On Friday, January 17, 2020, Lagos Business School (LBS) hosted Yale President, Peter Salovey who discussed emotional intelligence in leadership and business with students, alumni and staff of the School.
Salovey’s trip to Nigeria is in line with his commitment to developing greater partnership with centres of research and academic excellence through the Yale Africa Initiative, a long-term university-wide commitment to enhance Yale’s ongoing bilateral engagement with African institutions and to bring African scholarship, research, and education at Yale into sharper focus.
Receiving Salovey, LBS Dean, Enase Okonedo highlighted the importance of the relationship between both schools with an emphasis on the alignment of their missions. “We are pleased to have Peter Salovey on our campus for the first time, as part of his visit to Africa. We are proud of the relationship with the Yale School of Management and consider the Global Network as one of our most valuable networks.”
In his presentation, Salovey highlighted the four skills of Emotional Intelligence as “the ability to perceive emotions in oneself and other people, the ability to use one’s emotions as data for decision making and creativity, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to manage one’s emotions and those of others”.
In an interesting revelation, Salovey disclosed that an academic paper he wrote on Emotional Intelligence was what informed the title of the widely read 1995 book by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, thus making him a pioneering researcher on the concept.
Closing his presentation, the Yale President touched on the willingness of young Nigerians to use their skills and talents in moving the country forward. He then went on to declare openness to a long relationship with LBS to improve education, research and scholarships that will advance the community and the world through the Yale Africa Initiative.
Salovey’s visit is well-timed in the light of Lagos Business School’s membership in Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM), a collaboration of 30 graduate schools of business that seeks to foster intellectual ties among business schools, students and deans.
As part of his visit, Salovey met with the team of LBS’ Full-Time MBA 17 students who are currently participating in the Global Network Investment Competition, hosted by the Yale School of Management (Yale SOM). The competition is an annual contest that enhances the study of equity investments, and this year, it is comprised of 24 student teams from top business schools across the globe who are members of the GNAM.
Also on account of its membership in GNAM, LBS hosts the annual Global Network Week, where it exposes participants from international business schools and their LBS counterparts to the current strategies and trends that drive selling in consumer markets within Africa’s largest economy.
In a similar vein, two of LBS’ faculty members, Professor Olawale Ajai and Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, in 2019, became the first Africans to be awarded the Global Network Africa Faculty Fellowship Programme at Yale School of Management, New Haven.
