What will determine their ability to achieve what they have set to do will depend on their emotional intelligence or EI. It links logic, ethics and healthy negotiation.
The concept of EI has been with us for many years. It first appeared in a 1964 research paper by clinical professor of psychology at Cornell 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网, Michael Beldoch. In 1990 it was further developed and discussed by two prominent social psychologists: John Mayer of the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of New Hampshire and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and it was widely popularised by author Dan Goleman in his 1995 book of the same name.
EI is a hotly debated concept and many different definitions have emerged, but Mayer and Salovey’s definition covers most. They define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things – “understand and manage our own emotions”, and “recognise and influence the emotions of others”. The ability to recognise the emotions of others further requires of us to consider and reconsider our own emotional response with the goal of finding the best way forward for all. This is central to leadership.
Leadership is described as “an emotion laden process with the skillful management of followers’ feelings representing a critical leadership function,” in an article titled Emotional Intelligence: Sine Qua Non of Leadership or Folderol? written by leadership and management professors Frank Walter, Michael S. Cole and Ronald H. Humphrey.
They argue that EI is central to the leadership process: “A leader who can effectively display and manage emotions can more strongly and positively influence followers’ feelings and address their concerns with greater proficiency … Scholars have noted that EI can help leaders generate and maintain follower confidence, cooperation, and trust; guide teams through situations of ambiguity, confusion, and conflict; and provide inspiration and a sense of meaning, identity, and commitment to followers”.
If we look at Trump and May and examine whether they are displaying any signs of EI with regards to the Wall and Brexit, we see the following: May has certainly shown tremendous determination in trying to negotiate the Brexit deal, yet she is often attributed with zero EI. This could well be her downfall because for the Brexit deal to be compelling, May needs a master class of EI to communicate the logic of the deal, and achieve the magic majority buy-in from the British parliament. Brexit is supposed to happen in March but as things stand, it doesn’t look the MPs will accept the deal.
Is Trump showing any EI in the case of the Wall? His supporters would argue that he is; that he responded with empathy to their concerns about immigration and that he is a man of integrity who is prepared to shut down the government to achieve it, and take a firm stand against the Democrats who are trying to usurp him. Going back to the second part of Mayer and Salovey’s definition of EI, Trump certainly knows how to “recognise and influence the emotions of others”; not necessarily in a positive way, but he is skilled at manipulating people and playing on their fears.
Those who don’t support Trump say he has zero EI; that he is playing hardball over the Wall, not for the common good but simply because he did not get his own way. Trump’s opponents add that he does not have the EI qualities of temperament, emotional self-mastery or reflection required of a president.
Regarding his communication skills, while there is no doubt that Trump has forever changed the way that leaders communicate, many would argue this is not EI as he is does not even connect with his own staff and his twitter feeds are all too often a barrage of insults and often unintelligible rhetoric. So how did he get to be President of the United States? Well, because he’s a “conman” writes professor of public policy at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of California, Berkeley, Robert Reich in his July 2018 column in Newsweek:
“Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman. He’s always been a conman … and he’s been a great political conman. He conned 62,979,879 Americans to vote for him in November 2016 by getting them to believe his lies about Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the ‘wonderful’, ‘beautiful’ things he’d do for the people who’d support him.”
Grand promises about the Wall were part of this, as was Brexit for May. Their promises were critical to their ascendancy to power but delivering on them is another thing altogether, because the three Aristotelian modes of persuasion, namely ethos, logos and pathos, are lacking in their leadership styles. Ethos meaning ethics, character and credibility; logos meaning reason, logic, facts and figures; and pathos – from the Greek word meaning experience, emotion and suffering – qualities of EI. To be a great leader, you need to be strong in all three. If Trump was scored on these modes, he would in all likelihood get 0 out of 3 and May would get 1.5 out of 3 as she has shown ethos and some logic but pathos, probably not.
In The Secret to Great Communication: Be Like Aristotle, by Harvard keynote speaker and communication specialist Carmine Gallo, says the ancient art of Aristotelian persuasion has regrettably been lost in the modern business (and political) world, yet it remains fundamental because it contains the three ingredients that convince people to go with you and your story over your competitor’s.
Gallo explains that “SAP, a giant business software company that’s global, just hired a relatively new marketing manager in the last year, but her title is Chief Storyteller. Storytelling goes back 2,000 years ago to Aristotle. This is not new. But what they’re finding is that they cannot compete by giving you engineering terms and talking to you about business software that is so complex that it’s hard for the average person to understand.”
Storytelling is all about EI, it is, in essence, pathos, emotion, insight, understanding – all qualities of EI. As Gallo puts it: “You cannot persuade another person to change their mind without pathos, without emotion. Everything about human nature — from the stock market to where we invest to how we vote — is based on our emotional narratives that we tell each other as groups and within individuals.”
Notwithstanding that the nature of leadership is highly complex and nuanced, intuitively we know that leaders who exude EI - who are empathetic, strong, emotional communicators - and who have the temperament to manage power, will, in all likelihood succeed when others do not. Why? Because pathos/EI is as important to them as ethics and logic. It is not seen as a soft skill, quite the contrary; it is recognised as the golden thread of inclusiveness.
A different way of putting this is a quote attributed to Aristotle, Confucius, a native American proverb and an ancient Chinese proverb (clearly indicating its universal wisdom): Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.
In their own ways, Trump and May share the same problem. If you are not going to be inclusive and responsive to people, you are going to fail. Hilary Clinton is a classic example of this. She pretty much accused Trump followers of not being able to think for themselves, calling them a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic “basket of deplorables”. She later apologised but not only had she forever lost a whole lot of voters, she had created enemies who would go out of their way to support Trump’s undermining of her.
Brexit and the Wall are both turning points for May and Trump, and their political futures might significantly unravel because inclusivity and EI are not there. Will this be the ultimate death knell for their long-term leadership tenure? During the course of 2019 we shall see.