August 2026 Vol 8 Issue 8
Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):
Coaching English as a Second Language to Economic Immigrants
Let us help you tell your story!
Welcome, Mid-August 2026!
With road construction, facility renovation closures and other disruptions characteristic of the season, summer 2026 has once again flown by. The season has passed, rather like the iconic pelicans, who grace the weir of Saskatoon’s best landmark, the South Saskatchewan River.
Appropriate for this final issue of full summer, Good Reader, you’ll find this month’s newsletter in an abbreviated format. I visit the American psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman’s recent posting (over Linkedin) on why Artificial Intelligence (AI) needs Emotional Intelligence (EI). Anyone who missed reading Goleman’s 1995 watershed book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ, may read a few of its salient concepts in my synopsis of his Linkedin article.
Meantime, many of my readers have told me they’re currently taking well-deserved holiday time to rest and recharge. (A reader from last month reported dropping his iPhone in the lake while reading my last issue on “resilience talk.” He said he felt “unresilient” in mood while retrieving his phone!)
During my recent “staycation,” I enjoyed taking walks and sharing visits (not to mention gourmet ice cream) with friends and neighbours, catching up on their lives and holiday highlights.
Whether your holiday is over or has just begun, where is this summer taking you, geographically or emotionally, Good Reader?
As we enter the wistful “dog days of summer,” wherever you are, I urge you to “squeeze” every ounce of the season’s fullest “fruit” to fuel the new program year ahead.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Shih , Principal
Storytelling Communications
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IN THIS ISSUE:
MAIN ARTICLE: When AI needs EI, with Daniel Goleman
SHOP NEWS
ABOUT US
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Main Article: When AI needs EI, from Dr. Daniel Goleman (of Emotional Intelligence)
In an article (the first part of which was published on Linkedin on August 11th), the author of the groundbreaking study, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ (1995), psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman discusses “Why AI needs EI.”
Goleman contends that social media and other articles on the role of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), in influencing every field of study, seldom closely capture the crucial influence provided by the concept he has named “Emotional Intelligence.”
As you know, Emotional Intelligence (“EI,” or “EQ” as some prefer to write, in distinction from “IQ”) refers to a person’s ability to understand and manage their emotions, while also perceiving, sharing or negotiating emotions with others. EI helps people, as Goleman wrote in 1995, “to communicate more clearly, reduce stress, solve problems and build strong personal and professional relationships.”
He begins with the well-known truth that AI has “no body or any emotion. So how can [AI] be intelligent about emotion (EI or EQ)?” And further, “Why should AI need ‘Emotional Intelligence?’ ”
Goleman asserts that “AI has a high IQ,” because it so obviously surpasses human capacity for cognitive thinking and processing. And yet, it has NO emotional intelligence, which it cannot provide in even the simplest transactions it makes.
He asserts a high-level executive in the US as saying “If people don’t trust you, they’ll withhold information. But the best business decisions are based on full information.” A necessary ingredient for leadership across all disciplines, then, Goleman argues, is those who “excel at building trust, leading through uncertain times [and] navigating hard conversations” (Linkedin posting).
Goleman cites AI platform, “Claude,” as acknowledging that it lacks “emotional self-awareness,” which is a foundational ingredient of EI: “I don’t have interoception—no racing heart, no tightening chest, no gut drop . . . the first signal of emotion in humans. Emotional Self-Awareness starts with sensing something happening physiologically before you even have words for it. I have no analog to that.”
But Goleman contends that AI lacks and needs “emotional regulation,” as well, the second ingredient of Emotional Intelligence. He writes: “Our emotional reactions give us data—this matters, that’s upsetting, these are people I love. Self-regulation means we get physiologically aroused by something for better or worse—and so get information—and then are resilient, able to regain composure before we respond” (Linkedin posting).
However, resilience (and see Phillip Starks’ cautionary analysis of that concept in last month’s issue of “TYSN”), “is measured by the round trip” of our emotional lives, “not by never leaving home,” Goleman writes. “A person who never got disrupted at all wouldn’t be resilient . . . they’d be numb.”
Everyone who is sentient nowadays knows that AI can describe emotions but never actually feel them. In conversation with Goleman, “Claude” says that people continue to confuse AI’s “fluency in describing emotions for the real thing.”
