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Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence

Table of Contents
I. Introduction

Introduction

JOHN WAS A DATABASE MANAGER at a northeastern financial services company. He was conscientious and brilliant — he knew how to fix technical problems that eluded others. After a notable couple of years, he was promoted. Again his technical wizardry won him admiration. When the vice president of information technology left in the midst of an upgrade to the database system, senior management looked to fill the position as soon as possible. John was the likely candidate and he got the job.
John had been promoted to his level of incompetence. But it wasn't technical incompetence; John was totally lacking in social and personal abilities. He communicated via e-mail only, often with terse comments. He was quick to put others down who could not grasp his level of technical expertise. He didn't trust that anyone knew as much as he did and often micromanaged. He continued to demand reports and analysis from his employees but rarely spent time in discussion with them. John's high IQ did not prepare him to use "people" skills.

"Emotional intelligence" is the term now used to describe personal and social skills. These often include what might be called "soft skills" — intuition, sensitivity, creativity, cooperation, social ability, knowledge sharing, empathy, rapport, adaptability and teamwork. But soft skills is a misnomer.
The science of direct marketing relies on analytical, factual, logical and systematic skills to bring about improved business effectiveness. But in addition to being a front-runner in using the technological advances of the past decade, the DM business embraced the improvement systems of the '80s and '90s including the quality movement, re-engineering and customer relationship management.
There also have been an unprecedented number of direct marketers getting MBAs and postgraduate degrees. In the past, those skills have helped individuals grow in their chosen DM...