Sunday, April 02, 2006

Emotional Intelligence - thoughts before I read the book

Emotional Intelligence and assessing your EQ has been all the rage for the last year or two. I keep ignoring invitations to seminars in work on the topic, and keep noticing mostly unread copies of Daniel Goleman's book (has only one been written on topic?) on people's desks ...

But I'm avoiding no more. Nine months after moving house, we recently started to unpack books from the many, many boxes that have been cluttering up the dining room.

And there it was ... sitting on our bookshelves ... the Emotional Intelligence book. Turns out that my wife's read it. And so will I.

But before turning the first page, I thought it would be good to jot down what I think the book will tell me. That way, you and I, can wonder at my naivety and ignorance in a week or two's time!

Its going to be about how our emotions work as we relate to people and situations; how to harness our emotions for positive results, and to limit the potential for damage by unchecked emotion; how people can be categorised and how combinations will relate; how to deliberately change your emotional expression in different situations.

EQ - hyped up like body language - but basically common sense.

Will this book change my life? No doubt it will reinforce some behaviours, and hopefully encourage the development of others. As a general principle, no point reading something if you're not willing to be challenged by it. (Presbyterians have a good way of describing how they should "accept light from any quarter".)

Will I become an EQ evangelist, unable to talk about anything else? No.

Will it be as good as Blink (which I read and reviewed earlier)? Doubt it.

I'll let you know how I get on. And feel free to leave comments telling me what do you think of EQ?

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