mommy to try to make them feel better.
00:26:52That's the way kids ordinarily are.
00:26:55But in children who are abused or neglected by that age, you see something very different and it's very troubling.
00:27:02These kids don't go over and try to make their friend feel better.
00:27:05They go over and they order them to stop.
00:27:07And if their friend doesn't stop, they'll get really angry at them.
00:27:11They'll start yelling at them.
00:27:12And if they still don't stop, they'll hit them.
00:27:15It's really a tragic thing.
00:27:17They've already started to treat others the way they were treated.
00:27:22Now, an absence in empathy is really disturbing.
00:27:26I have a brother-in-law.
00:27:28He's a writer and, as it happens, an expert on horror and terror.
00:27:33Now, actually, he's a Chaucer scholar by training and a really nice guy.
00:27:37But he was born in Transylvania.
00:27:40He was.
00:27:41And somehow I think it affected him.
00:27:43At one point, he wanted to write a book about this man who was a serial killer.
00:27:48He was called the Santa Cruz Strangler.
00:27:50Before he was arrested, he had murdered five co-eds at UC San Diego, his own mother and his grandparents.
00:27:58Very scary guy.
00:28:00For one thing, he's almost seven feet tall.
00:28:03But actually, that's not the scariest thing about him.
00:28:06You want to know what's really scary about him?
00:28:08His IQ is 160.
00:28:11He's a certified genius.
00:28:13But that's the point.
00:28:15There is zero relationship between IQ and empathy.
00:28:20The neurons for empathy, the neurons for recognizing emotion in another person, are in the amygdala.
00:28:26It's in the emotional brain, not in the thinking brain.
00:28:29So anyhow, after hours and hours of interviewing this strangler, my brother-in-law finally gets up the courage to ask him the one question he's been dying to know.
00:28:39He says, how could you have done it?
00:28:43Didn't you feel any pity for the people that you murdered?
00:28:46And the strangler says very matter-of-factly, oh no, if I felt any of their distress, I couldn't have done it.
00:28:52He didn't feel any of their distress.
00:28:55I couldn't have done it.
00:28:58That's just the point.
00:29:01Empathy is what keeps people from harming others.
00:29:06When we feel with someone, we want to help them.
00:29:10If our own amygdala is too busy with its own little hijack, you're not going to be that clear channel.
00:29:16You won't be able to empathize.
00:29:18And when we empathize with someone, we feel their distress, and so we want to help them.
00:29:23Okay, now for number five.
00:29:25The fifth part of emotional intelligence boils down to handling emotions in other people.
00:29:31It's the art of relationships.
00:29:33In every exchange, we can make each other feel a little better or a little worse, or a lot better or a lot worse.
00:29:42Every interaction can be related along this dimension of nourishing to toxic.
00:29:48You see, emotions are contagious.
00:29:52Emotions pass between us as part of every interaction.
00:29:57People who are really adept at social skill, they know this.
00:30:03They use it to make things better.
00:30:06Now I'm going to tell you the story that changed my life.
00:30:09It showed me we're all part of each other's emotional toolkit for better or for worse.
00:30:14It was a really hot, horrible, humid day in New York City.
00:30:20And everybody's walking around in a kind of a bubble that says, don't touch me.
00:30:25Don't talk to me.
00:30:26You know, leave me alone.
00:30:27I'm a little prickly and irritable today.
00:30:30And I'm waiting for the bus with my bubble intact and pulls up and I get on, careful to bring my bubble with me.
00:30:38And the bus driver does something really surprising.
00:30:42He talks to me.
00:30:43He says, hi, how you doing?
00:30:45It's great to have you on the bus.
00:30:47He really means it.
00:30:48I'm shocked.
00:30:50I sit down and all of a sudden I realize this guy's carrying on a dialogue with the whole bus.
00:30:56Oh, you're looking for suits, are you?
00:30:58You know, this department store down here on the right, it's got a great sale on suits.
00:31:01You should check it out.
00:31:02Hey, did you hear about this great Picasso show at the museum down here?
00:31:06On and on and on.
00:31:07People get off the bus and you say, well, so long.
00:31:10It's been great having you.
00:31:11And they say, yeah, it's been great being on this bus.
00:31:15That man, that man was an urban saint.
00:31:20He was sending ripples of good feeling throughout the city.
00:31:25When I saw him, I realized we all have this power to make each other feel better or worse.
00:31:33And we have this power no matter what we do because it's how we do it that makes the difference.
00:31:41Let me tell you about several ways all this makes a big difference in our lives.
00:31:48For one, being intelligent about our emotions, science is now finding, is good for our health.
00:31:56That's right, good for health.
00:31:58Some of the strongest links between the brain and the body are between the emotional centers and the immune system and the emotional centers and the cardiovascular system.
