潘多拉de魔盒 2006-9-20 11:36 AM
Intelligently emotional
Given a choice between two potential recruits, one intelligent but cold and one engaging but not as clever, which would you pick? Most managers assume that brightest equals best. But these two Toronto academics note that employees with high “emotional” intelligence, even if they have lower “cognitive” intelligence, still tend to perform well: in fact, the lower the cognitive intelligence, the stronger the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance. Emotionally intelligent workers, the authors suggest, might score higher in job performance ratings because they can work more easily with different groups, leave a positive impression with their superiors, and manage conflict. There is still hope for the super-bright introvert, however—the authors do not conclude that employees with high cognitive abilities and low emotional intelligence are at a disadvantage relative to their opposites. There may, in fact, be room to succeed for both the killjoy and the extrovert, depending on the task at hand.