A high IQ and good grades are not the only things kids need for success at work and in life. “Once you are in a given job—say a manager—you are competing with people as smart as you. That’s when IQ loses its power to predict success, which starts to depend more on ‘non-cognitive’ factors like persistence in pursuing your goals or social intelligence,” writes Daniel Goleman, author of international bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Focus. Goleman will delve into those “non-cognitive factors” that are essential to education this Sunday at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The talk will focus on how we can teach our children skills that can help them experience better academic performance, enhance their personal development, and improve their relationships skills. From the JCC event posting: Goleman will discuss his new book, The Triple Focus, which presents a new methodology for providing children with a complete inner tool kit that can be used in the classroom and in life, helping them successfully navigate our complex and challenging world. There will be a small reception and book signing following the talk. In Triple Focus, Goleman and Peter Senge emphasize that there are more than a few programs that cultivate kindness and empathy currently underway and these programs are empirically tested. In a recent interview, Goleman provides an example of how social-emotional learning (SEL) is essential to learning. He says: There’s a huge meta-analysis that was done that involved more than 270,000 students—half had had the [SEL] program and half hadn’t. Students in schools where they had the program had fewer incidents of antisocial behavior like bullying, violence in school and dropping out. And their academic achievement scores went up. [SEL is] helping children deal with the things that upset them. These are the melodramas that grip their minds and keep them distracted. I think the reason for the bump in academic achievement is that kids can pay more attention; their emotions are under better control.
