Introduction
This report describes the results of a pilot study that has been set up[1] to test whether emotional intelligence – seen as one of the main qualities of an effective leader – can be improved not only by leveraging on the personal relational experiences, but also through the mental training provided by studying the science of negotiation[2].
[1] For the collection of data and the analysis of the results, a special thanks goes to Dr. Lorenzo Di Luzio and Dr. Giulio Zorzi.
[2] D. T. Malhotra – M. H. Bazerman, Negotiation Genius, Harvard Business School, Bantam Books, 2007, p. 19: “Under the false assumption that negotiation is “all art and no science,” most people fail to prepare adequately for negotiation.
The key competence supporting an effective leadership
More and more often what is required to people (by boards of directors, recruiters, as well as we ourselves …) to assume a leadership position is just the opposite of what it takes to be an effective leader. In fact, overconfidence, narcissism (often mistaken for “vision” and “creativity”) and the perception of charisma help people (especially men) reach a leadership position. But once this position is achieved, the same competences and features turn against the organizations themselves, negatively affecting the performance of the groups. Indeed, according to conventional wisdom, managing people requires charisma[1], vision, and a commanding manner—but not negotiation competencies. This is a common misconception about the nature of leadership which, in fact, is viewed as a personality trait and not as a relationship between the leader and her followers. Therefore, equating leadership potential with negative personality traits (of men) has therefore created an imperfect system that keeps leadership standards low and ends up rewarding incompetent leaders[2]. Indeed, leadership must be considered as a relationship between the leader and her followers[3]. Therefore, to improve the quality of our leadership, we should evaluate the “leadership potential” by verifying that candidates possess genuine social competencies. This is because being an effective leader is strictly related to the ability to build relations with followers. So, the question is: which kind of competences can be decisive for increasing the quality of leadership? To find it out, let’s take a little step back.
[1] As pointed out by Prof. T. Chamorro-Premuzic charisma – as a personality trait– does not exist. It is only a perception of the followers. When a leader is confident and narcissistic, followers perceive him or her as charismatic. Charisma is like love at first sight. It makes us blind to the dangerousness of the other. In fact, we tend to defend the choices of a person whom we perceive as charismatic without requiring evidence to support his or her grand visions. And we will not be objective even when we have to evaluate his or her performance. History teaches us that a leader who is perceived as charismatic can use charisma to gain power, manipulate followers and pursue his or her own personal interests. In spite of this, we continue to choose charismatic leaders. And we do not realize that the most effective leaders in the world, on the contrary, are humble people; people who are excellent not at promoting themselves, but at increasing the ability of their followers to work together in the interest of the group (see T. Chamorro-Premuzic Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).
[2] T. Chamorro-Premuzic, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.
[3] J. W. Salacuse, Real Leaders Negotiate! – Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation, Palgrave mac millan, 2017.
What does emotional intelligence have to do with leadership?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage one’s own and other people’s emotions and it includes all those competences that allow people to socially interact and to cooperate with each other[1]. Scholars have demonstrated that all individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence are much more effective in leadership roles and that there is a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and leadership[2]. This is because work – and, therefore, leadership – is about interacting with people.
[1] T. Bradberry, J. Greaves, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, TalentSmart, 2009; D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, 2020.
[2] T. Chamorro-Premuzic, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019; D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, 2020; D. Goleman, The emotionally intelligent leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.
[1] As pointed out by Prof. T. Chamorro-Premuzic charisma – as a personality trait– does not exist. It is only a perception of the followers. When a leader is confident and narcissistic, followers perceive him or her as charismatic. Charisma is like love at first sight. It makes us blind to the dangerousness of the other. In fact, we tend to defend the choices of a person whom we perceive as charismatic without requiring evidence to support his or her grand visions. And we will not be objective even when we have to evaluate his or her performance. History teaches us that a leader who is perceived as charismatic can use charisma to gain power, manipulate followers and pursue his or her own personal interests. In spite of this, we continue to choose charismatic leaders. And we do not realize that the most effective leaders in the world, on the contrary, are humble people; people who are excellent not at promoting themselves, but at increasing the ability of their followers to work together in the interest of the group (see T. Chamorro-Premuzic Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).