00:32:09That means our emotions have a major impact on, say, our resistance to colds and viruses or our susceptibility to heart disease.
00:32:18In fact, there was an analysis of more than a hundred studies that looked at people's emotional states, their habitual emotional states and their health.
00:32:26And they found that people who are chronically distressed or chronically pessimistic or irritable or stressed out and anxious and so on have double the risk of developing a major disease.
00:32:41And this is major diseases of all kinds. Double the risk is quite an amazing statistic because it's as big as the health risk factor for smoking.
00:32:50So one key to handling stress in your life, to handling it better, is giving yourself ways to recover.
00:32:59Ways to kind of calm down from whatever is upsetting you.
00:33:04See, stress isn't really so much in the things that happen in your life.
00:33:10It's really in how we react to them. And we can do something about those reactions.
00:33:15There are three windows of opportunity when it comes to handling the stress in our lives.
00:33:20The first is to do something to change things for the better.
00:33:23You know, whatever is the cause of the stress. If you can change it, do it.
00:33:27The second is in how you see it. Changing the way you perceive what's happening.
00:33:33I once heard a wonderful line from a television preacher. It goes like this.
00:33:38Something good is going to happen to you today. I love that line.
00:33:46That is so great. You don't know what it is. It's a wonderful thought because it allows the possibility that what may seem so bad at first has an upside.
00:33:58That there's a silver lining to that cloud, right?
00:34:02Now, if we can't change the things that are happening to us and we can't change how we see it, then we're left with a third opportunity.
00:34:11And that's handling the way our body and our mind react to these things.
00:34:16See, when the body is stressed, the emotional centers flood the body with stress hormones.
00:34:23And this makes it do things like shunt blood from the arms and the legs into the organs.
00:34:28It's a fight or flight response. It pumps up our blood pressure, speeds up our heartbeat.
00:34:33It steals energy, actually, from the immune system, it turns out, to get us ready for an emergency.
00:34:39It's what's called the fight or flight response. You've heard about that.
00:34:42Now, if that response gets triggered day after day, week after week, and month after month, over years, what happens is the biological system in our body that's most susceptible genetically, that's most reactive, is going to start to develop a stress-caused disease.
00:35:05You know, if you're a cardiovascular reactor, you're going to get high blood pressure.
00:35:09If you react in your gut, you're going to get problems there and so on throughout the body.
00:35:13That's how stress over years and years leads to disease.
00:35:17It makes, it speeds up the process of coming down to the disease.
00:35:20So, constant stress, it's like getting your amygdala stuck in high gear.
00:35:25Continual hijacks.
00:35:28We need to calm down.
00:35:31That's where relaxation comes in.
00:35:34Now, a relaxation method I've been using for years is a very simple meditation.
00:35:39What I do is every morning I spend about 20 minutes or so just in a quiet place and just being aware of my breath.
00:35:46I just focus on my breath.
00:35:47When some other thoughts come up, if they're distracting, something I'm worrying about, I just let it go.
00:35:52I go back to my breath.
00:35:54You can use a simple prayer in the same way.
00:35:58In fact, you can use any positive word as a point of focus.
00:36:02Anything that has positive meaning for you will work in the same way.
00:36:06Or if that doesn't appeal to you, if you like aerobic exercise, it'll do the same thing.
00:36:10It works as a relaxer.
00:36:12It turns out that after you've had your workout and you're all pumped up, your body gets more relaxed than it was before you started out.
00:36:19So it ends up doing the same thing.
00:36:21But having a daily period where you take the time by yourself to be calm and relaxed will pay off in dealing better with the stresses in your day.
00:36:33And that means better health.
00:36:36Now let's look at how emotional intelligence matters for our relationships, for our friendships, our marriage, for family life.
00:36:45Starts out like this.
00:36:47One of the partners has a grievance, something on their chest they just want to get off their chest.
00:36:53Now, they do it in the wrong way.
00:36:56Now let's say it's the wife, okay?
00:36:58She does not wait for a moment when this couple is feeling cozy and close and then take that opportunity to tell her husband,
00:37:07Oh, you know, dear, when you leave your dirty clothes on the bedroom floor for me to pick up,
00:37:13it makes me feel like you don't respect me or something.
00:37:16So I'd really feel better, dear, if you would take your dirty clothes and put them in the laundry yourself.
00:37:23She doesn't do that.
00:37:24Instead, she waits until she's really steamed up.
00:37:27She's really burning, amygdala hijacking her like crazy.
00:37:30And she says, you are the biggest slob I have ever seen.
00:37:37Right?
00:37:40Now that's not an effective critique.
00:37:43It's a character attack.
00:37:45And what do you do when you're attacked?
00:37:47Well, it's only natural.
00:37:48You defend yourself, right?
00:37:49So he makes some lame excuse like, well, I picked him up last week.
