Beyond Emotional Intelligence

1The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence

Each generation rides on the invisible wings of the great thinkers and doers who came before them but from whose departure in substance, style, and approach we often stand to gain. What if we hadn't moved beyond the insights of Aristotle or Newton, for example? Without even knowing it, we are constantly iterating upon the uptake of residual knowledge of those who have come before us, be it our teachers, our contemporaries, or the collective wisdom (or lack thereof) of the context in which we find ourselves. In writing this book, I've often pondered where the world might be if the big thinkers in the various fields of science or quantum mechanics had as their primary object of inquiry the mind and had rigorously applied their fancy-pants formulas and analysis to its movement and behavior. Or what if the most skilled meditation masters had applied their wisdom and direct experience of the mind to the study and behavior of the physical universe? And how amazing would it be if there were a clearer path between the two, a practical crosswalk between them?

The Business Context from Which Emotional Intelligence Emerged

Thanks to the collective wisdom of the younger generations and those who are demanding a new model of leadership and ways of doing business, the leadership paradigms of yesterday are starting to budge—maybe not as much in practice or as quickly as we'd like, but they are shifting. A senior leader I worked with in the investment ...