From Management to Leadership: Strategies for Transforming Health, 3rd Edition

Social Intelligence

Further research from the emerging field of social neuroscience—the study of what happens in the brain while people interact—provides scientific basis for three elements long believed to influence the effectiveness of a leader: empathy, intuition, and rapport, all of which increase the quality of relationships and social interactions. One of the most important discoveries is that certain things leaders do, “specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods—literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers” (Goleman and Boyatzis, 2008, p. 76). This has led to the appreciation that effective leadership is about having powerful social circuits in the brain and has prompted an expansion ...