00:37:54Well, maybe just my socks, but still, okay.
00:37:57Or he counterattacks.
00:37:59But you leave the dishes in the sink for me to clean up, right?
00:38:02Well, it only makes it worse because no matter what he says, counterattack,
00:38:06lame excuse, it's not satisfying.
00:38:09Because when you have a complaint, what you want is to be heard.
00:38:15The person making the complaint wants to feel understood.
00:38:19So if you don't feel heard, the natural next step is to up the volume.
00:38:26You up the volume emotionally by adding two very powerful emotions to the message.
00:38:33One is contempt and the other is disgust.
00:38:39You know, it's the sarcasm, the sneer, right?
00:38:45Rolling your eyes, oh, man.
00:38:48That's how you do it.
00:38:49It turns out these are especially hurtful messages from someone you love.
00:38:54When people are at the receiving end of disgust or contempt in these interactions,
00:39:03their heart rate can jump 30 or 40 beats per minute in a single heartbeat.
00:39:09Man, that is a huge amygdala hijack.
00:39:13People say it's like being swamped, having this overwhelming feeling they would do anything to escape.
00:39:19So that leads to the final round.
00:39:22And that final round is stonewalling.
00:39:24He just goes blank, like pretending this is not happening.
00:39:28If they're back home, it might be going back to reading the newspaper or watching TV,
00:39:32tuning her out completely, leaving the room.
00:39:35Now, luckily, in most healthy relationships, people go down that path a little ways.
00:39:40But then one or the other partners deescalates or the couple maybe they've learned to take a break
00:39:46when they're both having an amygdala hijack.
00:39:49So they might go off and do something to cool down or come back later together so they can talk about it more.
00:39:55Now, that would be great.
00:39:56Now, not every couple could do that, right?
00:39:59So at least you might try to realize when you're having that amygdala hijack.
00:40:05You've got to give the hijack time to pass.
00:40:08You have to let the prefrontal lobes, that's your rational intellect, have a voice.
00:40:14Now, we've seen how repeated amygdala hijacks can destroy a marriage.
00:40:20The same things go on in relationships at work.
00:40:24It's just like a married couple and it's just as destructive.
00:40:28Let me tell you about a guy named Melbourne McBroom.
00:40:32Very interesting character.
00:40:34He was an awful boss.
00:40:36This is a guy whose temper was so bad it intimidated all his employees.
00:40:40Now, if he had worked in an office, we would never have known about McBroom except he was an airplane pilot.
00:40:46One day, McBroom is piloting a plane into Portland when he notices a problem in a landing gear.
00:40:54So McBroom begins fiddling and fiddling with this problem and the plane is circling Portland.
00:41:02And while he's obsessing, his co-pilots are saying nothing because they're so scared of his temper.
00:41:09But their fuel gauges are getting lower and lower and lower.
00:41:15They never said a word that plane crashed, killed 10 people.
00:41:23Today, that cockpit tape is used in training pilots because one estimate says that up to 90% of airplane crashes could be prevented if the crew were able to communicate better.
00:41:35If they could work together more harmoniously.
00:41:38Now, the cockpit of a plane is like a microcosm of a company.
00:41:44Miserable morale, intimidated workers, arrogant bosses, right, that can make a company go down in flames in just the same way.
00:41:52Open and clear communication is as essential at work as in marriage.
00:41:59Pick a moment when you're not being hijacked, for starters, right?
00:42:03Find a time to bring it up when you're not upset and be specific.
00:42:08Tell them exactly what they're doing wrong.
00:42:11Give them an idea of what they can do right, how to be more effective.
00:42:16That way, you're not going to hijack them.
00:42:19Maybe they'll really hear it if you follow that.
00:42:22Remember, your goal isn't to prove you're right and they're wrong.
00:42:26It's to work better together.
00:42:29And to work well together, what do we need?
00:42:31Emotional intelligence.
00:42:34Now, we do need it, but there might be less of it to go around in a little while.
00:42:39And the bad news about emotional intelligence is that children seem to be losing it.
00:42:45They seem to be declining.
00:42:47There's a national problem.
00:42:49The best data comes from a random sample of more than 2,000 kids across the country.
00:42:56These are kids that were rated by their parents and teachers, grown-ups who knew them really well.
00:43:02It was done twice, a decade and a half apart.
00:43:05And over that decade and a half, America's children showed a steep decline.
00:43:11Now, it isn't that there still aren't terrific kids.
00:43:14Of course, there are great kids.
00:43:16So, on average, something is going wrong.
00:43:19They were more anxious and depressed, more disobedient and lonely, more angry.
00:43:27They went down on 42 measures of emotional intelligence.
00:43:30They didn't go up on one.
00:43:32Now, that's a mammoth change.
00:43:35I believe, you know, those headlines we've been seeing lately about how younger and younger kids are committing murders,
00:43:42or those horrible shootings of other kids in the schools.
