Social Intelligence

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Anderson on January 23, 2010 at 11:05pm

Malcolm Gladwell has written a number of excellent books on the human thought process, many of which are actually readable by regular people.
Try Blink.

In Blink, you will find mention of Dr. Paul Ekman: he has written many books on facial expressions and has some training available. It's mostly based on figuring out when people are lying, but that's an important part of social intelligence.
If you start taking the training, I would not discuss it. I think it would alarm the people around you. I would prefer not to find this out through practical experience.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kimberly Smith on February 11, 2010 at 3:34pm

Martin,

I have found this book useful, although "Emotional Intelligence" in my opinion, was better. After obsessing about everything I read in these books, then getting on with life, I realized I became aware of one very important fact. When someone recognizes that another person is genuinely interested in them, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions, they open up.

While some poeple will use this simple fact to harm someone else, how much better if you use the skill to improve their life? And isn't that why people are in business? To make a profit while bettering someone else's life in some way?

What I got out of the book is "just pay attention".

Kimberly

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Erlinda Silva-Parris on February 22, 2010 at 4:26pm

Hello Everyone, I was drawn to this group by this question. Social Intelligence!?

I also have asked these question to myself many times. Although, I have always questioned the determinism of certain personality, self help theories, I have been enlightened by one while working as a strenght coach to improve workplace performance. The Talent theory of Gallup can be very resourceful to start understanding how people are motivated, how their thought process works, how they get things done, and most importantly, how to manage them. If you wish to read the book and discuss it, I would love it.

Besides that, I believe this type of understanding comes with the re-elaboration of an experience. Thus, I make the effort to see it around me. It is in the dynamic of our rule playing, the environment we are living or adapting to that we can draw some hypothesis. The general agreement is that "WE" like to talk about ourselves - but body language is interesting when we start to think about mimicking. Have you ever tried that?

For those who like TV, it is very interesting to see the role/behavior/motivation changing on the NCIS series. I think the author is very clever on this matter. In literature, we can see how Dostojevski built his character in Crime and Punishment or in the Idiots.
That's why I believe in the uses of some dynamics as helpful tool to dramatize a rule to identify motivations to change, to act, to react, to generate peace.

That being said, all these effort to understand people worthies ones attention. Specially, when we are responsible for creating enjoyable, safe and productive work places for people with great talents.

I love the question, and would challenge the group in a little resource building to this discussion. It would be nice hearing about examples, moments, and resolution of a situation in which was required of you "social intelligence" as defined by Martin Dimier.

I will come back to it latter. Now, back to work!

Thanks for reading!

▶ Reply to This