Connect through Emotional Intelligence

Learn to master self, understand others, and build strong, productive relationships

De: Mike Acker

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Did you know that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a better predictor of success than IQ?

You can have all the skills and smarts, but if you aren’t great with people, your personal and professional life will always fall short of your expectations.

In every sector, from teaching to manufacturing to law enforcement, brains and brawn no longer cut it. The ability to interact well with others—peers, subordinates, and clients—is what makes candidates highly desirable in today’s competitive market.

Improving your EI is not about sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya. It’s about becoming a fully functioning adult who enjoys a higher quality of life in every area—within themselves, in their home, with their friends, and in their workplace.

Here’s the good news: While IQ is relatively fixed—no amount of study can turn you into Albert Einstein—anyone can improve their EI.

Connect Through Emotional Intelligence: Learn to Master Self, Understand Others, and Build Strong, Productive Relationships is your accessible and practical guide to:

• Understanding and overcoming internal obstacles that hold you back,
• Connecting with your coworkers and improving teamwork,
• Increasing your empathy,
• Giving more effective feedback, and
• Resolving conflict productively.

From the Introduction:

Here’s the big picture of where we’re going: Imagine that you and a bunch of friends are planning a week-long camping trip the next state over, involving about a dozen cars. Vehicle-wise, there are three key components for a safe journey:

1. You need to make sure that your car is running well and capable of making the trip.
2. Once you’re on the road, you need to interact safely with countless other vehicles, watching for brake lights and anticipating erratic driving.
3. You need to coordinate with your friends to arrive at the same location.

I’ll explain how these apply in just a moment, but first I want to return to the research done on EI. Six years after Salovey and Mayer’s seminal work, Dr. Daniel Goleman brought the concept of EI to a much wider audience with his book Emotional Intelligence. Pulling from many different strands of research, Dr. Goleman defined Emotional Intelligence according to five areas…[that] will provide some of our core topics:

• Self-awareness,
• Self-regulation,
• Self-motivation,
• Social skills, and
• Empathy.

The first three are all about yourself (intrapersonal intelligence). The second two are about others (interpersonal intelligence). In this book, we’ll begin by looking at you and how to make sound judgements about your own emotions and choose the wisest course of action. Then we’ll look at how you interact with other people’s emotions, responding to people in general then those who are part of your life. So, the three parts of the book are:

1. Me: Understanding and controlling my own “car.”
2. Them: Being able to read and safely interact with the other “cars.”
3. Us: Interacting with the other “cars” in my group to arrive at our desired destination.

Think of this book as a toolbox that will not only help you fix your own car but also help with everyone else’s cars. Each of these parts has three chapters, filled with research, stories, and useful information. But more than information, these chapters are devoted to helping you see real growth and increase your EI.