“To invest successfully over a lifetime,” he said in an interview, “does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.”

We see here interface between emotions and intellect that is called “emotional intelligence.” The emotions can put asunder what intellect has so wrought. Fortunately you can increase your EQ, while you generally cannot increase your IQ.

Buffet also evidences interpersonal skills, integrity and compassion in his business dealings that characterize high EQ. His conduct during 9-11 with his own super-cat insurance crisis was exemplary; memo he wrote to his employees was circulating Internet. Something to his regional managers about -- you keep doing your job, and let me worry about this. That's my job.

Would you work for this man? I surely would. And he wouldn't sell my stock right out from under me either.

He told a newspaper interviewer he was “disgusted” by corporate CEOs who tout their companies while selling shares. “These business leaders,” he said, “view shareholders as patsies, not partners.” He is notorious for never having sold a single share of Berkshire Hathaway.

When 'Dumb' Gets 'Smart'

Buffet further says, "By periodically investing in an index fund, for example, know-nothing investor can actually out-perform most investment professionals. Paradoxically, when 'dumb' money acknowledges its limitations, it ceases to be dumb."

Buffet is talking about Emotional Intelligence and who would argue with world's second richest man. And don't forget part about "drop out" Bill Gates.

And for academic professional, no one said it better than Shakespeare: "We know what we are, but know not what we may become." Emotional Intelligence brings balance, and positively affects not only success, but health and happiness.

The field of Emotional Intelligence is based on hard data, that is empirical, scientific research. No manager, executive or professional can survive in today’s economic climate on intellectual capacity and academic degrees alone. The maneuvering skills, leadership, ability to see big picture and communicate, these are what EQ is all about. Jobs change, career fields change, professions and specialties alter considerably or disappear, and new fields appear. Technical education becomes obsolete almost as soon as its attained, though a liberal arts education will endure, benefits of which are approached in programs such as The EQ Foundation Course© (http://www.susandunn.cc/courses.htm ). Consider emotional intelligence coaching for yourself, and your up-and-coming employees, and get emotional intelligence coaching training for your managers and HR personnel. It works.

As word gets around – and this is an international phenomenon -- that "soft" skills bring "hard" results, you'll be in right place at right time with right tool. And that's Emotional Intelligence.

Since you must correct such abberations before they morph into hurtful behaviors, you now select specific perception to be altered, and that becomes your public relations goal.

Unfortunately, a PR goal without a strategy to show you how to get there, is like meatloaf without gravy. That’s why you must select one of three strategies especially designed to create perception or opinion where there may be none, or change existing perception, or reinforce it. The challenge here is to insure that goal and its strategy match each other. You wouldn’t want to select “change existing perception” when current perception is just right suggesting a “reinforce” strategy.

Now writing skill enters fray. Someone on your PR team must put those writing skills to work and prepare a compelling message carefully designed to alter your key target audience’s perception, as called for by your public relations goal.

Consider combining your corrective message with another newsworthy announcement of a new product, service or employee which may lend credibility by not overemphasizing correction.

Try to build several values into your corrective message. Clarity for example. It must be clear about what perception needs clarification or correction, and why. Your facts must be truthful and your position must be persuasive, logically explained and believable if it is to hold attention of members of that target audience, and actually move perception your way.

Here is least challenging part of your campaign, picking “beasts of burden” – actual tactics you will use to carry your persuasive new thoughts to attention of that external audience.

There are plenty of communications tactics available including letters-to-the-editor, brochures, press releases and speeches. Or, you might select others such as radio and newspaper interviews, personal contacts, newsletters, or group briefings, always making sure tactics you select have a record of reaching same audiences as those that make up your target stakeholders.

You’ll want to be ready for queries about progress by again monitoring perceptions among your target audience members. Using questions similar to those used during your earlier monitoring session, you will now watch carefully for indications that audience perceptions are beginning to move in your direction.

We are fortunate in PR business that we can always put pedal to metal by employing additional communications tactics, AND by increasing their frequencies.

As this article suggests, you WILL want this kind of PR only after you insist on an aggressive new public relations plan that targets kind of key stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your operating objectives.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com