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Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Paperback)
by Daniel Goleman
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Emotional Intelligence, Thinking pattern, Personal and business success |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
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¥ 168.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
This runaway bestseller is a classic on emotional intelligence and a must-read for personal and professional development. |
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Author: Daniel Goleman
Publisher: Bantam; 10th Annv edition
Pub. in: September, 2005
ISBN: 055338371X
Pages: 384
Measurements: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00373
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0553383713
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- Awards & Credential -
A ground-breaking book first published in 1985. The #1 Bestseller. |
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- MSL Picks -
The importance of emotional intelligence was proven to me early on in this book, especially with the author's neurological explanations of the brain. Daniel Coleman used a variety of approaches to prove the value of emotional intelligence including: neuroscience, biology, and studies. Yet, some of the directions the author chose to take lost my interest. The studies could have been abbreviated and maybe the classification of emotions could have been expanded on. The book demonstrated the dire consequences of not learning emotional intelligence and sometimes used extreme examples, which seemed unnecessary. However, this pioneering book (albeit somewhat outdated) deserves attention.
For me the book started well with references to Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," making a connection between the wisdom that Aristotle exalted and emotional intelligence. The book went on to explain how the physical components of the brain affect emotional behavior; here the amygdala is explained, which is the control center for emotional behavior, and is referred to throughout the book. This biology and neuroscience clarified how rudimentary emotional behavior is in the human brain.
In part three, the author showed progressive thinking in his belief that the medical profession must consider emotional factors. Since the book's publication, medical schools have agreed with him. On June 10, 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported that graduates from all 126 medical schools in the U.S. will take a standardized test that will rate "bedside manner." According to the article, this test will "gauge what multiple-choice questions cannot: a graduate's ability to communicate with patients..."
In parts Four and Five my interest waned as the author discussed how emotional training can improve society. Although the author suggests key improvements to pedagogy, the studies and extreme examples of what can go wrong with the emotional brain belabored the topic for me. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is closely analyzed, as is trauma, abuse, and bullies--all valid areas for discussion but beyond what is needed for demonstrating what emotional intelligence is and why it is important. Violence, social aggression, and certain neuroses resulting from emotional problems could have been explained in a shorter section. But the author deserves credit for offering solutions, and has an interesting theory that modernity is the cause for a worldwide trend of melancholy.
I would have liked more of the book devoted to the challenge of defining emotions. Of interest to me was Appendix A because it revealed the classification attempts made for emotions. The section considers a handful of "core" emotions with all other emotions being a blend of these; there also might be families of emotions with many nuances affecting moods and temperament.
This book reveals a big-picture outlook of the human brain and the emotional activity that is an intrinsic part of it. The thesis that emotional intelligence can be more important than IQ is well supported, but the author is not saying that it is necessarily better! (Previous reviewers of the book have created an EQ-versus-IQ polemic.) Both are critical facets of intelligence that must work together and neither can be dismissed.
(From quoting C. Bordman, USA)
Target readers:
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, government and non-profit leaders, professionals, MBAs, anyone else interested in the concept of Emotional Intelligence.
And all the parents, teachers, and educators should also read the book.
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- Better with -
Better with
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
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Daniel Goleman, Ph.D. is also the author of the worldwide bestseller Working with Emotional Intelligence and is co-author of Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence, written with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee.
Dr. Goleman received his Ph.D. from Harvard and reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for twelve years, where he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He was awarded the American Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and is currently a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science His other books include Destructive Emotions, The Meditative Mind, The Creative Spirit, and Vital Lies, Simple Truths.
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From Publisher
Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds" - the rational and the emotional - and how they together shape our destiny.
Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.
The best news is that "emotional literacy" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.
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The New Yardstick
The rules for work are changing. We're being judged by a new yardstick: not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other. This yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who will be hired and who will not, who will be let go and who retained, who passed over and who promoted.
The new rules predict who is most likely to become a star performer and who is most prone to derailing. And, no matter what field we work in currently, they measure the traits that are crucial to our marketability for future jobs.
These rules have little to do with what we were told was important in school; academic abilities are largely irrelevant to this standard. The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness.
This is no passing fad, nor just the management nostrum of the moment. The data that argue for taking it seriously are based on studies of tens of thousands of working people, in callings of every kind. The research distills with unprecedented precision which qualities mark a star performer. And it demonstrates which human abilities make up the greater part of the ingredients for excellence at work - most especially for leadership.
If you work in a large organization, even now you are probably being evaluated in terms of these capabilities, though you may not know it. If you are applying for a job, you are likely to be scrutinized through this lens, though, again, no one will tell you so explicitly. Whatever your job, understanding how to cultivate these capabilities can be essential for success in your career.
If you are part of a management team, you need to consider whether your organization fosters these competencies or discourages them. To the degree your organizational climate nourishes these competencies, your organization will be more effective and productive. You will maximize your group's intelligence, the synergistic interaction of every person's best talents.
