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Home » How We’ve Been Misled by ‘Emotional Intelligence’: Kris Girrell at TEDxNatick (Transcript)

How We’ve Been Misled by ‘Emotional Intelligence’: Kris Girrell at TEDxNatick (Transcript)

Kris Girrell

Here is the full transcript of author and executive leadership consult Kris Girrell’s TEDx Talk: How We’ve Been Misled by ‘Emotional Intelligence’ at TEDxNatick conference.

TRANSCRIPT: 

You know, we’d all be a whole lot better if we could just learn to speak in equations. That’s what a scientist once told me, once when I was working with him on his leadership skills. Of course, you and I know how awful that would be, because most of what we receive in communication happens beyond the words we speak, in the form of the cues that we pick up from each other. And people who are able to pick up on those cues are said to have emotional intelligence.

Research also tells us that great leaders are also good at emotional intelligence. But my question is: what if you’re not so good. Is something that you can learn? Is there something that opens up that emotional can of worms inside and helps us better understand what’s going on inside us and our friends and our co-workers?

Well, about five years ago, I experienced a perfect storm of three things coming together that opened this conversation for me. And I’d like to share with you what happened in the process.

The first was, I had just written a book called A Married Man’s Survival Guide, which was based on having interviewed a bunch of men who had been monogamously married for 35 to 60 years. So I had a fresh set of clues that perhaps I was not the only man around who had a fairly skimpy emotional toolbox.

The second thing was, I had begun researching a theological principle called the dark night of the soul which is that scary place where everything that you hold to be true in explaining how the world works no longer explains your current situation.