Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

58 LEADING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Today it is
more and more
apparent how
blind spots in
the personal
competencies
of executives’
Emotional
Intelligence
have led to the
greed, lying, and
manipulations
inside some major
corporations.
day a politician, sports fi gure, or celebrity
falls from grace.
Many of these former Star Performers
who became fallen heroes had the inability
to delay gratification. Goleman talks about
the “amygdala hijack,” a situation where
your brain’s alarm system overrules executive
functioning in the prefrontal lobes. 80
The amygdala is the brain’s alarm
center. It houses the ancient emotional
brain, which plays a key role in reacting to
emergencies. It also is the center of emotional
memory and responds to threats
with primitive reactions of fi ght or fl ight.
The prefrontal lobes of the brain dictate
executive functioning, including decisionmaking,
planning, comprehension, reasoning,
and learning. For most people, their
prefrontal lobes organize around executive functioning, bringing
rational thought and control to the initial amygdala reaction. But
it doesn’t always work that way. In Chapter 2 you will learn more
about the neuroscience behind the amygdala hijack, how it affects
IQ and performance, and about the tools to enhance emotional selfcontrol.
THE MARSHMALLOW STUDY
Four-year-olds at Stanford Pre-school were each given a marshmallow
by a researcher. They were told, “You can have this marshmallow
now if you want, but if you don’t eat it until after I run an
errand, you can have two when I return.” Some students immediately
ate the marshmallow; others contrived all kinds of distractions
for themselves to manage the urge to grab and swallow it. This was
a longitudinal study and, 14 years later, when the once 4- but now