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Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Book Review

April 23, 2014 by Justin R Patterson   

I recently read the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves.  It is a book that aims to help identify the four EQ skills; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

To quickly summarize these points:

Self Awareness – The ability to accurately perceive your emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations.

Self management – Is what happens when you act or do not act

Social Awareness – ability to accurately pick up on emotions and pick up what is really going on.

Social Competence – is your cross between social awareness and relationship management skills.`

Some of my favorite takeaways:

One of my favorite lines from the book was “The difference between an interaction and a relationship is a matter of frequency”.  If you are wanting to build relationships with those around your best bet for starting to make this happen is by interacting more often and having more conversations with the individual you desire to build a relationship with.

Have a back pocket question – When conversations don’t go as planned have a question or two lined up to cover silent moments such as “What do you think about ____”  It could be related to a current event or something pertaining to work.  I think that this is a great idea to help bridge conversations in moments where they might be dying but can quickly be rekindled or to diffuse a tense moment.

Living in the moment – If in a meeting or wherever you be as present as possible so that you see the people around you and experience life in that moment.

Explain decisions do not just make them.  I think this one really is important because the rationale behind a decision is important and it could come across the wrong way without knowing why the decision was made.

In conclusion Emotional Intelligence is a learned skill rather than some unalterable trait; it also can be unlearned.  So  EQ can be worked on if you have the desire to adjust your emotions to help you succeed.  The book has many statistics that show 90% of high performers have high EQ’s while only 20% of low performers have high EQ’s.  Some of what the book brought forth was common sense and at the same time it was worth repeating and remembering to follow through.


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