Good Work!

What’s the connection between our work and leading a good life?

Howard Gardner and I (we’ve known each other since our grad school days) had the chance to explore this question when we got together near Cambridge for a taped conversation (you can listen in on Good Work: Aligning Skills and Values, available from www.MoreThanSound.net). We explored the implications of Howard’s recent research, done with William Damon at Stanford and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, famous for his studies of “flow.” The team has been studying the ways in which people are able to combine excellence in their job with expressing their values – what they call “good work” (see their website, www.goodworkproject.org).

This concept has helped me think through the relationship between emotional/social intelligence and people’s values. As mounting research suggests, this aspect of intelligence can contribute greatly to making someone an outstanding performer at work – for leaders, social intelligence strengths are especially crucial to success. But that says nothing about the values a person brings to their job.

Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social intelligence | 3 Comments »