00:43:45That's just the tip of the iceberg.
00:43:47That's why I've become an advocate of courses in emotional literacy.
00:43:51I think it's important to teach these skills in school.
00:43:55We've got to be sure every child gets these proper lessons for life.
00:44:02Now, the good news about emotional intelligence is that it's learned.
00:44:07That's unlike IQ, which doesn't change through life.
00:44:11These abilities can be mastered at any point.
00:44:15The brain, it turns out, is the last organ of the body to become fully mature anatomically.
00:44:20You know, it continues to grow long after we're born.
00:44:23And the centers that regulate emotion are among the last part of the brain to become anatomically mature.
00:44:30They don't take their final shape until around, I don't know, age 14 or 15, if you can believe that.
00:44:36The way the brain shapes itself is through repeated experiences.
00:44:42The more we experience something, the stronger the underlying circuitry for it becomes.
00:44:49So we can help our children actually train their emotional circuitry for the better.
00:44:55Now, some people claim the parents don't matter when it comes to how their children turn out.
00:45:02It's just not true.
00:45:05You are your child's main emotional tutor.
00:45:10Parents matter very much.
00:45:13If you realize your child is learning such key lessons from you, it gives you a very different way to look at those moments when your child is upset.
00:45:24These, you'll see, are opportunities to teach a little lesson in emotional intelligence.
00:45:29Say, for example, a 10-year-old girl comes in and she's crying because her friends wouldn't play with her.
00:45:34It's a common melodrama at that age.
00:45:37Well, what you might do is point out to her that she got hurt and then she got angry and now she's upset.
00:45:45And that helps her learn how one emotion leads to another, build self-awareness.
00:45:50Then you can find ways to help her calm down.
00:45:53You might, for example, recommend, you know, dear, why don't you go off and play with a favorite toy of yours for a while?
00:45:59Then when you feel better, come on back and we'll talk about it.
00:46:02So that helps her understand ways that she can make herself feel better.
00:46:05And then when you do come back together, you can brainstorm with her.
00:46:09It's a third thing you can do.
00:46:11Think of ways that you can solve this little social problem you're having.
00:46:15So maybe something, find something that's really fun that everybody would enjoy doing.
00:46:19So that's another lesson in emotional intelligence.
00:46:22And teaching kids these basic lessons in emotional intelligence has real payoff.
00:46:28But then again, there are costs when kids lack the fundamentals too.
00:46:33Let me tell you about some.
00:46:35Fourth and fifth grade girls who confuse the feelings of worry and anxiety and loneliness and hunger,
00:46:44start to binge when they're upset.
00:46:49These are the girls, if you follow them through the teen years, most at risk for eating disorders.
00:46:55If you look at second and third grade boys who are most antsy and impulsive and disruptive and so on,
00:47:02you follow them through their teen years, they have three to six times the likelihood of being violent or getting arrested as other kids.
00:47:11Now if you look at impulsive girls from third grade on, they don't get violent.
00:47:18They get pregnant at three times the rate of other girls.
00:47:21Schoolyard bullies, this is an interesting one.
00:47:24It turns out they have a deficiency in empathy.
00:47:27They misinterpret neutral faces as hostile ones.
00:47:31So they see themselves as surrounded by kids that are against them.
00:47:34They don't think of themselves as picking on the kids.
00:47:36They see themselves as defending themselves.
00:47:40But kids can learn these basic skills if we bother to teach them.
00:47:45Schools across the country have started to teach emotional intelligence as part of the regular curriculum.
00:47:53One of the great success stories is in New Haven, Connecticut.
00:47:57This is a place where every one of the 19,000 kids in that town gets a class in what they call social development.
00:48:06It starts in the earliest years.
00:48:08It goes through high school.
00:48:10Now I've sat in those classrooms and I've watched.
00:48:13And one of my very favorite things is on the wall in each of the classrooms, it's a stoplight.
00:48:18It's a red light, yellow light, green light.
00:48:21And it says whenever you're upset, whenever you're going to do something that might get you in trouble, remember the stoplight.
00:48:26Red light, stop, calm down, and think before you act.
00:48:35Well, what's stop?
00:48:37Stop is impulse control.
00:48:39Calm down is managing your feelings.
00:48:42And think before you act teaches the crucial lesson about emotions, which is you can't control what you're going to feel,
00:48:49or when you're going to feel it, or how strong it's going to be.
00:48:52But you do have a choice point, and that's how you react once you feel that way.
00:48:59Then there's a yellow light.
00:49:01Think of a whole bunch of different things you could do and what the consequences of each one is going to be.
00:49:06And then green light, pick the best one, try it out.
00:49:10I tried this myself.
00:49:12It's pretty good advice, actually.
00:49:13I recommend it.