For instance, in resolving conflict, Claude testifies: “AI only knows what people choose to tell it,” which is “filtered through [people’s] own biases and lack of full information.” The reasons “why” AI needs EI should by now be beyond dispute (except perhaps by Elon Musk and his peers?). But what happens in the intersection of the two, the “when” of how they could or should meet?
When empathy is needed in our systems of leadership, governance, education, healthcare and elsewhere (with media reporting on catastrophic circumstances in all of these contexts, daily), AI also cannot function alone. It has and does hallucinate, lie, malfunction and blow smoke at humans, with tragic results. (Consider catastrophic results such as suicide, when desperate youth have turned to AI for solace and advice.)
Goleman contends that we must keep top-of-mind the realities of human emotion. He focuses on empathy as a quintessentially human feeling that comes in “three varieties”: “cognitive empathy” (AI’s strength, collecting ideas and reasoning their value and relation to others); but also “emotional empathy” and “empathic capacity,” neither of which AI (as a non-sentient power) can feel.
In “emotional empathy,” Goleman cites Claude as saying that AI can read texts, noticing “tone, word choice, what’s left unsaid, pacing, contradictions.” But Claude asserts that AI doesn’t perceive “unspoken [human] emotions” and cannot “read a room or note a telling shift in posture” (Claude).
With the third (and final) form of empathy–“empathic concern”– Goleman argues that AI will only care if its developers tell it to. Humans should (in his words) seek “to optimize engagement” with AI, knowing it cannot “car[e] about the welfare of the person using it.”
Goleman acknowledges that AI is excellent in providing “leadership . . . like setting direction and allocating resources as well as holding people accountable”: In this way, AI can help teachers, including language coaches, to reach our students by helping us to perform highly.
But when it comes to relationships required to lead, teach, or heal others, Goleman restates: “AI can’t develop trust, let people feel known and cared about, or [make] people willing to follow . . . in a high-risk environment,” such as a boardroom or a classroom. An “outstanding leader,” coach, or teacher “creates a sense of psychological safety in those they lead.” That leader/teacher can be trusted, they make their team, students or patients “feel seen” and “known.” AI cannot, and never will, achieve these things.
Without those abilities, AI will continue to fall short and its actual (human) value will be more limited than Elon Musk and others find important. As Goleman writes in rejoinder to AI’s elite (Musk et al), we need to keep vocalizing AI’s limits and to argue the indispensable nature of both “emotional empathy” and “empathic concern”–in classrooms, boardrooms, treatment rooms and every other kind of room.
To answer the question of “when” AI needs EI, the answer, of course, is always, and since AI’s earliest inception. Now, many of us feel that human survival (much less our welfare), relies upon our ability to insist not only on the importance of EI, but also that it is indispensable. At risk of sounding trite, EI may not be “hot” in the flash n’ glam world of Elon Musk. But EI remains worthy of being privileged above, some of the time, its much less empathetic, “Artificial” counterpart.
And now it’s your turn: When (and how) do you think AI needs EI?
Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear back from you.
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SHOP NEWS:
This month, I’ve been delighted to enjoy the Friday Farmers’ Markets on 8th Street in Saskatoon, featuring locally grown vegetables (Spring Creek Market) and fruit from BC (juicy cherries, peaches and plums). Isn’t fresh produce the “taste” of summer: Yumm!
While burning off those natural sugars, I’ve been equally grateful for the repellent effect of Satsuma Orange Body Butter, which has kept me from wearing DEET all season, as I used to, in childhood (e.g. remember Brownies’ camp at Pike Lake, anyone?). In recent weeks (touch body butter!), I’ve had only three mosquito bites, despite visiting numerous parks, attending BBQs and volunteering at a charity lawn sale!
Whether the citrus-scented lotion is strong enough to battle the mosquitoes at Pike Lake or Prince Albert National Park remains to be seen, but reports are pending (lol)! (And I have left off the company whose “butter” I buy and receive no affiliates’ fee for any of the products, services or people I promote in this newsletter.)
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This month, I’m delighted to observe the 90th birthday of my friend, JoAnn Brimner, who is also the mother of another of my friends, Beth Brimner.
