Visty Banaji
Old MacHR has a farm(ula), E-I - E-I - O! EI (Emotional Intelligence) has been the rage for well over two decades now. Is it really the cure-all it is made out to be? What cautions should guide its use?
The road less travelled
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r. MacHR had built up a roaring practice. It had only one problem. Whatever the ailment or injury, he prescribed the same test and cure: EI. The full form of the charm was Elixir Incredibilis, though it was popularly known by its new-fangled name of Emotional Intelligence. Depending on the problem at hand, Dr. MacHR administered it in different forms, of course. So, there were EI filters for preemployment testing as well as for internal progression, there were orally administered EI doses to large groups of run-of-the-mill, sandpaper-surfaced staff and then there were the individually designed, heavy-duty EI surgical implants, which were experientially or coachingly inserted into those senior executives who had all the ingredients for corporate success except affable smiles and sensitive hearts. In a delightful paper published almost a century ago, A J Clark explains | may 2021
the very human desire to have a universal cure. After critiquing "Mesmer's tub, Graham's ethereal essences, Perkins's tractors, or Hahnemann's tinctures", he writes: "dozens of similar crazes have arisen in the past and will arise in the future. These universal cures simply represent the old quest for the elixir of life in a new form, and arise to satisfy the fundamental craving of the mass of humanity for a miraculous cure for disease.
Science has nothing to do with these cults, and they are scarcely influenced by its progress; and since the type of mind that produces them and accepts them both remain constant, one finds from century to century that remarkable sameness between succeeding crazes..."1 Emotional Intelligence (EI) is certainly not as baseless or devoid of efficacy as the examples provided by Clark. It has a clear role to play in the evaluation and development of manag-
