This weekend I got the chance to catch up with his follow-up work, “Social Intelligence – The new science of Human Relationships”. Daniel describes Social Intelligence as the interpersonal part of Emotional Intelligence. He argues that human beings are “wired to connect” with brains of other individuals. Our brain is “Social”, meaning that our interactions with others, verbal or visual, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins–and bad relationships like poisons. Daniel points out those emotions are “contagious” – we can “catch” other people’s emotions the way we catch a cold. The “Social Brain” has something called “Mirror Neurons”, which sense both the move another person is about to make and their feelings, and instantaneously prepares us to imitate that movement and feel with them. This is extremely important when you consider implications on the business world, when negotiating with the opposite party, and especially in Leadership. Followers are naturally attuned to mirror the emotions of the leaders.

Hmmmm… does this make it all the more important for leaders to manage emotions? Sometimes I think of a true leader as a symphony conductor – aware and being one with the surroundings, attuned to each and every musician in his group, expert in communication both verbally, by movements of the hand, gestures, facial expressions… all in order to create a state of the art experience for the audience – the final product. Agree/Disagree?

The book points to experiments, like a British study of health care workers who had supervisors on alternate days, once they dreaded and one they liked. One the days the dreadful boss worked, their average blood pressure jumped 13 points for the systolic and 6 for diastolic. Wow. I guess now those law suites we hear of… where employees claim heath issues from workplace harassement, may hold some truth. 

Too often, when leaders deliver a message, the content takes the first seat and the “HOW” is ignored. Daniel points out to a study where when a manager delivered a piece of bad news (disappointment that an employer had failed to reach performance goals) with a warm demeanor, people neverthless rated the interaction positively. When good news (pleasure that the goals had been met) was delivered with sullen expression, the interaction paradoxically left people feeling bad. This points to the fact that leader’s emotional tone has a surprising power over the organization.

Interestingly, Daniel points out that today’s technological advances which have given birth to the concept of “global communities” and “online virtual worlds” might have a sinister down-side. He discusses the concept of social corrosion resulting from “technocreep”:

“… There are unknowns in the ways humans around the words are connecting – and disconnecting –as technology offers more varieties of nominal communication in actual isolation. These trends signal the slow vanishing of opportunities for people to connect. This inexplorable technocreep is so insidious that no one has yet calculated its social and emotional costs.”

“The one-person shell created by headphones intensifies social insulation. Even when the wearer has a one-on-one face-to-face encounter, the sealed ears offer a ready excuse to treat the people as an object, something to navigate around rather than someone to acknowledge, or, at the very least, notice.”

Daniel argues, “to the extent that technology absorbs people in a virtual reality, it deadens them to those who are actually nearby. The resulting social autism adds to the ongoing list of unintended consequences of the continuing invasion of technology into our daily lives”

Daniel makes a powerful point… which I hate to admit, I have noticed myself. Looking back, I can see how I switched from the good old paperback edition of books to MP3 versions. The convenience and ease is just undeniably one of those things that attracted me to audio books in the first place. Plugin that iPod and take it wherever you go… the long drive, the gym, the walk from the parking lot to work… however, I realize that I DID get in a “bubble” when listening to those books… sometimes so much so that a 10 hour cross-state drive seemed like something I looked forward to!! Yeah – that’s sick for sure. And lemme not forget my huge twitter list who I believe NEED to know everything and anything I do. And my virtual social network, on those gazillion websites out there, where I HAVE to drop in to “show some luv”. Have you paused and wondered if a comment on “My Wall” is really something that “connects” me to my ”virtual” peep sitting in Russia? Do we really understand Social Networking?

“In 1970s two-thirds of Americans belonged to organizational with regular meetings that they attended. That number has dropped to about one-third by the 1990s… New organizations keep people at a distance. Membership comes via e-mails or mass-mailings, and the main activity boils down to sending money, not getting together.”

I agree with Daniel that this new “communication culture” is still too new. There are unknowns in the ways humans around the world are connecting – and man disconnecting – as technology offers more varieties. Are we losing that “personal touch”? Am still looking for that “right answer” – What do you think?

The book has a vast multitude of stories and references to research materials which makes it a very interesting read. Usually I take at least a week to finish off a book, mostly reading an hour or so in the night… but this one got me reading all through thanksgiving

Check out the “introductory” video by Daniel Goleman below… and also 2 related posts – Daniel points out the connection between Social Intelligence and Leadership, and the inspiring Ted presentation on Compassion and Empathy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Eric Haseltine:
Haseltine is associate director for science and technology for the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI), where he is responsible for ensuring that U.S. intelligence stays on the cutting edge of research and development.

Haseltine bears one of the more colorful résumés at the DNI. A former director of engineering for Hughes Aircraft, he served as head of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he managed the Virtual Reality Studio and oversaw key technology initiatives for the Disney Co. After Disney, he joined the code-breaking, eavesdropping National Security Agency as R&D chief, then began work for the DNI in June last year.

Read more about Eric Haseltine

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About Daniel Goleman:
Daniel Goleman brought the notion of “EI” to prominence as an alternative to more traditional measures of IQ with his 1995 mega-best-seller Emotional Intelligence.

Since the publication of that book, conferences and academic institutes have sprung up dedicated to the idea. EI is taught in public schools, and corporate leaders have adopted it as a new way of thinking about success and leadership. EI, and one’s “EIQ,” can be an explanation of why some “average” people are incredibly successful, while “geniuses” sometimes fail to live up to their promise.

