Peter Drucker is credited with saying, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." So true, although the late Mr. Drucker's people have repeatedly said he never uttered those words.
Here's a bigger and better one. EQ eats IQ for both lunch and dinner.
I was reminded of this in reading about the extraordinary "godfather of artificial intelligence" Yann LeCun. He was asked in a recent Financial Times interview with Melissa Heikkila what he wants his legacy to be. The extraordinary Turing Award winner and longtime Chief AI Scientist at Meta said he wants to increase the amount of intelligence in the world. "Intelligence is really the thing that we should have more of," he said, "adding that with more intelligence, there's less human suffering, more rational decisions, and more understanding of the world and the universe. We suffer from stupidity."
Dr. LeCun is right, of course, at least as far as he went in the interview. That said, his observations may be a tad too Mr. Spock-like. Suffering from stupidity and enjoying the benefits of brilliance are dual aspects of the human condition. What too often goes missing in these conversations, however, is the distinction between intellectual intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) and that a leader is enormously handicapped without the latter.
Look, the world is momentarily dominated by a broligarchy that generally thinks EQ is for sissies and boasts, bloviates, and bullies accordingly. Too bad because without self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, social regulation, and the interpersonal skills that come with these tenets of emotional intelligence, their arrogance and arrested development too often destroy people, careers, organizations, opportunities, and even countries. Without a willingness to understand if not embrace the importance of so-called "people skills," those in leadership positions too often fail. What's worse is that these folks bring everyone else down with them. No matter how intelligent these characters are or, in the spirit of Dunning-Kruger, think they are, they suffer from monstrous stupidity. Emotional stupidity. And we all suffer as a result because, in reversing LeCun's terms, they increase human suffering, produce less rational decisions, and diminish our understanding of the world.