Stephen Billing’s Blog

Informalisation of our relations with each other is accompanied by expectations of increased self control. And watch out if you make a mistake of self control.

I had the privilege of hearing Cas Wouters speak at the Hamburg conference Control or Care of the Self in July 2008. He pointed out that the informalisation of social controls (e.g. in the form of mufti days or casual Fridays) is accompanied by an increase in self-control.

In organisations, people are also expected to informalise their relations with each other, but at the same time (and this is not so obvious) they are also expected to have more self-control, more self-regulation.

For example, as Jason Hughes pointed out in his presentation at the same conference, casual Fridays ostensibly give employees the freedom to wear any clothes they like, within the constraints of decency. It seems like a move from corporate uniform to corporate mufti. And yet are people really free to wear anything they like? Thinking of how people comment on each other’s clothes, it is obvious that there is plenty of judgment going on about what people are wearing.

It is a move to informalisation of what people wear to work on a Friday, and it is accompanied by a need for increased self-restraint. The company does not prescribe what you wear on a Friday, you decide yourself. But you need to exercise self control. And beware if you get it wrong!

At the Control or Care of the Self conference in Hamburg in July, Jason Hughes (right) caught my attention with his paper critiquing emotional intelligence. The others in the photo are Stefanie Ernst (our host in Hamburg) and Sam Binkley (Boston).

You have no doubt come across Daniel Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligence. Hughes pointed out that the promise of emotional intelligence is to open the door to talk about emotion at work. On the other hand it makes the emotions into something that can be labeled and measured.

The concept of emotional intelligence promises the management of emotions at work. It repackages human emotions as a corporate concern. The ability to measure people’s emotions appeals to the perceived requirement for managers to inspire the hearts and minds of their people to perform exceptionally well for their employer. This leads to a kind of quest to colonise employee emotions in the service of their goals for the organisation.

The concept of emotional intelligence configures emotions as abilities that are properties of the person that can be developed intentionally by the individual. There is no notion of the social development of the self in emotional intelligence as there is in the work of G H Mead, Norbert Elias and Ralph Stacey.

Although I notice that Goleman now talks about social intelligence, his view of social intelligence seems to be a bolt on to emotional intelligence  and the two terms are used interchangeably.

Emotional intelligence allows you to experience emotions, as long as the expression of them is ‘appropriate.’ For example, you can become angry, as long as it is in the right degree and expressed appropriately. Not only is there an expressive element to EI (express your anger) but it is also subtly suppressive (express it only in appropriate ways), and the suppressive component is hidden – or at least not obvious.

Emotional intelligence has a further worrying fish hook that Hughes identified. In the past, if you made a mistake at work, you would be seen as a bad worker. Now, if you make a mistake in the expression of your emotions you will be seen as a bad person. This amounts to little more than a personal judgment that is lent an aura of scientific rigour by the measurement scales of emotional intelligence.

For a person with emotional intelligence, read a person who expresses desirable emotions. For a person lacking emotional intelligence, read a person who expresses undesirable emotions. Who decides what is desirable or undesirable?

I don’t doubt that if Daniel Goleman were to read this, he would take exception to what I have said here. You might be a supporter of emotional intelligence. Whatever your stance might be, I would be interested to hear what you think.