[2] T. Chamorro-Premuzic, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.
[3] J. W. Salacuse, Real Leaders Negotiate! – Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation, Palgrave mac millan, 2017.
Leadership is based on human interaction. Negotiation is the science of human interaction. Can leadership potential be improved by studying the science of negotiation?
As anticipated, this research moves from the assumption that leadership is not a personal quality or a personality trait. Leadership is rather the outcome of an effective relationship between the leader and the followers[1]. Building this relationship involves knowing the other, “putting oneself in their shoes”. And the basic tool to build this relationship is the ability to learn about the interests and emotions of the followers (rather than trying to become a more visionary or charismatic leader). In other words, establishing this relationship depends on our emotional intelligence and on our capacity for human interaction. Negotiation is the science of human interaction in such a way that studying the science of negotiation enables to learn how to “learn” about others. Indeed, negotiation has nothing to do with “speaking to win”, with “attacking or defending our position” or with “getting what we want”. On the contrary, it has a lot to do with “listening and learning from the other”. Negotiation is a learning process[2]. This learning process is based on a strategic communication with high emotional impact that has essentially to do with human being interaction. Despite this, negotiation is not yet considered central to a leader’s competencies[3]. This is why we decided to better investigate the link between the ability to negotiate and the emotional intelligence and, therefore, the link between the ability to negotiate leadership potential. Grounding on this, we developed a research to verify whether emotional intelligence and, therefore, leadership potential can be improved not only with personal experiences, but also through the mental training provided by studying the science of negotiation.
In particular, given that:
- negotiation is the science of human interaction,
- studying the science of negotiation is based on the simulation of relational reality,
- the science of negotiation (just like art, novels, films, poetry, singing, theater, opera) provides a mental training about ours and others’ emotions and interests,
the aim of the research was to verify whether the mental training (based on theory and role play about conflicts and human interaction) done during the attendance of the NegotiatingLab – exactly like personal experiences – helps develop the basic elements of emotional intelligence (namely social awareness, relationship management, self-awareness, and self-management)[4] and, therefore, the leadership potential.
[1] J. W. Salacuse, Real Leaders Negotiate! – Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation, Palgrave mac millan, 2017.
[2] A. MONORITI – R. GABELLINI, NegoziAzione – Il Manuale dell’interazione umana, Giuffrè, 2018.
[3] J.W. Salacuse, Real Leaders Negotiate – Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation, 2017, page 1: “According to conventional wisdom, real leaders don’t negotiate… For many executives, negotiation is a tool to use outside the organization to deal with customers, suppliers and creditors. Inside, the organization, it’s strictly “my way or the highway”… That’s because most people think that leadership and negotiation are two different skills that don’t have much to do with one another. For them, strong leaders command and weak leaders negotiate…The conventional wisdom is wrong …”.
[4] We must never forget, in fact, that, also in order to gain self-awareness, it is essential to understand how our actions are perceived by others and what others think of us. Our emotional stability cannot depend only on the attempt to self-regulate our relationship with ourselves (as if the brain were a “closed circuit” system), but also depends on our ability to understand our relationship with the external environment and is, in particular, linked to interaction with other people.
[1] T. Bradberry, J. Greaves, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, TalentSmart, 2009; D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, 2020.
[2] T. Chamorro-Premuzic, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019; D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, 2020; D. Goleman, The emotionally intelligent leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.
[1] As pointed out by Prof. T. Chamorro-Premuzic charisma – as a personality trait– does not exist. It is only a perception of the followers. When a leader is confident and narcissistic, followers perceive him or her as charismatic. Charisma is like love at first sight. It makes us blind to the dangerousness of the other. In fact, we tend to defend the choices of a person whom we perceive as charismatic without requiring evidence to support his or her grand visions. And we will not be objective even when we have to evaluate his or her performance. History teaches us that a leader who is perceived as charismatic can use charisma to gain power, manipulate followers and pursue his or her own personal interests. In spite of this, we continue to choose charismatic leaders. And we do not realize that the most effective leaders in the world, on the contrary, are humble people; people who are excellent not at promoting themselves, but at increasing the ability of their followers to work together in the interest of the group (see T. Chamorro-Premuzic Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).
