Executive Intelligence

Here is a clip from a recent HBS review of Justin Menkes new book "Executive Intelligence." Sounds like the countersynch to Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence.

Menkes says what we need are even more brilliant corporate leaders, and personality is not as important as we think in determining leadership success. Give me a break! Yes, we need smart people to lead organizations, but we had better start paying attention to what these people carry in their hearts too. Read this one and gag.

Sorry folks. I know people will flock to this one, but it just doesn't do much for me.

"In his recent book, Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes proposes another set of hypotheses, among them that too much emphasis has been given to personality and style and too little to types of intelligence that enhance leadership performance. He argues that "when it comes to predicting work performance, cognitive-ability tests have been demonstrated to be approximately ten times as powerful as personality assessments. . . . Personality is not a differentiator of star talent. It is an individual's facility for clear thinking or intelligence that largely determines their leadership success." Menkes places his bets on an individual's "executive intelligence," the ability to digest, often with the help of others, large amounts of information in order to form important decisions that produce useful action with the right amount of deliberation."

Click to read the full article.