Book Review: Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The good news is that adults with low EQ can change. Even though old patterns of thinking have carved deep grooves in our brains, making it harder and harder over time to recover emotionally and develop healthy responses to our own and others' feelings, it can be done. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it is not easy.

Published in 1995, Goleman's book is apparently the one that started it all. The expression "EQ" is now part of the culture, and most of us do have a vague understanding of what it means and it's proven importance. Less well-known, of course, is exactly what constitutes emotional intelligence, what builds or destroys it, and what can be done to repair damage. That is why I am glad I read this one. The four-page summary I prepared is available as a free download by clicking here.

I recently had an opportunity to attend a workshop on emotional intelligence at a nationwide conference of peers. With only three hours, the trainer had to pack a great deal into his presentation and small group exercises. Along the way he suggested that we not read this book, saying it was too dense and academic to hold our interest. I noticed that his materials were derived from other works in this field, notably the stuff produced by Travis Bradberry, Jean Greaves and the folks at TalentSmart. That's fine, but I disagree that Emotional Intelligence was difficult reading. It gives fullness to the work of those who came after and helped me understand some of what I learned in the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 self-assessment.

Here's a key quote for me, suggesting a strategy for improvement that I will be working to implement in my own life over the next few weeks:

"The train of angry thoughts that stokes anger is also potentially the key to one of the most powerful ways to defuse anger: undermining the convictions that are fueling the anger in the first place. The longer we ruminate about what has made us angry, the more 'good reasons' and self-justifications for being angry we can invent. Brooding fuels anger's flames. But seeing things differently douses those flames."

This idea has shown up in much of my reading. It's in Learned Optimism and other works by Martin Seligman. It's in Leadership and Self-Deception. It's in everything by Wayne Dyer and others who teach about the Law of Attraction. And it is certainly in Stephen Covey's work. My year-long exploration of The 8th Habit is what led me to finally read Goleman. But as Covey says "To know and not to do is really not to know." To get the full value from having read this book I will need to apply the lessons learned. Breathe. Count to ten. Challenge those negative thoughts. Let it go. Carve new neural pathways.





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Emotional Intelligence 2.0

One point. Six years after first taking an Emotional Intelligence assessment, I have raised my overall score a whopping one point.

This is what Dr. Covey is talking about when he says "To know and not to do is really not to know."  Six years ago I developed a plan for raising my EQ. I didn't do it. Not one action step.

My commitment to spending 2016 working through the principles of The 8th Habit includes reading and thinking about the books that are mentioned in it, or are at least closely related.  Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is at the heart of Chapter 4: Discover Your Voice. So I am dedicating February to learning more about it.  Um, I am dedicating February to implementing strategies for increasing my own EQ.

Here are the basic EQ skills, according to Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, the authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (TalentSmart, 2009).

• Self-Awareness. The ability to recognize your own emotions in real time, and understanding your own tendencies. My 2016 score: 69 (of 100)
• Self-Management. Using your self-awareness to employ the space between stimulus and response to choose an appropriate expression of emotion.  My score: 57
• Social Awareness: The ability to correctly detect the emotions others are feeling and to interpret the emotional cues they are giving. My score: 58
• Relationship Management: Using self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness to conduct successful interactions with other people. My score: 51

The scores come from the online test available (twice) to those who buy the book.  The website then provides a report recommending which three of the 66 strategies they describe in the book to yield the highest results, given the test-taker's unique patterns and deficiencies. For this go-round TalentSmart recommends that I focus on the skill of self-management and that I do the following: 

• Breathe Right. Get my brain the oxygen it needs for proper functioning by consciously engaging in deep breathing, both throughout the day as I think of it and in moments of high stress.
• Count to Ten. Yep, just like the pre-school teacher said. Doing this in conjunction with deep breathing during times when irritation is high should bring about an improvement in my ability to jettison that snarky comment and choose something more productive.  Like a smile.
• Set Aside Time in Your Day for Problem Solving.  Predicated on the idea that it's hard to make good decisions when I am bouncing around from emotion to emotion, this strategy seeks to make use of quiet time to pre-decide important matters. Interesting, and definitely worth a try.

I like it that there is a physiological strategy as well as behavioral ones. Makes me feel a little less at fault for my situation. (Oh, but wait, taking personal responsibility is the power move. I can make the changes and I can produce the results I seek. No victims here.) I also like it that these strategies are aimed straight at increasing the space between stimulus and response.

In my own defense, my biggest area of weakness in 2010 was self-awareness, and I have raised that score 15 points since then. It's just that I lost ground in the social awareness area, which I attribute to being so far removed from my training as a facilitator.  In recent years I have tended to take contracts where I was doing more consulting in an area of expertise than facilitating as a neutral outsider.  My radar for others' emotions has gotten weak. The truth is I do know how to do that well, I just don't. I bet deep breathing will help this, as will taking care to get enough sleep. That will be an excellent thing to fix as I transition my life to Florida.

At a conference last weekend I had an opportunity to attend a three-hour workshop on emotional intelligence. It was a nice refresher on the basics and provided me with an opportunity to reflect on a recent situation with a volunteer gig I have where a relationship went south in a hurry, never to recover. I do see my own role in that more clearly, both in terms of failing to show more empathy and in terms of exacerbating it with endless rumination. Could someone with a higher EQ have saved the situation? I don't know... but next time the person with the higher EQ will be me.

Learn more about Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and the self-assessment by visiting their website at www.TalentSmart.com.