00:49:14And it makes a big difference in the schools where good programs are being used.
00:49:18Kids in those schools, they not only get more emotionally intelligent, they have fewer problems like fights or substance abuse or dropouts, things like that.
00:49:29And very interestingly, the kids in these schools have higher achievement test scores.
00:49:35Because they can pay attention.
00:49:36They can learn.
00:49:37Their amygdala is not going crazy on them.
00:49:39Now, you're really lucky if you learn these skills as a kid.
00:49:44But remember, you can improve emotional intelligence at any point in life.
00:49:51One of the fundamental skills is handling an amygdala hijack.
00:49:56Now, if you feel you need to get better at it, and who doesn't?
00:50:01Good news is, you can.
00:50:03There are five simple steps.
00:50:06Number one, watch yourself.
00:50:09At first, just try to notice, you know, when your temper flares up, what are the situations that triggered?
00:50:16Who sets you off?
00:50:18Just keep track for about a week, okay?
00:50:22Number two, find a model.
00:50:25Just watch someone who you know who handles similar situations without flying off the handle.
00:50:33If you can ask them about it, ask them.
00:50:36And practice in your mind handling anger or hijacks the way this person does, the way your model does.
00:50:45Number three, notice the signals in your body that tell you when your anger is starting to build up.
00:50:51Maybe your stomach tightens up.
00:50:54Maybe your brow furrows.
00:50:56Maybe you start feeling tense in your body.
00:50:58It doesn't matter what it is.
00:50:59Just start to notice it.
00:51:01Get familiar with it.
00:51:03Number four, short circuit the hijack the moment you see it starting to build.
00:51:09Now this is a crucial step.
00:51:11Once you know how to spot this anger or hijack building up in you, there are many ways you can cool down at that moment.
00:51:18You can count to ten.
00:51:19You've heard that a hundred times?
00:51:21It actually works.
00:51:22Take a time out if you can.
00:51:24You know, ask yourself, does this really have to be dealt with at this minute?
00:51:28Can it wait until you cool down?
00:51:30One of the most useful phrases I ever learned was, I'll think about it.
00:51:34Try it.
00:51:36Or just remind yourself, blowing up isn't going to help.
00:51:39Number five, repeat these steps at every opportunity.
00:51:46And here's an important one too.
00:51:48You blow it, hey, forgive yourself.
00:51:51You're going to slip backward.
00:51:53Just be sure you use that relapse as an opportunity how to learn to do it better next time.
00:51:59What can you learn from that?
00:52:01Let me end with a story about a friend of mine.
00:52:04His name's Terry Dobson.
00:52:06When Terry was a young man, he was a really tough guy.
00:52:13He was a U.S. Marine.
00:52:15And his idea of a good time was to go into a bar, get drunk, and pick a fight.
00:52:21That's the kind of guy he was.
00:52:22He was actually a direct descendant of Daniel Boone.
00:52:24A real tough kind of guy.
00:52:26Well, Terry was a U.S. Marine, but he got out of the service and he found himself in Japan.
00:52:32And he became one of the first American students of a man who was a teacher of a martial art called Aikido.
00:52:39One day after he's been working out all day, he's on one of these jammed Tokyo trains going out to the suburbs where he lives.
00:52:47And at one stop, this man gets on a huge kind of dirty labor, it looks like.
00:52:53Very, very drunk.
00:52:55And this drunk guy starts flailing around on the train, knocks over a pregnant woman.
00:53:00Now, Japan is a very decorous society.
00:53:04This kind of stuff just never happens, right?
00:53:06So everybody on that train is trying to get away from this guy down to the other end of the train.
00:53:11It happens that Terry is at the other end of the train.
00:53:14Terry is secretly delighted.
00:53:17This is the big moment he's been waiting for.
00:53:20So he stands up very slowly and deliberately.
00:53:24He's about a foot taller than everyone else on the train.
00:53:26So the drunk spots him.
00:53:28He says, oh, a foreigner.
00:53:31You need a lesson in Japanese manners.
00:53:34It's like high noon there on the train car.
00:53:38So as this drunk is staggering down the train toward Terry, all of a sudden, a little old Japanese man in a kimono, who's sitting in a seat to the side, pipes up.
00:53:50He says to this drunk, hey, what you been drinking?
00:53:53And he says it in the most friendly tone, like he's known this guy all his life.
00:53:57This drunk is kind of astonished.
00:54:00He says, sake, what's it to you?
00:54:03This old man is completely undeterred.
00:54:05He says, oh, sake, you know, my wife and I, we just love sake.
00:54:08Every night, we'll warm up some sake and take it outside in our backyard and sit under our favorite persimmon tree and talk over the events of the day.
00:54:16I mean, do you do anything like that?
00:54:20All of a sudden, this drunk's face just changes completely.
