Social Intelligence

Social Intelligence

We humans are the preeminent social animal. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our primitive ancestors developed complex social groupings. To adapt to this, they evolved mirror neurons, which were more refined and sensitive than those of other primates. This meant that they could use these mirror neurons not only to imitate those around them, but also to imagine what others might be thinking and feeling, all on a preverbal level. Such empathy allowed for a higher degree of cooperation.

With the invention of language and the reasoning powers it brought them, our ancestors could take this empathic ability further-seeing patterns in people's behavior and deducing their motivations. Over the years, these reasoning skills have become infinitely more powerful and refined. In theory, all of us today possess the natural tools-empathy, rational thinking to have a supreme understanding of our fellow humans. In practice, however, these tools remain mostly undeveloped, and the explanation for this can be found in the peculiar nature of our childhood, and our extended period of dependency.

Compared to other animals, we humans enter the world remarkably weak and helpless. We remain relatively weak for many years before we can truly operate on our own. This extended period of immaturity, lasting some twelve to eighteen years, serves a valuable function: it gives us a chance to focus on developing our brain by far the most important weapon in the human arsenal. But this prolonged childhood comes with a price.

During this time of weakness and dependency, we experience the need to idealize our parents. Our survival depends on their strength and reliability. To think of them as having their own frailties would fill us with unbearable anxiety. And so we inevitably see them as stronger, more capable, and more selfless than they are in reality. We come to view their actions through the lens of our needs, and so they become extensions of ourselves.

During this long period of immaturity, we often transfer these idealizations and distortions to teachers and friends, projecting on to them what we want and need to see. Our view of people becomes saturated with various emotions - worship, admiration, love, need, anger. Then inevitably, often in adolescence, we start to glimpse a less-than-noble side to many people, including our parents, and we cannot help but feel upset at the disparity between what we had imagined and the reality. In our disappointment, we tend to exaggerate their negative qualities, much as we once had exaggerated the positive ones. If we had been forced earlier on in life to make it on our own, practical needs would have come to dominate our thinking, and we would have become more detached and realistic. But as it is, the many years of viewing people through the lens of our emotional needs turns into habit that we can hardly control.

Let us call this the Naïve Perspective. Although it is natural to have such a perspective because of the unique character of our childhood, it is also dangerous because it envelops us in childish illusions about people, distorting our view of them. We carry this perspective with us into the adult world, into the Apprenticeship Phase. In the work environment the stakes are suddenly raised. People are no longer struggling for good grades or social approval, but for survival. Under such pressure, they reveal qualities of their characters that they normally try to conceal. They manipulate, compete, and think of themselves first. We are blindsided by this behavior and our emotions are churned up even more than before, locking us into the Naïve Perspective.

The Naïve Perspective makes us feel sensitive and vulnerable. Looking inward as to how the words and actions of others implicate us in some way, we continually misread their intentions. We project our own feelings onto them. We have no real sense of what they are thinking or what motivates them. With colleagues in the work environment, we fail to see the source of their envy or the reason for their manipulations; our attempts at influencing them are based on the assumptions that they want the same things as ourselves. With mentors and bosses, we project onto them our childhood fantasies, becoming unnecessarily adoring or fearful of authority figures and creating stormy and brittle relationships in the process. We think we understand people, but we are viewing them through a distorted lens. In this state, all of our empathic powers are rendered useless.

With the inevitable mistakes we make, we become entangled in battles and dramas that consume our minds and distract us from learning. Our sense of priorities becomes warped-we end up giving far too much importance to social and political issues because we are not handling them well. If we are not careful, we carry these patterns over to the next phase in life, the Creative-Active Phase, in which we are in a more public position. At this level, being socially inept can prove particularly embarrassing, even fatal to our careers. People who retain their childish attitudes will rarely be able to hold on to the success they may achieve through their talent.

