Daniel Goleman - Author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence

As an author I’m used to being mis-quoted and mis-interpreted. But there’s one distortion of my position on how “emotional intelligence matters more than IQ” which disturbs me. As I explain in the new introduction to the tenth anniversary edition of Emotional Intelligence:

Unfortunately, misreadings of this book have spawned some myths, which I would like to clear up here and now. One is the bizarre—though widely repeated—fallacy that “EQ accounts for 80% of success.” This claim is preposterous. The misinterpretation stems from data suggesting IQ accounts for about 20 percent of career success. Because that estimate—and it is only an estimate—leaves a large portion of success unaccounted for, we must seek other factors to explain the rest. It does not mean, however, that emotional intelligence represents the rest of the factors in success: they certainly include a very wide range of forces—from the wealth and education of the family we are born into, to temperament, to blind luck, and the like–in addition to emotional intelligence.

As John Mayer and his associates have pointed out: “To the unsophisticated reader, bringing up the “80% unaccounted for variance” suggests that there may indeed be a heretofore overlooked variable that truly can predict huge portions of life success. Although that is desirable, no variable studied in a century of psychology has made such a huge contribution.”

George Kohlreiser knows a lot about negotiation – he’s been held hostage four times, and talked his way out of harm each time.

The first time was early in his career as a psychologist, when he was working with the domestic violence team of an urban police department. They had just intervened with a couple, and the police had left. At that point, the still-angry husband grabbed a scissors and held it to George’s neck.

The husband was furious at George, who he saw as part of a plot against him. But George somehow thought to ask the man, “How do you want your children to remember you?” That question began a dialogue that ended 45 minutes later with the man letting George go.