00:54:24He says, no.
00:54:27My wife, she died three years ago.
00:54:30I don't have a wife.
00:54:33I don't have a job.
00:54:35I don't have a home.
00:54:37I'm so ashamed of myself.
00:54:41At that, the old man says, oh, you poor thing.
00:54:45Come sit here next to me.
00:54:46Tell me about it.
00:54:48The drunk sits down.
00:54:50Just then, the train gets to Terry's stop.
00:54:53And he looks over.
00:54:54He sees, well, it looks like it's okay to leave.
00:54:56And as he's leaving, he looks back.
00:54:59And there is the drunk with his head in the old man's lap, just sobbing.
00:55:09That's emotional brilliance.
00:55:12Now I'd like to share with you a preview of my newest research on emotional intelligence
00:55:17and how emotional intelligence matters for star performance at work.
00:55:22It's a little bonus.
00:55:24Picture this.
00:55:26It's Super Bowl Sunday, right?
00:55:29Plane is coming into Detroit full of businessmen, but the plane is two hours late,
00:55:35and these guys are dying to get home to their TV sets, right?
00:55:40The plane taxis down the runway, gets almost to the gate, about 100 feet short,
00:55:47and for no known reason stops dead, cold.
00:55:51I'm sure it's happened to you.
00:55:54The moment it stops, all the guys on the plane jump to their feet,
00:55:57and they start to get their stuff down to them, right?
00:55:59And they're just sitting there with their little satchel in hand, all crowded in the aisle.
00:56:04But they're 100 feet from the gate.
00:56:06You know, and there's a regulation that a plane cannot proceed to the gate
00:56:09until everybody sits down.
00:56:11Very interesting moment.
00:56:13Well, the flight attendant does something really quite brilliant.
00:56:16She does not say in an officious tone,
00:56:19Federal regulations require that passengers stay seated until the plane has taxied to the gate.
00:56:25She doesn't say that.
00:56:27She does something much more effective.
00:56:29She says, like she's talking to a little, lovable, mischievous kid
00:56:34who's just done something naughty.
00:56:36She says, you're standing.
00:56:39And at that, everybody laughs and sits down, right?
00:56:43Plane goes to the gate.
00:56:44What she did was brilliant, but not in the academic sense.
00:56:48It was emotionally intelligent.
00:56:50She struck just the right chord to get not only everybody to sit down,
00:56:55but get them off the plane in a good mood.
00:56:57Fantastic.
00:56:58So those passengers got off the plane with smiles, not with frowns.
00:57:03Emotional intelligence is a different way of being smart.
00:57:08And it's absolutely crucial for success at work.
00:57:12Now, my research is showing that when it comes to career success,
00:57:16emotional intelligence matters far more than IQ.
00:57:21I was able to get access to data from almost 200 companies.
00:57:26And this is data, by the way.
00:57:28It's collected by the companies themselves.
00:57:30It's proprietary data.
00:57:31They want to find out what makes some people in a given job really great at it,
00:57:35while other people are mediocre.
00:57:37The companies typically come up with a list of, say, 6 to 15 specific abilities or competencies
00:57:44that are found in the stars but not in average performers, people who are only mediocre.
00:57:51The abilities fall into three general categories.
00:57:53One is IQ abilities, cognitive abilities, like analytic reasoning, things like that.
00:57:58The second set is technical expertise, like maybe being able to run a certain computer program,
00:58:05things like that, job specific skills.
00:58:07The third set of abilities, though, is competencies based on emotional intelligence,
00:58:13things like teamwork or collaboration or initiative, self-confidence, things like that.
00:58:18So I analyzed the ratio of these abilities, and I found that for jobs of all kinds,
00:58:26emotional intelligence counts twice as much.
00:58:31That's twice as much as IQ plus technical skill combined for star performance.
00:58:37The higher you go in the organization, the more it matters.
00:58:41You know, at the top levels of leadership, it turns out 85% of what sets the stars apart from average is emotional intelligence.
00:58:51Let me give you a quick look at how each of the five emotional intelligence skills matters for outstanding performance.
00:58:58Now, take self-awareness.
00:59:00You know, that ability to listen to your feelings as well as your thoughts.
00:59:04They asked 60 highly successful California entrepreneurs, they asked them,
00:59:10how do you go about making business decisions?
00:59:12It turned out every one of them said they used a combination of listening to their gut feelings and the relevant data.
00:59:21There wasn't one that said that their decision was on the data alone.
00:59:25They all checked out what the facts seemed to be indicating against what their feelings told them.
00:59:34Then they went ahead.
00:59:35Now consider, too, the dilemmas we all face when it comes to making career decisions that are in keeping with our own deepest values, our life goals.
00:59:45It's our gut feelings, our sense that what we're doing is the right thing.
00:59:50That's what keeps us on course.
