IQ is not Predictor for Performance, Agreed Daniel Goldman

I have been busy lately with works and many readings so only hardly had time to read my feeds. Today, when I scanned through my Google Reader, I found an interesting note by Daniel Goleman, the initiator of Emotional Intelligence and author of the book with the same name. The thesis of the post is IQ is not a good Predictor for Performance.

Here is the extract of the part where Daniel presented the findings of some researches:

"The relation of IQ to exceptional performance is rather weak in many domains… For scientists, engineers, and medical doctors…the correlations between ability measures and occupational success are only around 0.2, accounting for only 4% of the variance (Baird, 1985)...

Hunter and Hunter (1984) found that only cognitive ability emerged as a useful predictor ... with early job performance. However, a recent review (Hulin, Henry and Noon, 1990) has shown that... ability tests can predict early performance on a job, whereas final performance is poorly predicted."

So if IQ is not good predictor, neither is cognition capability, what would be?

Daniel cited Spencer and Spencer (1993) that "for the tech sector generally, the top six competencies that most powerfully predict star performance" are:

1. The drive to continually improve performance
2. They are impactful
3. Conceptual thinking
4. Analysis
5. Initiative
6. Self-confident

I believe in the first statement that IQ is not a good predictor for performance, since people can hardly perform without interaction with others. IQ tests often reflects categorization way of thinking, which downplays interactions among system components, which I deem very important to succeed in complex environments. Meanwhile, I don't think there is a good set of predictors for performance due to many flaws that may happen in the process, especially volatile definition of "star performance" and sampling bias. After all, human are much better in telling what's wrong than in telling what's right.

Comments

[Quang]

I agree too.

Just feel funny about the title. DG is the proponent of Emotional Intelligence so saying "DG agreed" bring no added value (support) to the statement at all.

[DrBob]

So if IQ is not good predictor, neither is cognition capability, what would be?

Simply... creativity!

[Lien Do]

Agree with you on 2 points;

1. IQ is not a good predictor, for sure. After all, business is all about people. However, it does help :)

2. It's hard to put together a short set of predictors. On the one hand, it depends on the position. On the other hand, there're many more competencies needed for outstanding performance, not just a few ones listed above - even though it says that's the top 6 only.