Soft Skills for CIOs and Aspiring CIOs: Four Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence

Today’s reading focuses on Emotional Intelligence, a topic discussed in the leader’s program.  In this piece — 

“Soft Skills for CIOs and Aspiring CIOs:  Four Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence“, or <http://tinyurl.com/29au7g>, Diann Daniel argues that soft skills and emotional intelligence are must haves for IT leaders and workers today.  As she notes and as been identified by researchers such as Daniel Goleman (see Goleman’s paper “What Makes a Leader” in the November-December 1998 issue of the Harvard Business Review which is available on the Tools page of the IT•LP group websites), emotional intelligence and soft skills influence almost everything from intelligence to life experience including how well you do in your job and how satisfied you are with your work.  Goleman puts it more starkly:  “If you look at specific abilities, competencies that set star performers apart from average ones, technical skill is not even in the top three.”

This piece is a stark reminder to all of us to sharpen those soft skills.

I trust that all of you will have a delightful holiday tomorrow as we celebrate the birth of our country and the principles of liberty, freedom, and equality on which it is created.

.  .  .  .  .     jim