Imagine yourself as a four year old. A friendly guy in white invites you and other kids into a plain room where a big fluffy marshmallow sits. "You can have this marshmallow right now," he whispers. "But if you wait until I get back, you will get two." And then he leaves.

It turns out that how you will deal with the marshmallow would pretty much predict how you will end up as an adult years later.

For sure, all of us have heard about the marshmallow test and the tremendous impact it would later have on child psychology, learning and education. Who could have known that a clueless marshmallow would be able to predict how emotionally intelligent a child will grow up as an adult.

Emotional intelligence (EI) may be defined as a set of competencies demonstrating a person's ability to recognize his or her behavior, moods, and impulses vis-à-vis other people, and to manage them best according to the situation. This typically involves emotional empathy, emotional self-awareness, mood management, adaptive responsiveness, and good social or communication skills.

Proponents say that EI is important in the workplace because many companies have traditionally focused their selection criteria and training programs either on hard skills such as technical expertise and industry knowledge despite the fact that unmet emotional needs actually cause most of the problems at work. Moreover, a survey of 515 senior executives conducted by the search firm Egon Zehnder International found that those who were primarily strong in EI were more likely to succeed than those who were strongest in either relevant previous experience or IQ.

So the question is, should companies now shift to an HR development program that focuses more on honing emotional intelligence than actual skills and experience? As HR practitioners, I believe we have to be a bit discerning.

Strictly speaking, intelligence does not come from emotions. Rather, it is a manifestation of one's collective ability to think rationally, abstractly and conceptually based on one's experience and skills acquired over time.

And if you are still not convinced about this word of caution, take heed on this. A 2008 CEO study by PricewaterhouseCoopers even found that what companies around the world are looking for are leaders with technical and business expertise, global experience, innovativeness, creativity, and the knack to manage risk effectively rather than on "soft" or EI skills. Due to the uncertainty of current economic climates, CEOs have become more concerned about finding and retaining people with enough technical and business experience who can manage risk just as well as being able to adjust quickly to the organization's internal and external environment.

Moreover, according to many experts, EI remains to be a purely subjective and relative concept. No research (yes, including the above marshmallow test experiment) has actually been able to establish with conclusive proof the correlation between EI and future success.

In other words, while academics explore and refine the idea of what it means to be emotionally intelligent, it might be better to take a step back, go beyond expert claims, check models and research designs, and do your own research about EI. Indeed, it would not hurt to apply a little IQ before giving in to the EQ issue, after all as David Caruso, a recognized EI expert himself aptly put it, "...emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head -- it is the unique intersection of both." In short, it is a balance of the heart and the mind. --- JK

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