He advocates taking problems slowly – noting that expertise comes with approx. 10,000 hours of training. He thereby identifies the ‘mismatch problem’, which is simply the idea that standards used to judge/predict success in a given field don’t match what it takes to be successful in that field.

For example, when diagnosing colonoscopies, it’s how much time the doctor spends on each colonoscopy, not how smart they are, how much training they have, where s/he went to school etc. that determines success. If you spend more than 10 minutes on each colonoscopy rather than one, you’ll find the cancers. However, we select and train doctors for their cognitive facility, for, amongst other things, the speed at which they acquire information and the efficiency with which they go about their tasks.

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About Malcolm Gladwell:
Malcolm Gladwell specializes in surprises — counterintuitive truths discovered by clever researchers, obscure historians, and ordinary people observing the world. In his first year as a staff writer at the “New Yorker in 1996, he captivated readers with an article titled “The Tipping Point,” which grappled with a mysterious sudden drop in New York City crime, by applying the principles of epidemiology to policing. “The Tipping Point” ultimately became a book and has remained on the New York Times best-seller lists for years.

Meanwhile, Gladwell has gone on to explore similar mismatches — mammography and fighter jets (it’s all about seeing), pit bulls and racial profiling, Wayne Gretsky and Yo-Yo Ma — writing cross-disciplinary articles that illuminate hidden facts about group behavior, business and individual selves. Gladwell began 2007 with a controversial look at the Enron case, distinct from all the reportage that’s come before.

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About Mike McCready:
Mike McCready is an entrepreneur and executive in the international music industry and has been referred to as the founder of the field of Music Intelligence. Mike grew up in both Ord and Broken Bow, Nebraska and now lives in Manhattan and Barcelona. He currently serves as CEO of Platinum Blue Music Intelligence a company he co-founded with another leader in the music intelligence field, Tracie Reed.

Platinum Blue uses technology to analyze the underlying mathematical properties of music in order to generate insightful music recommendations and to help create and market hit songs for major music labels and top producers. Before co-founding Platinum Blue he co-founded and served as CEO at Polyphonic HMI from November 2001 to December 2005.

He has recently joined the advisory board of an exciting company in Dallas, Texas called Dremāk. The company is installing mini-recording and audition studios in shopping malls and commercial centers which will allow budding artists to record demos, audition for opportunities in Hollywood or Broadway without having to travel or just have a professional record of their work.

About Malcolm Gladwell:
Malcolm Gladwell specializes in surprises — counterintuitive truths discovered by clever researchers, obscure historians, and ordinary people observing the world. In his first year as a staff writer at the “New Yorker in 1996, he captivated readers with an article titled “The Tipping Point,” which grappled with a mysterious sudden drop in New York City crime, by applying the principles of epidemiology to policing. “The Tipping Point” ultimately became a book and has remained on the New York Times best-seller lists for years.

Meanwhile, Gladwell has gone on to explore similar mismatches — mammography and fighter jets (it’s all about seeing), pit bulls and racial profiling, Wayne Gretsky and Yo-Yo Ma — writing cross-disciplinary articles that illuminate hidden facts about group behavior, business and individual selves. Gladwell began 2007 with a controversial look at the Enron case, distinct from all the reportage that’s come before.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About James Surowiecki:
James Surowiecki is the foremost authority on how to harness the collective wisdom of your organization for competitive advantage. He has written a well-received book on the theory and practice of “The Wisdom of Crowds—Why The Many Are Smarter Than The Few And How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies And Nations”.

In The Wisdom of Crowds, Jim describes systematic ways to organize and aggregate the intelligence available in your organization in order to arrive at superior decisions—often better than those that individuals would make, even if they are ‘experts’.

The book and Jim’s presentations based on the book are full of insights into how groups operate that are invaluable to business leaders. He also offers practical methods, tailored to his audience, for leveraging people and technology to learn what you need to know and make decisions that really serve the organization’s goals.

Jim writes a twice-monthly financial column for The New Yorker that is typically pegged to current events and incorporates the kind of insights from economics, sociology, and business history that make The Wisdom of Crowds so valuable.

He has written for a broad range of other publications on a wide variety of topics. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal and other major publications. He wrote “The Bottom Line” column for New York magazine, and was a contributing editor at Fortune.

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About Jeff Hawkins:
Jeff Hawkins pioneered the development of PDAs such as the Palm and Treo. Now he’s trying to understand how the human brain really works, and adapt its method — which he describes as a deep system for storing memory — to create new kinds of computers and tools.

Jeff Hawkins’ Palm PDA became such a widely used productivity tool during the 1990s that some fanatical users claimed it replaced their brains. But Hawkins’ deepest interest was in the brain itself. So after the success of the Palm and Treo, which he brought to market at Handspring, Hawkins delved into brain research at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in Berkeley, Calif., and a new company called Numenta.

Hawkins’ dual goal is to achieve an understanding of how the human brain actually works — and then develop software to mimic its functionality, delivering true artificial intelligence. In his book On Intelligence (2004) he lays out his compelling, controversial theory: Contrary to popular AI wisdom, the human neocortex doesn’t work like a processor; rather, it relies on a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. He think that “hierarchical temporal memory” computer platforms, which mimic this functionality (and which Numenta might pioneer), could enable groundbreaking new applications that could powerfully extend human intelligence.