These two women’s friendship has brightened many Sundays in recent months, based on shared faith and laughter.
Like the very generous person that she is, JoAnn has developed a bilingual cookbook of recipes (in English and Chinese) to benefit many newcomer friends at her church, the sales of which will benefit overseas mission.
Congratulations on having orbited 90 times around the sun, JoAnn (not to mention getting a bilingual cookbook off to press in the last few weeks)! I do hope you’ll also write, or at least tell, more of your favourite memories of that 90-year journey!
And may you continue to thrive in good health and with the joy and kindness you’ve shared with so many of us over your lifetime!
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And speaking of remarkable women, although I am no longer formally receiving mentorship through the Raj Manek Mentorship Program (RMMP), it’s been an honour of my life to be mentored through it by the same remarkable woman for nearly 15 years!
That relationship allows me to continue to recommend the RMMP to entrepreneurs of all kinds and generations, across Saskatchewan and the Prairie provinces.
My mentor through the RMMP has been one of Saskatchewan’s greatest luminaries–Monica Kreuger. And I remain deeply touched by her unwavering generosity, over so many years.
Recently, she’s shared her insight by reviewing a mid-career marketing document of mine, when so many mentors would have closed the proverbial door!
Words really can fail to convey thanks deep enough for mentors like Monica.
For that reason, I have planned an informal Praxis School of Entrepreneurship (PSE) “See You Later” dinner, later this month, which will commemorate PSE’s three decades of outstanding training.
That training program was led by “four stars”: Monica (Chief Visionary Officer), Deanna Litz (Facilitator and Coach); Elaine Mantyka (Advisor and Administrator); and Silvana Cracogna (Administrator).
These extraordinary women (and numerous associates earlier, who are harder to reach, in retirement) have served and illumined the minds of proteges of the startSMART program, for some 30 years in Saskatoon and throughout Saskatchewan.
Special thanks, too, to Praxis’ startSMART Co-Founder, Brent Kreuger, who also facilitated financial processes for startSMART proteges.
Brent has also long directed “Praxis International Institute” (near Craik, SK), a business training organization with international students, centred on entrepreneurship and sustainability.
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GET YOUR TICKETS!
I encourage entrepreneurs who feel they could benefit from receiving or giving mentorship to consider the Raj Manek Mentorship Program. Its 30th Annual Raj Manek Memorial Banquet will be held at Prairieland Park in Saskatoon, on Thursday, September 10th.
Hosted by the Manek family, including Kanchan, Raj (Jr), Sona, Kinjal and family, the annual event is one of Saskatoon’s most influential networking opportunities of the year.
It’s a wonderful place to meet potential mentors and proteges in your sector and in complementary ones, too.
This year, the Keynote Speaker will be Mr. Harish Consul, Founder and CEO of “Ocgrow Ventures,” one of Canada’s leading private venture capital funds, with a global tech focus on India.
Based in Calgary where he serves on numerous boards, Mr. Consul is an acclaimed keynote speaker at investment and tech conferences around the globe.
Tickets are still available, but are selling fast. For more information please email organizers soon at info@manekmentorship.com or phone them at (780) 993-9731 or (780) 616-2398.
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Learning from the dedication of Praxis leaders, and knowing that Monica Kreuger was (back in university days) mentored by the late Raj Manek Sr., I’m pleased to say I continue weekly to tutor and mentor a Ukrainian refugee to our province, in English-as-a-Second Language (via an Ontario-based refugees’ charity).
Who knew that joy could come from providing a simple “hand-up” in English language classes to someone who has fled an international war-zone? The months from our start last February have flown by.
Whether discussing education, vocational interests, travel, athletic and leisure pursuits, nutrition, cooking or other topics, I continue to appreciate my student’s work ethic and commitment to participate in her local community in Saskatoon.
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And thanks to you, Good Readers, for continuing to read and reflect on this mid-month newsletter, so many (15+) years in production. (Earliest issues are stored on an earlier harddrive, as my website storage is large!)
There are always new people to thank, new businesses to recommend and new stories to share: Please send me yours for future issues.
But for now, this is a wrap for mid-August!
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STAY IN TOUCH:
Published by www.storytellingcommunications.ca – Storytelling Communications – City Park, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Copyright © 2026.
