Emotional Intelligence: Understanding Human Nature

In Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices (Jossey Bass, 2001), Harvard Business School professors Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria draw evidence for their four-drive theory from evolutionary psychology and Charles Darwin’s teachings, as well as the social sciences and organizational life.

Human beings seek ways to fulfill the following drives because our evolutionary heritage compels us to meet basic survival needs:

1.The drive to acquire objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others. We’re driven to seek, take, control, and retain objects and personal experiences. In the course of evolution, humans have been naturally selected to compete for food, water, shelter and sexual fulfillment.

We’re driven to acquire material and positional goods, as well as social status. But the drive to acquire is rarely satisfied; we always seem to want more and seek even greater status.

2.The drive to bond with others in long-term relationships of mutual care and commitment. Human beings have an innate drive to form social relationships and develop commitments with others—drives that are fulfilled only when the attachment is mutual.

Groups of individuals who bond to one another have always had a better chance of surviving environmental threats. This drive induces us to cooperate with others.

3.The drive to learn and make sense of the world and of ourselves. Humans have an innate drive to satisfy their curiosity—to know, comprehend, believe, appreciate, and develop understandings or representations of their environment and themselves through a reflective process.

This drive, without doubt, has enabled mankind to survive the elements and has given us distinct advantages over other creatures.

4.The drive to defend ourselves, our loved ones, our beliefs and our resources. Humans have an innate drive to defend themselves and their valued accomplishments whenever they perceive them to be endangered. The fundamental emotion manifested by this subconscious drive is alarm, which in turn triggers fear and/or anger. This drive has obvious survival value and quite possibly may have been the first drive to have evolved in our earliest ancestors.

In modern life, the drive to defend manifests in many ways. Much of human activity is generated by this drive. It is activated by perceived threats to one’s body, possessions and bonded relationships, as well as by threats to one’s own cognitive representations of our environment and self-identity. Understanding our emotions is the root of good emotional intelligence. Real leaders are those who inspire and motivate others, create teamwork, and achieve results. They model the behavior they want to see in their employees. Emotional Intelligence provides you with the understanding of what motivates those around you. It can move you from management to leadership.