00:59:53It helps us make decisions in our life that we'll feel good about a month or a year later down the road.
01:00:00For instance, at Harvard there's a program called Odyssey.
01:00:04For people at midlife who want to rethink their careers, they go into this program for about a week.
01:00:10One man who went through the program had just reached 50.
01:00:13This guy was a lawyer, highly successful corporate lawyer, but he felt trapped in his job.
01:00:19He felt that he was working longer and longer hours meeting the demands of his clients.
01:00:24All his life it turned out that he looked forward to the time he was 50 so that he could start to take things easy.
01:00:30He wanted more freedom and flexibility.
01:00:32He didn't have it.
01:00:34So he goes through a process of reflecting on what really mattered to him.
01:00:39And instead of thinking in competitive terms like how am I doing compared to my peers, he asked the question inside out.
01:00:47What would be truly fulfilling for me?
01:00:50The answer led him to do this.
01:00:53He cut down the time he put in a law firm and he put that time into a side business he started with his son trading cattle.
01:01:00This guy was out west.
01:01:02He loved it.
01:01:03He loved being on the horse.
01:01:04He loved the whole, you know, spirit of it.
01:01:06So he put all his energies into that.
01:01:09It turns out within two years this lawyer is making more from cattle trading than from law.
01:01:14Not only that, he loved what he was doing.
01:01:18So let's look at the second part of emotional intelligence.
01:01:22That's self-control.
01:01:23In one sense that means how well we can handle our disruptive impulses.
01:01:28Well, there was a study of more than 4,000 business people.
01:01:32It was looking at self-restraint.
01:01:34That's how well you can handle your impulses.
01:01:36During the course of that study, three of the people in the study got into deep trouble.
01:01:41There was one man, a vice president, fired for sexual harassment.
01:01:45There was another treasurer of a company who spilled company secrets.
01:01:48It was the president of a company who got arrested for embezzling company funds.
01:01:53Guess what?
01:01:54Those three people had among the lowest scores they ever saw on self-restraint.
01:01:59Being able to handle our impulses well, to just say no, is the key to integrity and trustworthiness.
01:02:08It also pays off in being conscientious and responsible.
01:02:12That has benefits in itself.
01:02:14People who are conscientious, that is who can be consistently counted on to keep their promises,
01:02:19you know, get things done on time, all of that, they're prized employees.
01:02:23For instance, I saw data from one company that had to lay off a bunch of people,
01:02:28large number of sales people, big appliance company.
01:02:30It turned out that how conscientious people were, how much they could be counted on,
01:02:35counted as much as what their sales were and whether they were kept on.
01:02:41One of the major signs of high motivation, that's the third part of emotional intelligence,
01:02:46is a constant drive to improve your performance.
01:02:50Now, these are people who take it on themselves to get feedback on how well they're doing
01:02:56and to work at changing it for the better.
01:02:58They're always trying to improve.
01:03:00And that striving to improve pays off.
01:03:03Consider, there were 59 entrepreneurs that happened to be in high tech, mostly research scientists.
01:03:09They each had started a company that took advantage of some innovative new technology.
01:03:13After five years, it turned out those highest in this drive to achieve,
01:03:18had an average increase in sales for their company of one million bucks a year,
01:03:22one million dollars, and 50 or more employees after five years.
01:03:26Those who lack this achievement drive, you know what happened to them?
01:03:29Very interesting.
01:03:30They'd done very poorly.
01:03:32They had four or fewer employees.
01:03:34A lot of them had to sell their business for a loss.
01:03:37A lot of them just gave up.
01:03:39The drive to achieve is one of the most crucial competencies for success for just about everyone.
01:03:48The fourth way emotional intelligence matters for work involves empathy.
01:03:52That ability to recognize and sense how people are feeling and responding to you and so on,
01:03:57has to do with the fine art of listening.
01:04:00In sales, for instance, listening well to customers is crucial.
01:04:05The very top salespeople start, when they have a customer, they start out by listening really closely
01:04:13to what the customer really wants.
01:04:15They want to discover what they need, what really matters to them, how they see things.
01:04:20Now, once they have this total picture, then, and only then, do they try to match what they have to offer
01:04:27with what the customer needs.
01:04:29They're more like an advisor or a counselor to the customer.
01:04:32See, that builds trust, and trust requires empathy.
01:04:37Star salespeople know it's less important to make a sale than to keep the customer.
01:04:44A lack of empathy, that can be a disaster.
01:04:48I don't care what field you're in.
01:04:50A friend of mine went to a doctor.
01:04:52She was being treated for a blood clot in her leg.
01:04:55When he explained during the course of what he was going to do in the treatment,
01:05:00that one of the risks of surgery just happened to be that she might lose her leg, right?
01:05:05She burst into tears.
01:05:07You know what he said?
