Preface
Thirty-five people gathered in Room 10 that morning. The classroom was designed to hold only 30 comfortably. We were at 3M, our largest corporate client at the time, one we had been serving for the past several years with a training curriculum called Personal Leadership. We were launching a new course in the PL series and apparently it addressed a topic that was generating quite a bit of interest.
This occurred in 1996, a year after Daniel Goleman had published his now landmark book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ. The book created a tremendous buzz in the business world; organizations everywhere were clamoring for more insight into this thing called emotional intelligence.
From our first EI course that day at 3M through the work we've done presenting this topic to Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, the U.S. government, and a host of other organizations large and small, the interest in and perceived value of emotional intelligence has not waned. Research in the field has grown tremendously, various models have been developed, new questions have been raised, lines of thinking have diverged, and we all still have a lot to learn.
Daniel Goleman didn't invent emotional intelligence; rather, he very nicely packaged and built on some work done by others in the field. Psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer are often credited as having coined the term “emotional intelligence” in an article by the same name they co-authored in 1990. Five years before that though, Reuven Bar-On, a psychologist at Haifa University in Israel, was seeking to isolate and identify the factors that determine one's ability to be effective in life. Based on his research findings, Bar-On introduced something he called the emotional quotient or EQ. This abbreviation, of course, was a pushback against the long-running notion that a high IQ was a predictor of success in life. Bar-On and many who have researched, written about, and taught the concepts of emotional intelligence after him believe that although intellect is certainly important, intellectual capacity alone is not enough. Other critical factors need to be considered. These factors, an interrelated group of competencies, are collectively known as emotional intelligence.
Definitions and models for framing EI continue to be refined by both the pioneers of the field and those who have followed in their footsteps. There are several different versions, and each camp likes to put on its own spin. For our purposes here, we choose to apply a fairly general definition to the term:
Emotional intelligence is using your emotions intelligently to gain the performance you wish to see within yourself and to achieve interpersonal effectiveness with others.
Our placement of the emotional intelligence competencies as a component of overall performance aligns us most closely with Daniel Goleman's framework for EI. Goleman's model consists of four major EI domains:
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relational Skills.
Within each of these domains, Goleman describes related competencies. You'll find these domains and many of the competencies within each described in detail in the pages ahead.
WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK
A number of important questions need to be asked about emotional intelligence. Primary among them is: Can the competencies of emotional intelligence be developed? IQ is often thought of as being static—you score what you score on the IQ test and that's about where it stays throughout your life. So what about growth opportunities for one's EQ?
Most researchers and practitioners in the field believe that emotional intelligence is something that can be developed. We agree of course, thus we offer this book on the topic. Granted, some people may be more naturally gifted at certain EI competencies than others, but competencies consist of behaviors that can be developmentally scaled. This means that with training and practice we can all become more competent over time. Therefore, we believe that all people have EI within them and can develop their EI abilities more fully if desired.
A second important question then follows—can EI be measured? Again, many of those in the field believe that it can be. Goleman, Bar-On, and Salovy and Mayer along with their colleague David Caruso have all developed EI (or EQ in the case of Bar-On) assessment instruments. Some of these are self-scoring instruments requiring a high degree of self-insight and honesty, whereas others are 360-feedback designs inviting input from those with whom you work or otherwise interact. See the Resources section of the book for an overview of some of the various EI assessment instruments.
Today many individuals and organizations are doing good work in the field of emotional intelligence research, promotion, and education. We feel that these efforts have significant value both for enhancing the lives of individuals and for contributing to organizational effectiveness. We applaud the work being done and are proud to be a small part of it. We offer this book to you as a launching-off point. Allow Put Emotional Intelligence to Work to serve as your introduction to and overview of the concept of emotional intelligence. We hope it provides valuable insight, presents pathways for growth, and provokes you to further exploration both within yourself and ever deeper into the realm of emotional intelligence.
HOW THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU
The question: “What is emotional intelligence?” does not necessarily have a basic answer. We have suggested a simple definition, but in reality emotional intelligence works more like a construct, a comprehensive model that is used to understand how cognition and emotion affect both personal and interpersonal behaviors. Put Emotional Intelligence to Work therefore offers these tools:
It concisely explains the EI model.
It translates the current EI research into practical, relevant understanding.
It focuses on the relevance of EI for personal and interpersonal success.
It offers practical application exercises.
It teaches the reader how to manage impulsive, unpleasant, and disruptive emotions that often lead to unwanted behaviors. It teaches the reader how to tap into self-motivating emotions like confidence, passion, enthusiasm, desire, happiness, and anticipation.
It demonstrates how emotional intelligence learning applies to influencing people, managing change, dealing with conflict, building teams, and developing others.
It provides insight into what it means to be an emotionally intelligent leader.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
We have written this book for people who want to develop their own emotional competency and for training, learning, and development professionals who are committed to building emotionally intelligent organizations. This group might include:
trainers who want to learn more about how to apply emotional intelligence research to practical learning
organization development professionals
human resource professionals
managers who need emotional intelligence training to enhance leadership and coaching skills
anyone who wants to understand how the various components of emotional intelligence work together to form a comprehensive model of effective living
anyone who wants to translate the current EI research into practical and relevant applications
faculty members and school teachers who want to integrate emotional intelligence concepts into their teaching materials.
CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS
As trainers, we seek to create opportunities in the training classroom for participants to experience the content we are exploring together. We work hard to take the theories of something like EI and bring them to life through activities and exercises. Through these efforts, we seek to both engage our training participants more deeply in the content as well as to help them to build a bridge of relevancy between these theories and their real lives.
Here now, as we seek to express EI in book form, we find ourselves another step removed from being able to truly bring this content to life and help you, the reader, make a connection to it. To resolve this, at points throughout the book, we lean back on our EI-training-classroom experiences. Every so often in a chapter, you'll come across something called “A Glimpse into the Classroom” in which we tell the story of how we explore one aspect of EI in a training session. We include these little vignettes as a way of helping you “experience” EI as we often present it in the training sessions, allowing you to live vicariously through the classroom-based experience of our training participants. We hope you find these glimpses both interesting and helpful.
Our exploration of emotional intelligence begins with self-awareness. Research supports that self-awareness is foundational to both self-management and social awareness. Self-management and social awareness then determine relationship effectiveness. A summary of the chapter-by-chapter content follows. We begin with self-awareness, move on to self-management, then consider social awareness, and relationship management.
Chapter 1. Emotional Intelligence: The New Science of Success
This chapter introduces the concept of emotional intelligence, examines why it is important to success, and explores EI basics.
Chapter 2. Emotional Self-Awareness
This chapter defines self-awareness as an effortful activity that includes not only recognition of emotional states, but also an awareness of why the emotion is present and an acceptance of the emotion as a source of helpful feedback.
Chapter 3. Confidence, Self-Esteem, and Peak Performance
A component of self-awareness includes an awareness of one's personal strengths, self-worth, capabilities, and even purpose in life. This chapter shows how your confidence and self-esteem are developed through a healthy and accurate assessment of your true giftedness.
If self-awareness provides us with accurate feedback, then self-management is our response to that feedback. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on self-management.
Chapter 4. The Anatomy of an Emotion
The first step to managing your emotions is to understand why emotions can often be so impulsive, reactive, and disruptive. This chapter explains how the brain processes emotions and that you have the ability to use your unique human intelligence to manage disruptive emotions proactively.
Chapter 5. Cognitive and Behavioral Strategies for Managing Your Emotions
This chapter explores both cognitive and behavioral strategies for managing disruptive emotions.
Chapter 6. Achieving Goals and Overcoming Adversity
Part of managing emotions includes learning how to tap into emotional energy and employ it in the direction of achieving goals. This chapter discusses the kind of emotional energy that we all want to leverage—enthusiasm, motivation, passion, desire, and optimism.
Chapters 7 to 10 move us from the personal competencies of self-awareness and self-management to the social competencies of social awareness and relationship management.
Perhaps the most important skill to developing effective interpersonal relationships is empathy. This chapter explains why empathy is so important, how to do it well, and how to avoid some common pitfalls surrounding it.
Chapter 8. EI and Workplace Issues
Relationship management is where your self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness get put to the test. This chapter explains how emotional intelligence helps you deal with the potentially more emotional challenges of work life—navigating change, resolving conflict, and interacting with teams.
Chapter 9. Emotional Intelligence and Influence
Influence is the result of a kind of emotional energy that occurs between two or more people who resonate with one another. This chapter explores the concept of resonant leadership and how to create resonance in your interpersonal relationships.
Chapter 10. Putting It All Together—Your EI Plan of Action
This chapter provides a framework for clarifying your intentions concerning growth and development of your emotional intelligence and offers a structure for creating an action plan for implementing your development goals.
In addition, the book includes an Additional Resources section that lists many sources to support your further exploration and continued growth and development of your emotional intelligence.
HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU TO EQUIP YOURSELF FOR SUCCESS
Emotional intelligence is something we all have within us. We have no doubt that you are already strong in certain aspects of EI. We also have no doubt that there are elements of emotional intelligence that you need to be reminded of and in which you could focus some energy toward becoming more secure. That's what your journey through this book and this work is all about. Our challenge to you as you turn these pages and engage this exploration is this:
Recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate your strengths with regard to EI. Leverage these gifts to their fullest potential.
Identify areas of EI in which you need to grow. Focus some energy on this by putting in place an action plan for development in these areas.
We need to add the disclaimer that when you've turned the last page of this text and set this book aside fully read, you will not necessarily be more emotionally intelligent than you were when you began reading. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way! Leveraging, honing, and improving the skills of EI requires practice and focused effort. It requires real-world application and cannot be gained by simply reading “How to…”
We can promise that when you finish this book, you'll know what EI looks like, you'll understand why it's critical to your success in life. You will have some foundation for applying and growing it as needed. At that point, we'll have done our job; the rest is up to you.