Many people assume that I haven't had to rely on the emotional intelligence of other people as an engineer by trade who went on to launch an A.I.-based, e-commerce focused, advertising platform. That could not be further from the truth.
Bad tech can ruin even the most promising company, but great technology always needs the instincts of insightful human beings in order to realize its full potential. When it comes to picking winners and losers, smart investors always look at the level of emotional intelligence at play behind key hiring decisions, judgment calls on development, methodology driving the branding strategy, and receptivity to new technology.
Openness to emerging innovation is not a full-proof indicator of emotional intelligence, but an utter lack of it is definitely a red flag. I have worked with thousands of Amazon merchants from vastly diverse background, and the one trait that the successful ones all seem to share is emotional intelligence.
The sellers understand that it takes a human to click on a "add to cart" in order to set up a sale. These are the people who know how to read the room and trust their instincts. The sellers embrace Artificial Intelligence.
Emotionally intelligent humans are inspired by tools that surpass their capacity. They are comfortable in admitting that a scope of work is beyond them individually and have no hesitation in recognizing the need for machine learning to gather and analyze billions of data points, interpret the results, and determine and implement massive courses of action simultaneously.
With the burden of those tasks off their collective plates, they can focus on initiatives that computers are notoriously bad at: creating relationships, fostering innovative thought, and motivating employees.
The Cambridge Dictionary says emotional intelligence is the ability to understand the way people feel and react and to use it to make good judgments and to avoid or solve problems. The key word in that definition is act.
I have embraced a lot of new innovation over the past decades and it has been very helpful. One of the hidden benefits of emerging innovation is the ability to observe how colleagues and competitors react to it.
There are people who see innovation as valuable and people who see it as intimidating. I have always found that witnessing a person navigating that process gives me a good indication of their emotional intelligence and likelihood of success. A lot of anecdotal data has been provided by the arrival of A.I.
It takes a certain amount of faith to successfully execute and build an A.I.-driven marketing strategy. E-commerce advertisers who lack emotional intelligence are more likely to react in fear to momentary downturns and pause the momentum in order to understand the situation. If the campaign was running on a traditional vehicle, this act of looking under the hood would be worth the time.
The emotionally intelligent sellers know that A.I. is not a replacement for human intelligence. There isn't enough human beings on the face of the Earth to conduct all the tasks being done by A.I. to connect marketers with the consumers who are most likely to buy.
Acceptance of A.I. is growing in our society. 78 percent of executives believe that artificial intelligence and automation will increase the demand for emotional intelligence.
Those with emotional intelligence will become essential as technology plays an increasingly influential role in the future.
Unlike human beings, A.I. considers, analyzes and evaluates all data without judgement, and fully remembers all successes and failures. People who are emotionally intelligent define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Artificial intelligence never makes the same mistake twice.
