Daniel Goleman knows how to work an audience. At a conference hall near Sandyford, the American author of Emotional Intelligence has normally reserved Irish managers shouting out examples of when their colleagues "lost it" at work and approaching strangers in the room to learn how to "really listen" to others.
But the audience is eager to leave their comfort zone and participate, given the many academic accolades Goleman has notched up over the years and how the psychologist's bestseller has transformed the education and the way the world does business.
Emotional Intelligence, which shows how being attuned to your feelings and those of others is a better predictor of success than a high IQ, sat on The New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half.
It has been translated into 30 languages in 50 countries and has sold more than five million copies since it was first published 12 years ago.
Before writing the book, Harvard-educated Goleman was a freelance science writer for The New York Times, where he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
His 1998 article for the Harvard Business Review, entitled What Makes a Leader?, is the most requested reprint in the history of the publication.
By 2002, Goleman was ranked one of the top 10 business intellectuals by the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change.
Goleman first came across the concept of emotional intelligence, which he views as more important for success than cognitive intelligence, while working for The New York Times.
"I was a science journalist and translating science journals for articles and harvesting research," he said, after his seminar at the Irish Management Institute (IMI) in Dublin.
"I read a 1990 article by two Yale professors on emotional intelligence and I thought it was an interesting framework for a book."
His latest bestseller, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, uses the latest findings in biology and brain science to show that we are all "wired to connect" with others, and delves into the surprisingly huge impact our relationships have on every aspect of our lives.
The MBA school at Columbia University has even gone as far as to introduce a programme on social intelligence, featuring courses and extracurricular activities designed to help students learn to manage themselves and teams as well as develop good judgment and decision-making. Peers, career services counsellors and executive coaches help students address the blind spots in their team-building and leadership styles.
"Social intelligence is a combination of our empathy and how we act in relationships," Goleman said at the IMI.
"Neuroscience has discovered the 'social brain', which is designed to attune to the person we're with. The set of brain cells known as 'mirror neurons' act as a wi-fi to others. This is what makes emotions contagious.
"There is an emotional subtext to every encounter we have in life. For instance, the last emotional encounter someone last had with your company is what forms their entire impression of your company. So someone's ability to operate well in this emotional subtext is very important."
Goleman argues that competencies based on emotional intelligence play a far greater role in performance in the workplace than intellect or technical skill. Indeed, emotional intelligence is the distinguishing competency of 85 per cent of top leaders, while IQ and technical skills account for just 15 per cent.
"The 15 per cent of leaders on the cognitive side is about 'big picture thinking'," Goleman said at the IMI. "This is about strategic vision. But once you have that, you can only communicate it through people so you need access to emotional intelligence abilities."
Studies have shown that leaders are hired for cognitive abilities but fired for their lack of emotional intelligence, he told the audience. The good news is people can build up emotional intelligence through self awareness, social awareness, self-management and relationship management.
"Outstanding performers have high self confidence, which is part of self awareness," he said. "Self management is about how we handle our emotions.Take the 'marshmallow test' at Stanford University. They put kids in a room alone one by one and told them they could either have one marshmallow now or wait a while and get two. The children were tracked down 14 years later and the kids who waited for the second marshmallow scored 210 points higher in university entrance exams."
Goleman describes social awareness as a mix of empathy for others and social skills, noting that there is no relation between IQ and empathy.
"Empathy will matter more for business in the future because of two trends.
"The first is the pace of mergers and acquisitions and how you integrate people from two companies and the second is globalisation and diversity amongst clients and staff.In Ireland, there is a huge influx of immigrants. If you don't empathise well with them in the workplace, you will have miscommunication with people who come from different backgrounds.
"For instance, silence in a business meeting in the US is ominous, but in Japan it's a sign of respect for the speaker and that you are thinking about what they said."
After spending years on the global speaking circuit, Goleman plans to scale back these engagements. He is working on a book about "organisational transparency" with Warren Bennis, professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, one of the foremost authorities on organisational development and leadership in the US.
Goleman's latest book will look at "the value of creating a culture of candour, where people can speak openly and managers want to hear bad news as well as good news". "People often sugar coat things in the workplace: no one wants to be the bearer of bad news or be called a whistleblower and fired."
