though useful at times, moves like a snail on quaaludes compared with the warp-speed conclusions coordinated by spindle cells. Four times larger than most brain cells, these neurons have an extralong branch allowing them to attach to other cells more easily, transmitting environmental impressions, memories, thoughts, and feelings at hyperspeed. “This ultrarapid connection of emotions, beliefs, and judgments creates what behavioral scientists call our social guidance system,” Goleman and Boyatzis emphasize. “Spindle cells trigger neural networks that come into play whenever we have to choose the best response among many — even for a task as routine as prioritizing a to-do list. These cells also help us gauge whether someone is trustworthy and right (or wrong) for a job. Within one-twentieth of a second, our spindle cells fire with information about how we feel about that person; such ‘thin-slice’ judgments can be very accurate, as follow-up metrics reveal. Therefore, leaders should not fear to act on those judgments, provided that they are also attuned to others’ moods.” (And, I must emphasize, provided these leaders are also aware of their own projections and prejudices, a topic I explore in chapter 12.)
It works both ways, of course. Spindle cells, mirror neurons, and horse heart-rate responses to threats imagined by humans add to growing scientific evidence that everyone — from your employees to your kids, your spouse, your mother-in-law, and your dog — is designed to read your mind. Kind of levels the playing field, doesn’t it?
Here’s an even more intriguing, or disturbing, bit of news, depending on whether or not you like to hide your emotions and intentions from others. In Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, emotional-intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman cites studies showing that not only does a person’s blood pressure escalate when he tries to suppress feeling but the blood pressure of those interacting with him also rises. Lie detector tests, of course, measure arousal fluctuations. However, you don’t have to be hooked up to a machine to reveal a hidden state of mind. Living beings are hardwired to transmit and receive this information at a distance. Our culturally induced emphasis on verbal communication lessens awareness of this valuable information over time, but anyone who retains or reclaims use of this natural ability appears downright psychic compared to the rest of the population.
The volume of this little-understood “sixth sense” is turned way up in prey animals such as horses, who become noticeably agitated in the presence of people who are incongruent, who try to cover anger, fear, or sadness with an appearance of well-being. This is not an equine judgment of our tendency to lie about what we’re really feeling; it appears to be a reflection of emotion’s physiology — and its contagious nature. In well over a decade of working with horses to teach human-development skills, I have regularly seen these animals mirror the precise emotion being suppressed, then calm down the moment the handler openly acknowledges that feeling — even if the emotion is still there. Let me say it again: The emotion doesn’t have to change in order for the horse to show some signs of relaxation. By making the fear or anger conscious, by becoming congruent, the handler effectively lowers his own blood pressure, even if only slightly. But it’s enough to drop the horse’s blood pressure in response, which the animal demonstrates by sighing, licking and chewing, and/or lowering his head.
Unless you’re a sociopath (which we’ll get to later in this chapter), your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing intensify when you’re frightened or angry, even when you’re wearing your best poker face. It takes extra energy to hide these feelings, which adds to the anxiety radiating from your body through a complex process that scientists are only now beginning to uncover. (It’s important to emphasize that horses can detect hidden emotions that I cannot see in the client. Sometimes this person doesn’t realize what he or she is feeling until the horse acts it out, oddly enough. Yet sure enough, when the client acknowledges this previously suppressed emotion, the horse will relax, sigh, lick, and chew. Something operating beyond the scope of mirror neurons is at work in humans as well, or the blood pressure of someone who’s suppressing emotion would not affect the arousal of the people he or she is interacting with.)
The good news is that positive feelings are contagious too. A person who truly feels peaceful in situations that unnerve others can have a calming effect on everyone around her. This is a key skill in becoming a great rider or a great leader. In fact, with more time in the saddle, our Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, might have just as easily become an accomplished horse whisperer. His ability to reassure and focus others during challenging situations had much less to do with words than most people would suspect.
Breaking the Spell
In 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer introduced the term emotional intelligence, defining it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions to discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.” Five years later, Daniel Goleman’s influential book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ expanded on this concept, spawning widespread interest in the topic. Since that time, numerous studies have shown that, even among scientists, high “EQ” is more important than raw IQ and training in predicting career success, not to mention in building and sustaining strong personal relationships.
The most exciting research illuminates intricate biological processes at work in the simplest human interactions, prompting Goleman to recognize that leaders in particular must both manage their own somatic responses and learn to modulate these emotional-physiological cues and reactions in others. In the 2002 bestseller Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Goleman teamed up with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee to unveil the neuroscientific links between organizational success or failure. The authors argued that “emotions are contagious,” a finding that “charges leaders with driving emotions in the right direction to have a positive impact on earnings or strategy.” As the authors emphasize,
Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they’re so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions. . . .
In the modern organization, this primordial emotional task — though by now largely invisible — remains foremost among the many jobs of leadership: driving the collective emotions in a positive direction and clearing the smog created by toxic emotions. . . . Quite simply, in any human group the leader has maximal power to sway everyone’s emotions. If people’s emotions are pushed toward the range of enthusiasm, performance can soar; if people are driven toward rancor and anxiety, they will be thrown off stride.
Goleman further elaborated on this phenomenon in his 2006 book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. In his subsequent Harvard Business Review collaboration with Boyatzis, he offered a brief history and definition of this groundbreaking concept: “The notion that effective leadership is about having powerful social circuits in the brain has prompted us to extend our concept of emotional intelligence, which we had previously grounded in theories of individual psychology. A more relationship-based construct for assessing leadership is social intelligence, which we define as a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits (and related endocrine systems) that inspire others to be effective.”
Drawing on the work of neuroscientists, their own research and consulting endeavors, and studies associated with the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, Goleman and his colleagues continue to search for ways “to translate newly acquired knowledge about mirror neurons, spindle cells” and other physiological findings “into practical, socially intelligent behavior that can reinforce the neural links between you and your followers.”
Which brings me to the “PhD level” of emotional and social intelligence: managing empathic insights. Back when I wrote my first book, The Tao of Equus, in the late 1990s (published in 2001), the contagious nature of emotion was a controversial notion completely ignored by most people and vehemently challenged by skeptics, who saw it as some kind of psychic mumbo jumbo. Yet after repeatedly witnessing horses accurately mirroring the unconscious emotions of my clients, I began searching for scientific corroboration of what I called “shared emotion.” At that time,