Hi! If you’re new here, I’m SV and I’m an autistic librarian student. This semester I am taking a class titled Management of Libraries and Information Centers. At some point I will write a blog post about the many ways that libraries are not capitalist enterprises and shouldn’t be run like them. But for now, I want to talk about one particular element of modern management theory that has tripped me up quite a bit: emotional intelligence.
Goleman (1995) listed five domains within emotional intelligence (EQ):
- Self-awareness or knowing your own emotions
- Self-regulation or managing your own emotions
- Motivation or a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status
- Empathy or recognizing and understanding other people’s emotions
- Social skill or proficiency in managing relationships
“What’s the problem?” you might be asking. “Number 3 sounds just like monotropic mindset!” Let’s step back and take a closer look at each of these points.
First, self-awareness. The experience of alexithymia, a condition noting difficulty identifying what emotions one is experiencing, is around 50% of autistic individuals, compared to around 5% in the general population (Kinnaird et al, 2018). By placing self-understanding of emotion on the list of skills required to be a good manager, Goleman and successive “experts” on management of libraries introduce bias against individuals who experience alexithymia, notably autistics.
Second, self-regulation. In order to regulate one’s emotional state, one has to be able to identify the emotions, place them in context, analyze them from a separate mental context, and choose logically how to deal with them. In addition to the alexithymia noted above, autistics often struggle with information processing and executive function, two key components of emotional regulation.
Third, motivation beyond money. This is just straight-up capitalism talking. If the people writing your management textbook can sell you on this idea, then libraries (or any other organization or company) can justify paying their managers less. The same concept of a “calling” has been brought up before for library work more broadly, and been thoroughly debunked (Ettar, 2018; Drabinski, 2020). Coupling that with autistics already struggling to find access to work and suffering economic disadvantage compounds the problem.
Fourth, empathy. Autistic people do not as a whole experience a lack of empathy. Instead, we’re merely on one side of the double empathy gap (Milton, 2012). We’re just as able to empathize with other autistics as non-autistics are able to empathize with each other. But without acknowledgement of that fact, a non-autistic hiring committee might evaluate an autistic candidate as lacking empathy since it is not expressed in a way they recognize, and evaluate the candidate poorly in terms of EQ.
And fifth, Social skill proficiency. Martin (2019) suggests that would-be leaders must “be aware of what look – not just your clothes but your overall facial and body expressions – you are projecting to the world,” an overtly exclusionary requirement for autistics who do not produce or observe non-verbal expression. Autistics tend to invest significant amounts of energy into very few very close connections. Due to their differences in social relational behavior combined with their neuro-motor differences that impact their ability to express emotions via non-verbal means like facial expression and tone of voice, it can be easy for neurotypical standards of evaluations to unjustly penalize an autistic person for what is perceived as a deficiency when it is merely a difference.
By putting these traits of so-called emotional intelligence on a pedestal, autistic and other neurodiverse people will be put at disadvantage in hiring decisions, workplace performance evaluations, disciplinary discussions, and other situations where a standard of inequity is applied. For libraries and other organizations to embrace equity and gain the unique viewpoints and lived experiences and skills of a neurodiverse workforce, the application of these standards needs to be rethought, minimized, or even abandoned. Instead, focus should be applied to the areas of education among management, staff, and patrons, and to providing support to bridge gaps between the autistic employee’s abilities and the diverse needs of those with which they work, for whom they serve, and over whom they manage and lead.
Drabinski, E. (2020). Professionalism reconsidered. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 15(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip29772
Ettarh, F. (2018, January 10). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books.
Kinnaird, E., Stewart, C., & Tchanturia, K. (2019). Investigating alexithymia in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Psychiatry, 55, 80–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.09.004
Martin, J. (2019). Emotional intelligence, emotional culture, and library leadership. Library Leadership & Management, 33(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5860/llm.v33i2.7329
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem.’ Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008