Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
On October 23, 1990, David Pologruto, a high school physics teacher, was stabbed by his smart student Jason Haffizulla. Jason was not a teenager you think would try to kill someone. He got straight A’s and was determined to study medicine at Harvard, yet this was his downfall. His physics teacher gave Jason a B, a mark Jason believed would undermine his entrance to Harvard. After receiving his B, Jason took a butcher knife to school and stabbed his physics teacher before being reprimanded in a struggle.
Two years following the incident in a New York Times article covering this story, it was reported that Jason raised his grade average to 4.614, which exceeds the perfect average of 4, by taking advanced courses. He graduated with highest honors.
How can someone as smart as Jason do something so dumb? Jason received above perfect grades and still emotionally lost himself by trying to severely wound his teacher. The answer? Smart can be dumb. Smart is not communication-dumb because studies show there is little or no correlation between IQ and emotional intelligence, but in this article we’ll look at how logical intelligence can hurt a person’s emotional life.
This article may generate controversy, but I feel I give a balanced discussion in sharing my experience, knowledge, and getting you to think deeply about the topic. Whether you are intelligent, “mentally-challenged”, or curious about this topic in understanding those smart people in your life, I am sure you will get a lot of useful advice from this article.
Being a somewhat smart guy myself, it is painful to hear that intelligence – such a useful characteristic to possess – may be harmful. It is tough to imagine a quality highly praised by society is detrimental to communication. For this reason, take a deep breathe now, relax, and open your mind to the possibilities of bettering your communication to improve your life.
During my early university years, I regarded myself as an intelligent guy. I was no Einstein, but I got good marks in Mathematics, Physics, and other technical subjects. This lead me to start a degree in Engineering, majoring in Mechatronics, an area of study that integrates mechanics, electronics, and computing. I would be able to design robotics and cybernetic systems – the wave of the future. I thought such skills would surely give me an edge in life.
After one year of study with decent marks, I began to see two major classes of students. The first category of student turned up to few lectures, partied every weekend, enjoyed a great social life, and did minimal work to pass courses. The second category of students were intelligent, hard workers, got good grades, and were very focused on their studies. Surely these intelligent and hard-working students would fill the great jobs before the other, more lazier, class of student?
Not so. Students are often shocked upon graduation that their qualifications are not as important as they once thought. In school, students are lead to believe their academic knowledge is the primary determinat of a great job and success. Howard Gardner in Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences defines various types of intelligence and emphasizes that schools are too focused on logic and linguistic intelligence. Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a more famous author that demotes the common belief that the government’s education system leads students to wealth and success. Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers contains further proof that IQ has very little correlation with achievement.
Graduates enter the workforce only to realize that co-workers hate them, less intelligent people are the ones receiving promotions, and sucking up to the boss doesn’t help their personal earnings. The students have the “hard skills” such as technical know-how, but they lack the “soft skills” such as conflict management and other human relational skills. The transition for intelligent people from being goal-oriented to process and people-oriented is usually realized through the hard school of knocks, experience.
If you have experience in hiring people, you know the importance of people skills. Educational skills are useless in some industries when people skills are absent. You can have great ideas, theories, and solve complex problems, but if you cannot effectively communicate that material in a persuasive and exciting manner by relating to your fellow human, you face an uphill battle in whatever challenges you encounter. It’s not that people dislike you because of your intelligence; it’s that people dislike you because you’re rude, not understanding, or annoying to be around. The intelligent person with poor communication skills is insensitive or unaware of other’s emotions.
Hopefully I can reveal the elusive obvious to you in this little exercise. I want you to think back to primary school or high school. Perhaps even college. Select the most memorable class to you.
I want you to categorize, and roughly rank, class members based on two sets of criteria: intelligence and popularity. You don’t need to go through every class member, but recall those at the end of each spectrum. That is, remember the smartest few in the class and the most popular few in the class. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest, give a person a rank of ten in intelligence if you feel they were the most intelligent in the class. For the students who had lots of friends, give them a ten in the popularity category. Try to categorize roughly six students. If you have problems remembering, quickly write the ranks down on paper.
Now, with the students you have ranked in one category, I want you to rank them in the other category. So if you have ranked the smartest student as a ten in the intelligence category, give the person a rank you feel is appropriate in the popularity category. Do the same for the students you ranked in the popularity category.
Now that you have got several people in each of the two categories, think about the difference between each student. The purpose of doing this exercise is to help you see the contrast between intelligence and people skills.
Genius-Failure Paradox
Chances are if you are like most people and myself, you would have noticed something distinguishable from the exercise. Those who were smartest in the class were generally not very popular due to poor social skills. (I know there are other measurements of communication than only popularity). They did not have good people skills. Presumptuous? Likely, no.
All intelligent people do not have poor people skills nor does all unintelligent people have good people skills. I know people will say, “But I know someone who is smart and great with people.” Good. So do I. Intelligence and people skills are not mutually exclusive characteristics! Having one does not mean you cannot have the other.
What I’m proposing, which has been touched on and backed by a couple of authors and teachers, is that academically intelligent people fail in predictable areas of their lives – and they don’t want to solve the dilemma. The genius-failure paradox describes that people who must feel smarter, wealthier – or generally superior – to others refuse to seek help in dealing with people. (You can read more about superiority, inferiority, and the self-image.)
