To succeed in today’s business climate it’s not enough to have general intelligence coupled emotional intelligence to be a success! Social Intelligence is also an essential requirement.

Over the past year I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time working with aspiring executives and explaining that their colleagues want the top job as much as they do and that often the only difference between candidates is their social intelligence.

it’s more than a smile, walking around the office thanking people for their work, being at the top of people’s party list or even having a sense of humour. Social intelligence is the ability to set oneself apart and to be identifies as the candidate for leadership because people are attracted to you and will follow.

I so enjoy working with people to develop their social radar and create an understanding of what will create and harm reputation. So the manager who accepted that having the 007 theme tune on his mobile phone was’t  the “coolest corporate image” was in fact demonstrating a distinct lack of social intelligence.

Creating a personal presence so that we can empathise with people’s feelings and, here’s the difference with emotional intelligence, being able to manage how we work with others despite our internal emotional feelings is now an essential tool.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Brand Image.