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A guide to emotional intelligence in the lab
Gemma Conroy is a freelance journalist in Mexico City and editor of Nature Briefing: Careers.
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Emotional intelligence has proved to be difficult to define and can cover a lot of concepts. Credit: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock
When Chen looks back on her time as a PhD student a decade ago, there’s one skill that she wishes she had developed much more than any technical prowess: emotional intelligence. This often-overlooked ability to recognize and manage the emotions of yourself and others might have saved her from years of inner turmoil.
During her PhD, Chen’s supervisor went from paying her little attention to taking a romantic interest in her. The relationship escalated into a toxic but exhilarating affair. “I believed everything he said,” says Chen, who requested a pseudonym for this article to avoid career repercussions. But things fell apart after her postdoctoral studies, when she asked her supervisor to clarify their relationship status so she could make decisions about her own life. The now-former supervisor’s reaction surprised her: “He stopped all communication with me.”
The end of the relationship also had professional consequences. The supervisor reassigned several of Chen’s projects to other students without discussing it with her, she says. When the results of these projects were published as papers and patents, Chen says, she was not included as a co-author or an inventor, despite her contributions. If she had been recognized and acknowledged for her work, Chen thinks, she would be in a “substantially stronger position professionally than I am today”.
The sudden cut-off left Chen confused and heartbroken, affecting her work and her productivity. As she reflects, Chen realizes that her supervisor’s actions were deeply unprofessional and took advantage of her position as a student. However, she adds that having greater emotional intelligence — sometimes known as emotional quotient, or EQ — could have helped her to avoid falling for her supervisor’s false promises or to navigate her heartbreak more effectively during the aftermath.
Emotional intelligence is a catch-all term for the mix of self-awareness, empathy, social skills and management of feelings that comprises our ability to understand others. It has a reputation for being overlooked as a tool in academia in favour of technical expertise and outward achievement. But it’s key for career success, because it enables people to work effectively with others, says Marc Brackett, a psychologist at Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence in New Haven, Connecticut. It’s therefore a skill that complements many other capabilities. “It helps you deal with all of the barriers to achieving your goals in life,” he adds.
Some universities, including Yale and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, run courses on emotional intelligence. Brackett’s centre aims to help staff to manage difficult emotions and create a supportive learning environment, whereas Harvard’s course focuses on emotional intelligence in leadership roles. But few institutions provide such training specifically for PhD students, laboratory leaders and other academic staff.
There’s still debate about what emotional intelligence is, how to measure it and its role in the workplace, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an organizational psychologist at University College London. And although emotional intelligence has become prized in many fields, its importance might depend on the job in question: it’s probably more important for those who work regularly with others than for those who mostly work alone. “What’s missing about the debate, because of the popularity of the concept, is a little bit of nuance,” says Chamorro-Premuzic.