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Book cover of Working with Emotional Intelligence
Management - Professional & Reference, Organizational Behavior - General & Miscellaneous, Leadership, Business Life - General & Miscellaneous, Success, Motivation & Self-Esteem, Executives, Self-Improvement, Business - General & Miscellaneous

Working with Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman
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Overview

Do you have what it takes to succeed in your career?

The secret of success is not what they taught you in school. What matters most is not IQ, not a business school degree, not even technical know-how or years of expertise. The single most important factor in job performance and advancement is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is actually a set of skills that anyone can acquire, and in this practical guide, Daniel Goleman identifies them, explains their importance, and shows how they can be fostered.

For leaders, emotional intelligence is almost 90 percent of what sets stars apart from the mediocre. As Goleman documents, it's the essential ingredient for reaching and staying at the top in any field, even in high-tech careers. And organizations that learn to operate in emotionally intelligent ways are the companies that will remain vital and dynamic in the competitive marketplace of today—and the future.

Comprehensively researched, crisply written, and packed with fascinating case histories of triumphs, disasters, and dramatic turnarounds, Working with Emotional Intelligence may be the most important business book you'll ever read.

Drawing on unparalleled access to business leaders around the world and studies in more than 500 organizations, Goleman documents an astonishing fact: in determining star performance in every field, emotional intelligence matters twice as much as IQ or technical expertise.

Readers also discover how emotional competence can be learned. Goleman analyzes five key sets of skills and vividly shows how they determine who is hired and who is fired in the top corporations in the world. He also provides guidelines for training in the "emotionally intelligent organization," in chapters that no one, from manager to CEO, should miss.

Working with Emotional Intelligence could prove to be the most important reference for bottom-line businesspeople in the first decades of the 21st century.

"...based on interviews and studies with business leaders and organizations...explains what sets star performers apart and how emotional intelligence becomes the most important factor in success."

Synopsis

Daniel Goleman changed the way we think about what it means to be smart with his groundbreaking bestseller, Emotional Intelligence. Now, in his eagerly awaited follow-up, Goleman applies his insights about emotional competence to the workplace. In Working with Emotional Intelligence, he explores the reasons why in today's rapidly changing world of business, emotional intelligence is more important to performance and success than IQ or technical competence, and he offers advice on how corporations and individuals can learn to improve emotional competence.

San Francisco Chronicle

Goleman's highly readable and wide-ranging exploration of the best research available by modern psychologists and educators provides important insights into the true meaning of intelligence.

About the Author, Daniel Goleman

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.

Reviews

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Editorials

NY Times Book Review

Mr. Goleman is a teacher at ease with his subject,...mak[ing] lively connections between the wealth of new understandings and the riches of older wisdom about our affective lives.

Philadelphia Inquirer

A smart, adventurous book...Goleman strikes a blow for both science and common sense.

San Francisco Chronicle

Goleman's highly readable and wide-ranging exploration of the best research available by modern psychologists and educators provides important insights into the true meaning of intelligence.

Warren Bennis

Anyone interested in leadership. . .should get a copy of this book. In fact, I recommend it to all readers anbywhere who want to see their organizations in the phone book in the year 2001.
New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Applying the lessons of his bestselling study Emotional Intelligence, Goleman has found that business success stems primarily from a workforce displaying initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness — i.e., key aspects of what he defines as emotional intelligence. He presents studies that show that IQ accounts for only between 4% and 25% of an individual's job success, whereas emotional competence (self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation) is twice as important as purely cognitive abilities in the workplace. These findings alone should shake up human resource departments that hire based on how good someone looks on paper. In sections like "Self-Mastery," "People Skills" and "Social Radar," Goleman uses anecdotes from the corporate trenches (and from his lecture tours) to isolate qualities, such as "trustworthiness" that are central to displays of emotional intelligence. These qualities, in turn, are broken down into sets of practices — "Act ethically and... above reproach"; "respect and relate well to people from other backgrounds" — that can be internalized for improved emotional intelligence quotients by individuals looking to get ahead, or managers seeking to revitalize the staff. These repetitive-sounding checklists can at times give the book the flavor of an overworked seminar presentation. Still, embedded within the linear format that emerges are many truly illuminating facts — that the real cost of employee turnover to a company is the equivalent of one full year of employee pay, for example — that show how critically important Goleman's thesis is to today's workplace.

Library Journal

Having explained in Emotional Intelligence that EQ matters as much as IQ in the workplace, Goleman now explains how EQ can be learned.

USA Today

A thoughtfully written, persuasive account explaining emotional intelligence and why it can be crucial to your career.

Kirkus Reviews

The author of the bestseller Emotional Intelligence expands on his earlier work by documenting the significance of emotional intelligence in the world of work at both the individual and organizational levels. Goleman, formerly a brain sciences editor for The New York Times and now the CEO of a consulting firm, Emotional Intelligence Services, asserts that emotional intelligence, more than IQ and technical know how, gives a valuable competitive edge to organizations and is crucial to the success of individuals, and he buttressed this assertion by citing both research studies and anecdotal evidence. (For newcomers to the concept, a summary of emotional intelligence is included in Appendix 1.) Emotional intelligence encompasses both personal and social competencies. Among the personal competencies are self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, while the social competencies include empathy and the various skills for inducing desirable responses in others. Goleman analyzes the various aspects of each skill and has a seemingly bottomless cache of stories demonstrating how people with and without these skills operate. For his examples, he draws heavily on corporate America: Ford, Intel, IBM, Xerox, etc., but with a sprinkling of more esoteric subjects: Mike Tyson, WWII's Manhattan Project, and a generous sprinkling of foreign and multinational concerns. Happily, emotional intelligence is a quality that can be acquired. While not claiming to offer a self-help manual, Goleman presents specific guidelines for teaching emotional intelligence within an organization. Those wanting to set up such a training program and wishing more guidance than the basic principlesoffered here are invited to contact Goleman's firm for practical assistance. While the various qualities making up emotional intelligence occasionally tend to overlap and blur into each other, and the many case histories come to have a certain sameness, Goleman's essential message comes through loud and clear.

Book Details

Published
January 1, 2000
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
400
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780553378580

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