A growing body of evidence points to seven key social-emotional abilities as the critical success factors from early childhood through the highest reaches of business. People who have them do better in school and on the job.

Variously referred to as "emotional intelligence," "soft skills," "people skills," or "social-emotional skills," they all address a similar skill set.

Research Points to Seven Key Skills

• empathy
• assertiveness
• impulse control
• management of feelings
• decision-making skills
• self-understanding
• connection to community.

These key skills can in turn be broken down into a hundred component skills.

Link to Business Success

Research has shown that the presence of these abilities marks successful business managers. At AT&T, managers who were perceived as having empathy with their workers were more likely to get phone calls returned than other supervisors. At American Express, sales people who received training in empathy were able to sell more life insurance to their customers, growing the bottom line. Psychologist and New York Times science writer Daniel Goleman found "emotional intelligence" more tied to workplace productivity than IQ and technical expertise combined, across businesses.

Linked to School Success

These same core abilities were linked to school success. Research has shown that connection to the school community is the single most important factor in drop out rates, even more important than parental relations to whether kids stayed in school. Empathy is not only correlated with popularity, but with higher SAT scores.

Absence Linked to Failure and Crime

People who lack these abilities not only have a far greater chance of dropping out of school and failing at work, they are most likely to injure others, end up in prison, and/or be victimized themselves.

Social Learning Reaching a Tipping Point

With the publishing of Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence and the spate of books that followed, this connection between core social emotional abilities and academic, workplace and personal success found its way from academia and private treatment centers, into the mainstream.

These Abilities are the Core of Ripple Effects Software

All Ripple Effects software includes some combination of the components of these seven core social-emotional abilities.