[2] T. Chamorro-Premuzic, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (and how to fix it), Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.
[3] J. W. Salacuse, Real Leaders Negotiate! – Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation, Palgrave mac millan, 2017.
The pilot study
As said, this study – carried out involving Luiss University students who attended the NegotiatingLab and the New Technologies and Labour Law courses in 2021 – moves from the assumption that emotional intelligence is an essential quality for leadership. We will refer to students attending the NegotiatingLab as the “Experimental Group” and to students attending the New Technologies and Labour Law course as the “Control Group”.
Data collection and Method
For the purpose of this study, we enrolled a cohort of 28 students of which 13 attending the Laboratory of Negotiation (NegotiatingLab)[1] and 15 attending the New Technologies and Labour Law course at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome between September and December 2021.
Both courses took place one day per week. Data were collected at two different points in time: first, at the very beginning of the courses; second, at the very end of the courses. We will refer to the first survey as Survey1 and to the second survey as Survey2.
The survey was built around the following sections:
1. Demographics,
2. Course structure,
3. Emotional intelligence,
4. Leadership.
Section 1 included questions regarding:
- Citizenship of the respondent,
- Date of birth,
- Gender,
- Prior work experiences,
- Prior volunteering experiences,
While Section 2 asked questions regarding the following:
– Which purpose the respondents perceive the course had,
– What they believe they learned while attending the course.
Apart from Section 1 and 2, the remaining sections were developed based on already validated self-perception measurement scales, grounded on either a 6 or a 5-point Likert scale. Here below we provide an overview of them (Table 1).
[1] The full program of the science of negotiation course is shown in the table of contents of A. MONORITI – R. GABELLINI, NegoziAzione – Il Manuale dell’interazione umana, Giuffrè, 2018. The course also required students to engage in various role plays.
Construct | #items | Item sample | Scale | Source |
Emotional intelligence | 1=Never, 6=Always | Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional Intelligence 2.0. TalentSmart | ||
Self-awareness | 6 | “How frequently are you confident in your ability?” | ||
Self-management | 9 | “How frequently do you handle stress well?” | ||
Social awareness | 5 | “How frequently do you realize when others influence your emotional state?” | ||
Relationship management | 8 | “How frequently are you open to feedback?” | ||
Leadership | 1=Never, 6=Always | Arnold, J. A., Arad, S., Rhoades, J. A., & Drasgow, F. (2000). The empowering leadership questionnaire: The construction and validation of a new scale for measuring leader behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(3), 249-269 | ||
Leadership skills | ||||
Participative decision making | 6 | “I encourage work group members to express ideas/suggestions” | ||
Coaching | 11 | “I help my work group see areas in which we need more training” |
Table 1: Measurement scales used in the surveys
As reported above, to measure possible changes occurring in the examined variables, we administered our survey at two different points in time (i.e. at the beginning and at the end of the courses). Then, for each student we calculated the total average of the variables which was therefore used to compare the results of each student between Survey1 and Survey 2, as well as between the Experimental Group and the Control Group.
Lastly, the Shapiro-Wilk test was performed to check for the normality in order to decide the most appropriate test to be used.
Empirical Results
Emotional intelligence
In order to measure whether respondents changed their emotional intelligence following the participation in the courses, for both groups we compared the average of the four emotional intelligence dimensions of each student between Survey1 and Survey2. Table 2 below shows the findings emerged for the Experimental Group, while Table 3 illustrates those relating the Control Group.
As shown in Table 4, we see the Total Averages of each column, where the Survey1 marked a 4.27 score and the Survey2 marked a 4.64 score. The difference in total averages is 0.37 which means a rise of 8.62% of the students’ emotional intelligence. The results are confirmed by the T-Test performed and they are statistically significant with a p-value of 0.000023.