Daniel Goleman Reframes the Intelligence Debate

The author creates the right balance between emotions and intelligence.


Question: What is the relationship between IQ and success?

Daniel Goleman: Yeah.  The key point is that the way we've been thinking about intelligence as just academic intelligence, just IQ, does us a great disservice.  Because IQ turns out to be a very strong predictor of what job you can get in hold.  But interestingly, once you're in that job, you know, once you're a lawyer, once you're a nurse, once you're a, you know, salesperson, it fails to predict how well you will do within that job.  Why?  Because then, what matters is how you handle yourself and how you handle your relationships.  Everybody else is as smart as you are.  So there's a floor effect, basically, for IQ.  So what we should understand is that success in life, not just in career but in your personal life, depends to great extent on these set of abilities and because it does, we should pay attention to nurturing them, to helping kids get it right in the first place.   



Question: What is the relationship between IQ and success?

Daniel Goleman: Yeah.  The key point is that the way we've been thinking about intelligence as just academic intelligence, just IQ, does us a great disservice.  Because IQ turns out to be a very strong predictor of what job you can get in hold.  But interestingly, once you're in that job, you know, once you're a lawyer, once you're a nurse, once you're a, you know, salesperson, it fails to predict how well you will do within that job.  Why?  Because then, what matters is how you handle yourself and how you handle your relationships.  Everybody else is as smart as you are.  So there's a floor effect, basically, for IQ.  So what we should understand is that success in life, not just in career but in your personal life, depends to great extent on these set of abilities and because it does, we should pay attention to nurturing them, to helping kids get it right in the first place.