If you work for a small organization or for yourself, your ability to perform at peak depends to a very great extent on your having these abilities - though almost certainly you were never taught them in school. Even so, your career will depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on how well you have mastered these capacities.
In a time with no guarantees of job security, when the very concept of a "job" is rapidly being replaced by "portable skills," these are prime qualities that make and keep us employable. Talked about loosely for decades under a variety of names, from "character" and "personality" to "soft skills" and "competence," there is at last a more precise understanding of these human talents, and a new name for them: emotional intelligence.
A Different Way of Being Smart
"I had the lowest cumulative grade point average ever in my engineering school," the codirector of a consulting firm tells me. "But when I joined the army and went to officer candidate school, I was number one in my class - it was all about how you handle yourself, get along with people, work in teams, leadership. And that's what I find to be true in the world of work."
In other words, what matters is a different way of being smart. In my book Emotional Intelligence, my focus was primarily on education, though a short chapter dealt with implications for work and organizational life.
What caught me by utter surprise - and delighted me - was the flood of interest from the business community. Responding to a tidal wave of letters and faxes, e-mails and phone calls, requests to speak and consult, I found myself on a global odyssey, talking to thousands of people, from CEOs to secretaries, about what it means to bring emotional intelligence to work.
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This search has taken me back to research I participated in while a graduate student, and then faculty member, at Harvard University. That research was part of an early challenge to the IQ mystique - the false but widely embraced notion that what matters for success is intellect alone. This work helped spawn what has now become a mini-industry that analyzes the actual competencies that make people successful in jobs and organizations of every kind, and the findings are astonishing: IQ takes second position to emotional intelligence in determining outstanding job performance.
Analyses done by dozens of different experts in close to five hundred corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide have arrived independently at remarkably similar conclusions, and their findings are particularly compelling because they avoid the biases or limits inherent in the work of a single individual or group. Their conclusions all point to the paramount place of emotional intelligence in excellence on the job - in virtually any job.
Some Misconceptions
As I've toured the world talking and consulting with people in business, I've encountered certain widespread misunderstandings about emotional intelligence. Let me clear up some of the most common at the outset. First, emotional intelligence does not mean merely "being nice." At strategic moments it may demand not "being nice," but rather, for example, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfortable but consequential truth they've been avoiding.
Second, emotional intelligence does not mean giving free rein to feelings - "letting it all hang out." Rather, it means managing feelings so that they are expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly toward their common goals.
Also, women are not "smarter" than men when it comes to emotional intelligence, nor are men superior to women. Each of us has a personal profile of strengths and weaknesses in these capacities. Some of us may be highly empathic but lack some abilities to handle our own distress; others may be quite aware of the subtlest shift in our own moods, yet be inept socially.
It is true that men and women as groups tend to have a shared, gender-specific profile of strong and weak points. An analysis of emotional intelligence in thousands of men and women found that women, on average, are more aware of their emotions, show more empathy, and are more adept interpersonally. Men, on the other hand, are more self-confident and optimistic, adapt more easily, and handle stress better.
In general, however, there are far more similarities than differences. Some men are as empathic as the most interpersonally sensitive women, while some women are every bit as able to withstand stress as the most emotionally resilient men. Indeed, on average, looking at the overall ratings for men and women, the strengths and weaknesses average out, so that in terms of total emotional intelligence, there are no sex differences.
Finally, our level of emotional intelligence is not fixed genetically, nor does it develop only in early childhood. Unlike IQ, which changes little after our teen years, emotional intelligence seems to be largely learned, and it continues to develop as we go through life and learn from our experiences - our competence in it can keep growing. In fact, studies that have tracked people's level of emotional intelligence through the years show that people get better and better in these capabilities as they grow more adept at handling their own emotions and impulses, at motivating themselves, and at honing their empathy and social adroitness. There is an old-fashioned word for this growth in emotional intelligence: maturity.
Why This Matters Now
At a California biotech start-up, the CEO proudly enumerated the features that made his organization state-of-the-art: No one, including him, had a fixed office; instead, everyone carried a small laptop—their mobile office—and was wired to everyone else. Job titles were irrelevant; employees worked in cross-functional teams and the place bubbled with creative energy. People routinely put in seventy- and eighty-hour work weeks.
"So what's the downside?" I asked him.
"There is no downside," he assured me.
And that was the fallacy. Once I was free to talk with staff members, I heard the truth: The hectic pace had people feeling burned out and robbed of their private lives. And though everyone could talk via computer to everyone else, people felt that no one was truly listening to them.
People desperately felt the need for connection, for empathy, for open communication.
In the new, stripped-down, every-job-counts business climate, these human realities will matter more than ever. Massive change is a constant; technical innovations, global competition, and the pressures of institutional investors are ever-escalating forces for flux.
