EnlightED 2021 Closing Ceremony: Daniel Goleman and Hadi Parvoti

IE Business School hosted a hybrid edition of the closing ceremony of EnlightED 2021 where Hadi Parvoti, founder of code.org, and Daniel Goleman, author of best-seller Emotional Intelligence, explored two apparently contrasting ideas of the necessary set of skills in the future of the workspace: computer science and soft skills.

Parvoti shared his story as an immigrant child to the U.S. and how the ability to code transformed his life. Building on his own experience, he created the Hour of Code initiative with over a billion students worldwide that encouraged educators to rethink how to embed coding practices in the classroom.

“I learned that if you learn how to code, you can create your own dreams and bring them to life.”
Hadi Parvoti, highlighting that students that learn computer science have 17% more chances of attending college

“Schools all around the world, with one and half billion students, are all teaching the same courses as we taught them 100 years ago,” Parvati said. “The students have changed and the buildings are new but the curriculum is one hundred years old. We need to think what is the curriculum for this century.” 

EnlightED is a world conference where Telefónica Foundation, together with IE University and South Summit, brings together worldwide experts in education, technology and innovation to reflect upon the challenges of education and learning in the digital age. This year’s hybrid edition boasted speakers like Internet Society co-founder Vinton Cerf, tennis champion Rafael Nadal, International Baccalaureate General Director Olli-Pekka Heinonen and many others.

Lee Newman, Dean of IE Business School, spoke with psychologist Goleman about emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness and self-management and how they can help to build meaningful relations in the workspace and increase performance.

Goleman-- present on an enormous screen in the new IE Tower’s auditorium-- gave tips on how to combat unproductive behaviours such as procrastination, uncontrolled emotions, poor listening and faulty prioritization. Goleman invited attendees to engage in mindfulness practices to combat these behaviours by increasing self-awareness and self-management. 

He heralded the effects of meditation and shared breathing exercises. Goleman said training soft skills is as important as learning hard skills because human traits drive success.

“Your hard skills are going to help you get the job, but once you are in that position you are now competing with people who might have the same or superior hard skills as you have. Now the soft skills take dominance in what distinguishes outstanding from average.”
Daniel Goleman