It is nothing new to say that intelligence does not equal success. Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence, says that IQ is too narrow to predicate success. The implications of emotional intelligence, which is summarized as an understanding of your emotions and the emotions of other people, are profound in communication and many areas of life. “Emotional Intelligence is a master aptitude, a capacity that profoundly affects all other abilities,” says Goleman, “either facilitating or interfering with them.”
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Update: What are your favorite songs to hype you up for pumping iron? For me, anything by King Tiesto.
Thanks for this great information. it seems really powerful.
Wonderful article…you hit the nail on the head about so many things. This article helped me identify mistakes I’ve been making in my communication and in my attitude towards people for years.
Your article is true and to the point. It helped me understand myself more. In addition, my workplace (a Junior College), is littered with intelligent people who have little or NO social skills. They also know how to mis-communicate very well… it is bad, very bad. They have no use for people’s emotions, and I long to retire.
Best..
Cap
Hi Joshua, this is one of the most interesting articles I have ever read. It has very profound facts derived from research and that’s good work. I agree with you that at later years of life one needs more of social skills than intelligence. Also, I am happy to know that I can learn something from anyone whether they are intelligent or not.
You are doing good work and please help us “intelligent” people to appreciate social and communication skills.
God Bless you.
Dear Joshua,
Thanks so much for sending me this article. It is logical that most intelligent people have poor communication skills since they seldom relate with others except their own kind. And so, their problem solving is often on the rational level and not on the experiential. They cannot speak all what are in their minds because their mental processing is too fast that it difficult to grasp all at one time.
I enjoyed reading your article. It is fortunate that I am in the field of applied social science and at times, there are technical people who come to me for help on conveying their research findings in a manner understandable to ordinary people in affected communities. Despite that, I learned much from your article.
More power to you and congratulations for this article. I know that you are being used by God for others to learn.
Tess
Hi Josh, would you think that having good communication skills has a greater advantage than having a higher than average IQ?
Hi Joshua, great work you made my day, l had to read it out to my fellow workers who are having problems here, l now realise why less intelligent people get promotion more than us who are smart!!
Thanks a billion, no a trillion!!!
I don’t think all intelligent people look down on others as inferior. Sometimes they just do not know where to begin since they are only taught to excel. Maybe with such articles, there will be a remarkable improvement in the social life of intelligent people. Let us just try to be there for them and not cast them to hell like it is of their own making to be very intelligent. Also, please forward the article to as many people as possible.
Thank you Joshua
Thank you, that was a great article. I found a lot of useful information for myself and I think many others will as well. One thought though – who is actually “intelligent” and by whose standards? I think to make your point more understandable it helped to label some as “intelligent people”, but IQ tests and academic achievement alone don’t always prove that so-called “intelligent people” are more logically proficient than “less intelligent people”. We all possess different skills of different magnitudes and nobody owns an intellotometer that I know of. If you are able to use your brain to manipulate, motivate, and inspire others, isn’t that a sign of “intelligence”?
I really liked the article, but I have my own personal struggle with how people label one another. It may seem pretentious, seeing that to distinguish one group from another you sometimes need labels, but I think the intelligent and unintelligent groups have a lot of overlap.
That’s why I liked the bit on “dropping the ego”. People shouldn’t always assume that they are more intelligent than another based on occupation, income, or schooling. Like you said, there are lots of lessons humanity has to offer, and assuming that oneself is more intelligent than another may lead to a predisposed attitude that doesn’t allow oneself to fully take in and appreciate all there is to be learned by someone, say… less than “intelligent”.
Thank you again for the article. There is no doubt that maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships is a key to success. Your mention of dropping the ego is a good reminder for me, not that I’m so egotisical, but we all need to remember that sometimes other people can make us better and smarter people.
Thanks guys for your insightful feedback. It’s always nice to hear everyone’s thoughts and experiences on the topics I write about.
Geoffery, I’m glad you found it that interesting!
Brian, yes. Not all intelligent people look down on those who are less intelligent. I’ve been guilty a tonne of times though. The inferiority complex can suck bad and make people be very judgmental of others. There’s constant comparing of people.
Niki, personally I think good communication skills will get you a lot further in many areas than just a high IQ. The intelligence quotient often just predicts educational achievement. Education doesn’t mean much on its own. Having said that, some people succeed in vocations like mathematics with a high IQ and poor communication. Generally, good communication and emotional skills will take you further. CEOs get hired for their intelligence and fired for their personality.
Get Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence if you’d like to learn more about IQ and interpersonal skills. Emotional Intelligence is a groundbreaking book that amplified the worldwide shift from IQ making or breaking your success to emotional intelligence
Robert Sternberg, a Yale University Professor of Psychology, has a book called Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life. You’ll learn some good things by just reading the reviews on Amazon and what the book is about.
Here’s additional links that may be of further interest:
- The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
- Just For Youth… Is Intelligence the Most Important Factor for Success
Alex, yeah. I don’t have any definite “model” of what intelligence is. Many people have differing opinions. In the article I mostly referred to intelligence as academic performance. Thanks for your insightful comment.