Another reality makes emotional intelligence ever more crucial: As organizations shrink through waves of downsizing, those people who remain are more accountable - and more visible. Where earlier a midlevel employee might easily hide a hot temper or shyness, now competencies such as managing one's emotions, handling encounters well, teamwork, and leadership, show - and count - more than ever.
The globalization of the workforce puts a particular premium on emotional intelligence in wealthier countries. Higher wages in these countries, if they are to be maintained, will depend on a new kind of productivity. And structural fixes or technological advances alone are not enough: As at the California biotech firm, streamlining or other innovations often create new problems that cry out for even greater emotional intelligence.
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USA Today (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
A thoughtfully written, persuasive account explaining emotional intelligence and why it can be crucial to your career.
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Warren Bennis (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Anyone interested in leadership... should get a copy of this book. In fact, I recommend it to all readers anywhere who want to see their organizations in the phone book in the year 2001. |
The Christian Science Monitor (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Good news to the employee looking for advancement [and] a wake-up call to organizations and corporations.
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Rebecca Johnson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Great spiritual teachers, like Buddha and Jesus, have touched their disciples' hearts by speaking in the language of emotion, teaching in parables, fables, and stories. Indeed, religious symbol and ritual makes little sense from the rational point of view; it is couched in the vernacular of the heart. ~Daniel Goleman
Of all the books I have read in my entire life, Daniel Goleman's book on Emotional Intelligence was as difficult to begin as it was to put down. After numerous attempts to make it past the first chapter, I finally dedicated an entire week to the reading of this classic treatise on the importance of emotional awareness. Surprisingly it then only took three days to finish reading because I read constantly day and night, night and day.
The rare beauty of Daniel Goleman's writing is breathlessly intellectual all while retaining a centered approach to the research of his topic at hand. Not only has he brilliantly woven carefully placed threads of awareness into a coherent and comforting blanket of understanding, he uncovers truly helpful and practical applications.
From a deep ocean of emotional conflicts and social programming, ideas for healing appeal to our hunger for inner coherence. His work also explains why we long for positive nourishment in a negative world and why a range of skills beyond basic IQ serves to enable our success.
Daniel Goleman's writing is rich and intricate. He draws on a variety of well-known experts and personal interviews he conducted for The New York Times. His extensive interest in this topic reveals itself in the fluidity with which he combines the information so as to make it completely accessible to anyone willing to take the time to follow his logic page by page. He explores the disintegration of civility, biological patterns of emotional response and shows how the rational and emotional minds can work in harmony.
Practical elements include an understanding of feelings as they happen, how to manage emotions and how to handle emotions as they arise. Throughout, Daniel Goleman gives hope and explains why "lapses in emotional skills can be remedied." Anyone who deals with anger or depression will be especially encouraged while reading this book.
All too often we learn by experience and this book is filled with a variety of pathways stemming from emotions that either lead us to peace or conflict. Even while reading this book, you may be triggered numerous times and feel a wide variety of emotions.
I was happy to read about how crying can "lower levels of brain chemicals that prime distress." Many of the topics in this book help to explain why our emotions create various responses and how we can adapt, immediately address the problems or move from one emotional state to another quite quickly with very minimal effort. Even while reading I could feel my emotional state in a constant flux due to various topics bringing memories into my awareness. There are at least three ideas I'm already putting into practice and reading books to distract myself from negative emotions definitely works to change moods dramatically, as does exercise. You may find yourself underlining entire passages and then finally just circling an entire page to refer back to in moments of reflection.
What does it mean when someone lacks empathy?
What are the early warning signs of divorce?
Why can neglect be more damaging than abuse?
Why is the ability to control impulse the base of will and character?
The reasons for addiction, epidemic depression and rage are all addressed from a scientific perspective while at the same time taking practical matters into account. Why do emotional impulses so often supersede rational thought processes?
If you enjoy reading books on psychology, love, interpersonal relationships or communication, this is essential reading. Reading this book could be as essential to your success as a college education.
In the end, I think you can't truly be happy unless you find at least "one" person who really listens to your heart. Once you know what your heart is telling you and you find a place where your desires don't conflict with your rational mind, peace may begin to appear for moments at a time.
Specific religious beliefs are not taken into consideration due to the all-encompassing nature of this book. However, once you read this book in all its beauty, everything you believe will make more sense. Keeping a handle on your emotions then gives you more control over your self-esteem, which in turn can keep you alive.
Reading a book on emotions may be essential to your survival for to understand this aspect of life is truly enlightening. I would not have been able to understand this book in my 20s, but I definitely have enjoyed finding it before I turn 40. I feel like entire worlds will open up as I read additional selections. This is a true basis for understanding the desires of the heart and how we can temper passion with rational thought. |
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