New studies of the brain show that leaders can improve group performance by understanding the biology of empathy. by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis

and the Biology of

Social Intelligence
Leadership
IN 1998, ONE OF US, DANIEL GOLEMAN, published in these pages his first article on emotional intelligence and leadership. The response to “What Makes a Leader?” was enthusiastic. People throughout and beyond the business community started talking about the vital role that empathy and self-knowledge play in effective leadership. The concept of emotional intelligence continues to occupy a prominent space in the leadership literature and in everyday coaching practices. But in the past five years, research in the emerging field of social neuroscience – the study of what happens in the brain while people interact – is beginning to reveal subtle new truths about what makes a good leader.
Jean-François Podevin
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74 Harvard Business Review

September 2008

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hbr.org

Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership

but their inability to get along socially on the job was profesThe salient discovery is that certain things leaders do – spesionally self-defeating. cifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ What’s new about our definition of social intelligence is moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and its biological underpinning, which we will explore in the folthat of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the lowing pages. Drawing on the work of neuroscientists, our leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) indeown research and consulting endeavors, and the findings of pendent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each researchers affiliated with the Consortium for Research on other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, we will show you into a