01:05:08He said, if you're going to cry, you're going to have to find another doctor.
01:05:12And you know what she did?
01:05:16You got it.
01:05:18So, social skill is the fifth emotional intelligence ability.
01:05:23It's crucial for business success.
01:05:26Business revolves around relationships, really.
01:05:29And social skill determines how well we can handle relationships.
01:05:33This matters for jobs of all kinds.
01:05:36One social skill is at the top of the list for what makes someone a success.
01:05:40You know what it is?
01:05:41It's persuasion.
01:05:42It's the art of getting things done through other people.
01:05:46One key social skill is the ability to resolve conflicts creatively.
01:05:53A friend of mine, her name is Linda Lantieri, teaches conflict resolution at schools around the world.
01:05:59One day, she was walking down a street in a very dangerous neighborhood in New York.
01:06:05All of a sudden, out of the darkness, three boys come and surround her.
01:06:09They're about 14 years old.
01:06:12One of them has a knife.
01:06:14He says, give me your purse, now.
01:06:18Now, even though she was a bit frightened, Linda had the presence of mind to take some deep breaths and reply very coolly,
01:06:28You know, guys, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable here.
01:06:32You're a little into my space.
01:06:35I'm wondering if you could step back a little.
01:06:37Well, she stared at the sidewalk, you know, wondering what's going to happen now.
01:06:42To her amazement, she sees three pairs of shoes moving backwards.
01:06:46Then she says, hey, thank you.
01:06:50Now, what I want, I want to hear what you just said to me.
01:06:55Did I get it right?
01:06:57To tell you the truth, though, I'm a little nervous about that knife.
01:07:01Could you put it away?
01:07:03Now, after what seemed like an eternity, that knife went back into her pocket.
01:07:10She quickly reached into her purse, took out a $20 bill, gave it to the guy who had had the knife.
01:07:15She says, now, here's what's going to happen.
01:07:18I'm going to stay right here while you walk away.
01:07:22And with that, the boy started to walk away.
01:07:25They're looking back over their shoulders at her.
01:07:27Then all of a sudden, they break into a run.
01:07:29These guys are running away from her.
01:07:33That small miracle points to the power of working with emotional intelligence.
01:07:40We have time for just a few questions.
01:07:43Yes, ma'am.
01:07:45You talked about the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe.
01:07:50How about with children or people that are attention deficit, that have attention deficit?
01:07:56That's a very good question about attention deficit.
01:07:58I think one of the problems, you know, often they use the phrase ADHD, attention deficit disorder, with hyperactivity.
01:08:06Hyperactivity is poor impulse control.
01:08:09One of the problems in attention deficit disorder, by definition, is kids can't pay attention.
01:08:15And I feel that, you know, Ritalin and those kinds of treatment may have a place.
01:08:20But if we only give kids medication, I think we're doing them an injustice.
01:08:24I think we should also work at helping them learn attention skills.
01:08:28Because we know the brain is malleable.
01:08:31It can improve.
01:08:32It can learn to do better.
01:08:34So I think it makes most sense to also help a child who has attention deficit learn the basic skills of attention any way you can do it.
01:08:43Yes, ma'am.
01:08:45When you have a preschool child and they're experiencing, you know, an amygdala hijacking and they're very upset,
01:08:51what's a good way to assist this child in appropriately expressing how they're feeling, the negative affect?
01:09:01So you've got a little kid, he's blowing up, basically.
01:09:05And what do you do so that he can both express himself but also handle the situation better?
01:09:10Let's look at the basic steps.
01:09:12For one thing, you've got a kid who's got an amygdala hijacked,
01:09:15but you also have a child whose prefrontal control areas are still developing.
01:09:21So one thing you can do is lower expectations.
01:09:24He's not going to handle it like a 44-year-old yet.
01:09:27In fact, you're in a situation where you've got an opportunity to help him learn the responses
01:09:34that if he gets, as an experienced over and over, are going to help him be a very mature adult.
01:09:41However, at four, first of all, impulse control, big issue.
01:09:45As we saw, a third of the kids couldn't stand it.
01:09:48They just grabbed that marshmallow.
01:09:50It's because the same prefrontal areas are still kind of forming.
01:09:53So you want to give them a stoplight lesson.
01:09:57Stop, calm down.
01:09:59Before you start talking about it, you have to help the child find a way to calm down.
01:10:04Anything that will calm that four-year-old, within reason, of course, is going to be a good step.
01:10:09And the more you can help the child learn those ways, if you can do it consistently,
01:10:14then kids will start doing it for themselves.
01:10:16And then you can start talking about what's wrong and how we can work it out.
01:10:21Thank you all.
01:10:22Thank you all.
01:10:23Thank you all.
01:10:29Thank you all.
01:10:30Thank you all.
01:10:31Thank you all.
01:10:35Thank you all.
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