The EQ Leader. Stein Steven J.

has been a lot of controversy around the concept of IQ, both at schools and in workplaces. There have been debates around the influence of genetics and the environment (i.e., nature vs. nurture). More controversies arose over cultural and racial differences. Nevertheless, IQ or cognitive intelligence has been a powerful force in the selection of students for university, graduate and professional programs, and for many workplaces.

      What Is IQ?

      IQ testing has evolved somewhat since the days of Binet and Simon. Let's look at what cognitive ability tests actually measure today. They evaluate your ability to concentrate and plan, to organize material, to use words to understand, assimilate, and interpret facts. In essence, IQ is a measure of your personal information bank – your memory, vocabulary, mathematical skills, and visual-motor coordination. Some of these skills are clearly relevant in the workplace.

      We've had a hundred years of research on cognitive intelligence testing and its ability to predict outcomes. Where do we stand on the ability of IQ to predict work success? Richard Wagner, in a major review of the topic, examining reviews of reviews and covering hundreds of studies with thousands of subjects, came to some interesting conclusions. His review of reviews (or meta-analysis) found that overall, proponents of IQ testing interpret the research estimating that it accounts for 25 percent of the variance in predicting job performance. In other words, 25 percent of an individual's job performance is attributable to their IQ. However, looking more realistically at the studies, and taking out some of the inflationary estimates, Wagner concludes the number is closer to 4 to 9 percent of the variance.32 Even if 25 percent of job performance was accounted for by IQ, that leaves 75 percent unaccounted for. The left-out factors could include experience, education, technical skills, and others.

      In another review by Robert Sternberg when he was at Yale University, the IQ was estimated to account for only 4 percent of the variance in job performance.33 That means about 96 percent of work performance was due to variables other than cognitive intelligence. Sternberg goes on to stress the virtues of practical intelligence, or common sense, in predicting job success. In my own experience, emotional intelligence can account for a substantial amount of variation in job performance.

      What Is Emotional Intelligence?

      While emotional intelligence is a relatively new concept, the skills we talk about have been around as long as humans have lived together in groups. The set of skills that make up emotional intelligence have evolved along with humankind. The need to cope, to adapt, and to get along with others was crucial to the survival of the early hunter-gatherer societies. The human brain reflects this undeniable fact. Sophisticated mapping techniques have confirmed that many thought processes pass through the brain's emotion centers as they take the physiological journey that converts information into individual action or response.

      On the one hand, then, emotion is as old as time. In the 1870s, Charles Darwin published the first modern book on the role of emotional expression in survival and adaptation.34 Darwin's book was titled The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. As already mentioned, there has been a great deal of controversy over our measures of cognitive intelligence being fair among races and cultures. In fact, there are prohibitions on this type of testing in some jurisdictions. When it comes to understanding emotions, however, Darwin went beyond cultures and examined the transferability of emotional expressions among species. I often ask audiences in my presentations if they have pets. Of the many that do, I ask how many pet owners recognize when their pet is happy, sad, excited, or scared. Without hesitation they all nod and smile. Well, if we can read emotions across species, then there should be fairly clear rules that work across cultures and race. And our research demonstrates this to be true. Of course sometimes it takes a lot of effort and expense for researchers to discover things that many people already know from their own experience.

      Why is this important? Darwin documented the importance of emotions as a signaling system. The angry look on the wolf's face serves as a signal that the hunter ignores at his peril. The flight-or-fight response kicks in when reading the anger on the wolf's face. This ability to read these emotions, according to Darwin, led to humans' survival. The lower, more primitive areas of the brain mediate this response. These are the same parts that control your emotional responses today. The sections of the brain are called the limbic system and the hippocampus.