Choice 4
Increase Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found out that it was ourselves.
—Robert Frost
It is no longer surprising news that rational “book smart” intelligence is not enough to live successfully. Our hearts as well as our brains are critical. In fact, it is EQ (emotional intelligence) rather than IQ that has become the recent center of attention for those wishing to be more effective in their work and life.56
Daniel Goleman popularized the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) in his best-selling book.25 According to Goleman,
emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships. It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ.26
Research suggests that EQ is every bit as important as IQ (intelligence quotient) for determining our effectiveness. It can help us to be more perceptive of hidden opportunities and interpersonal challenges. EQ can allow our emotions to become sources of useful information and even wisdom, as opposed to being distracting intrusions, and thereby can significantly increase our capacity for success. And it can help us be more resilient in the face of life pressures. For example, research has suggested that a higher EQ can help us to have less severe emotional reactions and to respond more constructively to the threat of possibly losing our jobs in the face of downsizing or corporate restructuring.2757
Goleman’s more recent book, written with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, titled Primal Leadership, describes the important role of EQ for leadership effectiveness.28 Specifically, based on decades of analysis in world class organizations, they argue that a leader’s emotions are contagious. They call for leaders to resonate enthusiasm and energy in order to help their followers and organizations thrive. If leaders project negativity and dissonance, the authors predict their followers and organizations will flounder.
Steve Ballmer, CEO of perennially successful Microsoft, has sent a consistent message. In commenting on “the pillars of excellence” for business, he talks about the importance of emotionally charged factors such as excitement, courage, and optimism.29 And when he talks about the need for vision in leadership, he points out its importance for getting people psyched up and enthused.
While EQ is clearly a very important concept to know about, its full benefit cannot be enjoyed unless we find meaningful ways of understanding its relevance to us personally and for applying it in our own lives. That is, being aware of what it is and that it is important are not enough. We need to find ways to increase our EQ on a continuing basis. This in turn can increase our overall capacity to cope with difficult feelings when they occur and to integrate the power and usefulness of healthy constructive feelings in our lives. Increasing our EQ needs to become a regular ongoing part of our daily experience.
The idea of lifelong learning has become a recognized reality of our complex and rapidly changing world. Continuing education at colleges, professional workshops, conferences, community education programs, online courses, and independent self-directed study are all part of our ongoing learning. All this is well and good and can keep us sharp now and growing even more for the challenges of tomorrow.58
The problem, however, is when the dominant focus of these learning activities is restricted to concrete functional skill development in specific areas of work performance without consideration of emotional factors. For example, legendary money manager and investment expert Peter Lynch has emphasized the futility of studying only the mechanics of investing without recognizing the importance of emotions:
The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them. This point cannot be overemphasized. Every year finds a spate of books on how to pick stocks or find the winning mutual fund. But all this good information is useless without the willpower. In dieting and in stocks, it is the gut and not the head that determines the results.… The person who never bothers to think about the economy, blithely ignores the condition of the market, and invests on a regular schedule is better off than the person who studies and tries to time his investments, getting into stocks when he feels confident and out when he feels queasy.30
Whether in investing or countless other aspects of life, too often the emotional aspects of our personal effectiveness can be given short shrift in our ongoing personally chosen curriculum.59
This presents us with yet another opportunity to make a disciplined choice. We can choose to seek out articles, books, workshops, courses, online offerings, or however else you feel motivated to learn, that specifically address increasing understanding and skill in dealing with emotions.
We can also observe and study our feelings. People spend years perfecting their golf game, tennis stroke, conditioning their bodies, or developing their professional knowledge in their technical field. Yet it is our feelings that ultimately wield power over the satisfaction we derive from any of these activities. We can have one of our best ever rounds of golf or turn in an outstanding performance on a project at work and still feel miserable. The miserable feeling may be due to a part of the process that we feel went poorly or because someone said something that upset us. We can increase our EQ by consciously studying our emotional responses to different situations. In the process we can learn more about how our emotions both put the joy into our life experiences as well as take it out. Sharpening our emotional intelligence deserves every bit as much priority, and arguably even more, than most aspects of our lives.
So an initial key to reaping the vast potential benefits of emotional discipline is to make the choice to enhance our EQ continuously by seeking out learning resources as well as studying our ongoing emotional experience. As we experience growth in this area and find ourselves gaining more power over how we feel, we will be naturally drawn to opportunities to further develop this distinctive aspect of our expertise. Newspaper and magazine articles will seem to jump out at us, and so will workshop and seminar announcements, web sites, and so forth. As we gain some sense of mastery and pride in our emotional awareness, knowledge, and skills, the foundation for our positive emotional discipline will be continuously reinforced. Choosing to increase our EQ is an essential part of emotional discipline and a key to increasing our power to choose how we feel.60
Normally I would list helpful learning sources in the notes section or in an appendix. However, since this chapter is specifically focused on increasing your EQ through the learning choices you make, I will include a list of books you might consider studying to help increase your emotional intelligence. The following resources offer a good place to start building your EQ. You don’t need to choose from only these books specifically, but I encourage you to consider working through one or more of them and to be on the lookout for other sources for increasing your EQ.
Some Suggested EQ Building Resources
In Chapter 1 I pointed out that the five key steps of an emotional discipline process incorporate some sound principles and strategies that have been addressed in detail in other books. The following books are suggested as additional reading both for help with specific aspects of the emotional discipline process as well as developing your overall EQ. They represent just a small sample of the many resources that you can choose to read, but they serve as a good starting place for study beyond this book.61
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns (New York: Avon Books, 1999) is a very thorough and helpful book for working with your thoughts that tend to correspond with your difficult feelings. It provides effective tools for analyzing and replacing dysfunctional beliefs and self-statements.
The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness by Gary Zukav and Linda Francis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) is a good resource for gaining more specific insights on becoming aware of your emotions. It addresses practical aspects of becoming more aware of and better understanding the physical sensations in the body that correspond with emotions as well as the thoughts that tend to accompany them.
Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J. Foster (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998) is a good reference for gaining understanding and guidance in applying “disciplines” as a means for growing spiritually, the primary historical usage of the term.
For a general treatment of the process of self-leadership, as a way to enhance your level of self-motivation and self-direction, and to increase your overall personal effectiveness, consider exploring the book I wrote with coauthor Chris Neck: Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, 1999, 3rd edition forthcoming in 2003).
Hooked on Feeling Bad: 3 Steps to Living a Life You Love! by Joyce Moskowitz (Davie, FL: Clear Vision Publishing, 2000) provides an interesting and straightforward way to examine your feelings and internal thoughts that can help reveal a deeper sense of how you see yourself at a core level.62
Daniel Goleman’s books Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ and Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 1995 and 1998 respectively) are very good sources for gaining a better understanding of the importance of your emotions and knowing how to intelligently live with and from them in your work and life. His newest book, co-authored with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 2002) extends this work by examining the practical significance of EQ for leadership effectiveness.