Case Application #1 Getting All Emotional at ICioogle Topic: Emotional intelligence? As the numberone company on Forhme's Best Company to Work For list for six straight years, Google must be doing something right! actually, it does many things right! One thing that you might be surprised at is a selfimprovement course l[one of many]I that's offered to Google's employees. The course, rst offered in 200?, is called simply Search Inside Yourself {SPY}. And it's so popular that thousands of Googlers are on waiting lists to take the course! SP1\" was developed by a Google engineer, ChadeMeng Tan. Tan has been around lBoogie from almost the beginninghe was Google employee No. 10?. His current work position carries the title "jolly l[Good Fellow," and his job description says he wants to, "Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace.\"-iEII Interesting concepts for a highly successful tech company, don't you think! But there's a serious side to what might seem to be a "uff\" topic. The SP! course was designed to show IGooglers how to be more aware of their emotions, to be more compassionate toward others, to be able to build sustainable relationships [internally and externally}, and, of course, to contribute to world peace. [We're not kidding!) SP! is based on the ve dimensions of emotional intelligencehere's a little review for you: selfawareness, selfmanagement, selfmotivation, empathy, and social skillsand is broken into three parts. The first part of the course focuses on attention trainingbemg able to center yourself calmly and clearly in the midst of whatever is going on around you .. . shouting, stress, conict, or whatever. The second part involves ssh\" knowfedgebeing aware of your emotions and eventually being able to master those emotions. And the third part is creetingmsntei habitsbeing in control of your emotions and able to naturally think how to relate calmly and kindly to others. Although all this sounds very interesting and very useful, that isn't the most fascinating part of the story. What is most interesting is the fact that this course is so popular among people who are extremely intelligent and very logical, practical, and straighiforwanzl. After all, Google hires the best and the brightest engineerspeople who have a lot of knowledge and training, but who may not always have the best social;Ir people skills. So how did Tan appeal to those individuals? The appeal was that the course was designed for the intellectual intelligence side {the nerd side} by focusing on the neuroscience behind the touchyfeely behavioral selfcontrol that is possible through ernoiional intelligence. And despite Google's need for very smart, competent, techoriented employees, the reality is that even its workplace has to be about people working together to solve problems and design new ways to keep moving the company forward. So, even for them, emoiional intelligence skills are needed for successful collaboration. Discussion Questions 11-14 Why might emotional intelligence be important to Google's engineers? 11-15 What is the purpose of this Search Inside Yourself course? 11-16 Describe each of the three parts of the SP1\" course. Which do you think would be the hardest to master? 'Why? 11-1? How has Google made the 51"? course appeal to its engineers? 11-18 What do you think about a course like this? Would you nd it interesting? Why or why not? Can you think of any potential ethics issues that might arise in a course like this? Discuss