Social Intelligence also encompasses your ability to observe and understand the context of a situation you may find yourself in, and to understand the ways in which the situation dominates or shapes the behavior of the people in it. Cooperativeness is an integral part of Social Intelligence.

Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft, which became the world’s largest PC software company. He displayed cooperativeness by building trust and loyalty partly by taking his employees’ opinion into account. He had high technical skills, but initially did not feel comfortable giving others influence on decisions. Then he learned that he could not do everything on his own. The only way he was able to delegate was hiring the most talented employees and giving autonomy to his managers.