Social intelligence is nothing more than the process of discarding the Naïve Perspective and approaching something more realistic. It involves focusing our attention outward instead of inward, honing the observational and empathic skills that we naturally possess. It means moving past our tendency to idealize and demonize people, and seeing and accepting them as they are. It is a way of thinking that must be cultivated as early as possible, during the Apprenticeship Phase. But before we can begin to acquire this intelligence we must first come to grips with the Naïve Perspective itself.

Look at the case of Benjamin Franklin, the icon of social intelligence and the clearest example of the role it plays in mastery. As the second youngest of a large extended family, he learned to get his way through charm. As he got older he came to believe, as many young people do, that getting along with others is a function of behaving charmingly and winning them over with a friendly manner. But as he engaged with the real world, he began to see his charm as the actual source of his problem. Being charming was a strategy he had developed out of childish need; it was a reflection of his narcissism, of the love he had of his own words and wit. It had no relation to other people and their needs. It did not prevent them from exploiting or attacking him. To be truly charming and socially effective you have to understand people, and to understand them you have to get outside yourself and immerse your mind in their world.

Only when he realized how deeply naïve he had been could he take the necessary steps to move past this naïveté. His focus on gaining social intelligence was the turning point of his career-it transformed him into the preeminent observer of human nature, a man with a magical ability to see into people. It also made him the perfect social companion-men and women every where fell under his spell because of his ability to attune himself to their energies. With tranquil and productive social relations, he could focus more of his time and attention to writing, to questions of science, to his endless inventions-to mastery.

It might be deduced from Benjamin Franklin's story that social intelligence requires a detached, emotionless approach to people, making life rather dull in the process, but this is hardly the case. Franklin himself was by nature a very emotional man. He did not repress this nature, but rather turned his emotions in the opposite direction. Instead of obsessing over himself and what other people were not giving him, he thought deeply of how they were experiencing the world, what they were feeling and missing. Emotions seen inside other people create empathy and bring a deep understanding of what makes them tick. For Franklin, this outward focus gave him a pleasant feeling of lightness and ease; his life was hardly dull, but simply free of unnecessary battles.

Understand : 

You will continue to have problems in attaining social intelligence until you come to the realization that your view of people is dominated by the Naïve Perspective. Following Franklin's example, you can reach this awareness by reviewing your past, paying particular attention to any battles, mistakes, tensions, or disappointments on the social front. If you look at these events through the lens of the Naïve Perspective, you will focus only on what other people have done to you the mistreatments you endured from them, the slights or injuries you felt. Instead, you must turn this around and begin with yourself how you saw in others qualities they did not possess, or how you ignored signs of a dark side to their nature. In doing this, you will be able to clearly see the discrepancy between your illusions about who they are and the reality, and the role you played in creating this discrepancy. If you look closely enough, you can often perceive in your relationships with bosses or superiors reenactments of the childhood family dynamic-the idealizing or demonizing that has become habitual.

By making yourself aware of the distorting process of the Naïve Perspective, you will naturally grow less comfortable with it. You will realize that you are operating in the dark, blind to people's motivations and intentions, vulnerable to the same mistakes and patterns that occurred in the past. You will feel your lack of real connection to other people. The desire will naturally arise from within to change this dynamic-to start looking outward instead of focusing only on your own feelings, to observe before you react.

This new clarity about your perspective should be accompanied by an adjustment of your attitude. You must avoid the temptation to become cynical in your approach as an over reaction to your prior naïveté. The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary.

With this new awareness and attitude in place, you can begin to advance in your apprenticeship in social intelligence. This intelligence consists of two components, both equally important to master. First, there is what we shall call specific knowledge of human nature-namely the ability to read people, to get a feel for how they see the world, and to understand their individuality. Second, there is the general knowledge of human nature, which means accumulating an understanding of the overall patterns of human behavior that transcend us as individuals, including some of the darker qualities we often disregard. Because we are all a mix of unique qualities and traits common to our species, only the possession of both forms of knowledge can give you a complete picture of the people around you.

Practice both forms of knowledge and they will yield invaluable skills that are essential in the quest for mastery.