While abstract intelligence is critical, what can determine the long-term arc of your career is your "social intelligence," also called "emotional intelligence," or EQ. Your capabilities with people -- whether reading a client's key concerns, harnessing the diverse talents of a team or inspiring a demoralized division -- can have a greater influence on your ascent to the highest ranks of leadership than your abstract intelligence alone.

It is not surprising that Columbia is leading the movement in social intelligence. New York's profile as a center for relationship-based industries makes Columbia a natural place for research on the dynamics of social judgment and interaction in business. Recently, Columbia Business School introduced the Program on Social Intelligence (PSI), a new initiative headed by Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership and on the Executive Education faculty, to help MBA students increase their social intelligence skills.

Social intelligence comes into play in many areas of business: for example, when you are developing new strategy or searching for answers to complex problems.

Professor Joel Brockner, faculty director of High Impact Leadership, notes that while it's part of the human condition to feel such emotions as anger, anxiety and guilt, the challenge "is to manage or regulate these negative emotions so that they don't derail you. In a best case scenario you can even use these 'negative' emotions for productive purposes. For example, anger and anxiety may actually be sources of energy. The emotionally intelligent leader is able to harness such energy so that it has him or her moving in the right direction."

The research on EQ, notes Professor Brockner, has caught up to what we have intuitively suspected all along: that being a great leader is much more than being smart in the conventional sense (as in, the kinds of skills that are measured by SATs, GREs and the like).

"What seems to differentiate the star manager from the average one is the set of both interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills that comprise emotional intelligence," he says. "Intrapersonal skills include being self-aware: in other words, having an accurate read on one's own emotions, values and preferences, as well as being realistic about how one comes across in the eyes of others."

Columbia Executive Education has a range of programs that enable you to explore and improve your social/emotional intelligence, including Leadership Essentials , led by Faculty Director Joel Brockner; Strategic Intuition , led by Faculty Director William Duggan; and Negotiation and Decision-Making Strategies, led by Faculty Director Bob Bontempo.

Please check our Web site, www.gsb.columbia.edu/execed, for the full range of programs, or send us an e-mail at execed@columbia.edu if you would like to receive updates about these offerings.