Is the best leader the smartest?
This is what the first scholars of organizations, such as Max Weber, thought, who believed that the leader had to be as intelligent as able to suppress his emotions in order to make the most appropriate decisions in an exclusively rational way.
Why is the best leader today no longer the most emotionally unavailable?
Because of the experience that shows today that the best leader combines intelligence measured by IQ with emotional intelligence, which we measure with other tests such as the MSCEIT.
Do those who elect leaders really take these emotional tests seriously?
They do them because we have shown that the best predictor of a leader’s success is his emotional intelligence.
How do your tests measure it?
From different angles: if you are asked the most used one, you will see that it consists of proposing emotionally defining situations for you to choose which answer to give.
For example.
You’re on a diet and they proudly offer you a delicious freshly baked chocolate cake: do you eat it to look good? You say you’re on a diet and you apologize? Do you make an excuse and leave? Do you eat it or not?
Can I imagine the answer that suits me best to be elected and lie?
It’s that they will judge you by the expressions on your face. Today we also use videos and recordings in which the subject judges the emotions of the protagonists and thus measure their accuracy in recognizing them.
For example.
A boss yells at a subordinate in the video and you have to recognize his emotion and whether that emotion is constructive or not. And if, faced with the behavior of the employee who tries to deceive everyone, you would call him that too…
What do you advise me to answer?
The truth in an interview always saves you a lifetime of lies. No one knows themselves better than themselves and we have traced the success of these emotional tests and have noted the enormous predictive capacity of a leader’s success.
A tip to improve leaders… already!
You’re doing well here. It’s not just what you say when planning what to say, but how you say it when you say it: tone, gesture, attitude…
We take note.
No matter how much you plan a message to your loved ones, if it’s not the right one – and to be that, it has to be sincere – it will fail, despite the fact that when you prepare it it seems convincing.
How do you get the exact tone?
Broadcast the message to your intimates and ask them: How do I sound? Am I telling the truth?
What should I get?
That they give the best of themselves to the group – performing as a team and being recognized is rewarding for every human being – and offer them support and confidence in themselves without, however kindly, giving them excuses to falter.
With?
It’s not easy. Very few succeed and that is why corporations ask us to take tests to predict their success as leaders.
Who is your favorite leader?
President Eisenhower was demanding and empathetic at the same time: so he was able to get the best of America’s best while battling egos like Churchill or De Gaulle or even Patton.
Steve Jobs?
It is mentioned as oppressive leadership, but also great. The personal computer was actually invented by his first partner, Wozniak, but he knew how to appropriate that talent and that of so many other technological creators who knew how to discover and universalize their achievements.
Bill Gates?
He’s definitely a genius, but…
A little autistic?
…He was criticized for his lack of empathy.
Like Elon Musk. Aren’t there many geniuses who are very unempathetic?
There is a popular theory that links the genes that give us the ability to abstract and structure with a lack of empathy. And my intuition is that perhaps by becoming more and more late parents we encourage them.
To change the world you have to be a little crazy and only crazy people change it?
But the success of the greats is above all a team success. I am not a supporter of the cult of personality. The leader is his circumstances also and his generation and time.
Without Silicon Valley there are no Jobs that count?
Without a country and a system open to innovation, there is no genius that counts.
Without emotional intelligence is there genius?
Another great leader and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, founder of an innovative industrial empire, said: “I have no idea how the machines that engineers design for us work, but I know how their hearts work and that’s why they work with me.” .
