Competencies, Skills and Intelligence

Today I read a web page created by a management consultant who says he subscribes to the "original 5 EQ competencies identified by Dan Goleman. (source) This reminds me that defining any form of intelligence as "competencies" can be misleading because competence is not the same as intelligence. For example, a person may be intelligent, yet incompetent because they are untrained, uneducated, inexperienced and/or unskilled. (See note) This is something many people have overlooked.

Here are the five competencies which Goleman listed in his 1995 book.

Awareness, Empathy, Regulation, Motivation, Social Skills

As I see it there are some problems with each of these when it comes to equating them with a person's EI.

With regard to awareness and empathy, it is possible a person with high innate EI could later have life experiences which numb them to empathy as well as to awareness of other people's or their feelings. Each of the others is also highly dependent on, and a function of, one's life experiences. They are not just a reflection or an indication of the capacity for emotional intelligence an individual was born with.

First, as mentioned in other places on this site, if a person comes from an abusive home, they are very likely to have trouble with regulating and managing their emotions.

Second, abused people are also much more subject to depression, which drains energy and kills our motivation in spite of one's original, innate level of emotional intelligence. I can speak from personal experience that my own motivation rises and falls depending on my level of depression from time to time and on things like how much help, understanding, encouragement and emotional support I get.

Third, social skills are by their very definition skills, and not a form of intelligence. One can have high innate intelligence, but be unskilled, or taught in dysfunctional ways.

Confusing skills with intelligence is a common mistake in the writing on emotional intelligence.

S. Hein
July 4, 2007

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Intelligence vs Comptence

I did a search on "Intelligence vs Comptence" and found one result. I also did a search on "Comptence vs Intelligence" and found no results.

Here is the one result I found

Source

Here is the actual page. And my back up copy