Emotional Intelligence 2.0
FOREWORD BY PATRICK LENCIONI, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a book with a single purpose—increasing your EQ. Here’s what people are saying about it:
“Emotional Intelligence 2.0 succinctly explains how to deal with emotions creatively and employ our intelligence in a beneficial way.”
—THE DALAI LAMA
“A fast read with compelling anecdotes and good context in which to understand and improve.”
—NEWSWEEK
“Gives abundant, practical findings and insights with emphasis on how to develop EQ.”
—STEPHEN R. COVEY
“This book can drastically change the way you think about success…read it twice.”
—PATRICK LENCIONI
In today’s fast-paced world of competitive workplaces and turbulent economic conditions, each of us is searching for effective tools that can help us to manage, adapt, and strike out ahead of the pack.
By now, emotional intelligence (EQ) needs little introduction—it’s no secret that EQ is critical to your success. But knowing what EQ is and knowing how to use it to improve your life are two very different things.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 delivers a step-by-step program for increasing your EQ via four, core EQ skills that enable you to achieve your fullest potential:
1) Self-Awareness
2) Self-Management
3) Social Awareness
4) Relationship Management
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars The Right Information, in the Right Dose, at the Right Time
By now there has been enough written about the theory, history,research and background of EI that any attempt to recreate this in a book would be redundant. Anyone that is interested in learning more about these areas will find no shortage of reading material out there. What is needed at this point is more information and tools to help organizations and individuals apply and use EI in all situations in every day life.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 gets right to the meat of the matter by recognizing the gap between our understanding of EI as a concept and our ability to apply it. It is this gap, or missing piece, that the authors address in the book.
In this they do an admirable job, breaking down the EI concepts into four areas. They then go on to explain the areas, give examples of what various levels of functioning in these areas look like and provide strategies for improving on these areas. At the end of the book there is a code to take a short EI test that gives valuable feedback. While the examples in the book are business ones, the same principles would apply just as well to the other areas of our life.
What perhaps isn’t stated clearly is that EI is not a form of therapy. It is not prescriptive and provides tools to help individuals increase their effectiveness with the assumption that they are functioning at a
certain level. There is the assumption that the person has the ability to accurately perceive their situation and have a good degree of control over their emotions. For individuals who are have a great deal of difficulty controlling emotions, such as anger, professional therapy might be needed before they are able to benefit from powerful, yet simple, EI tools.
3 Stars A Good reinforcement, but seems Shallow
I read their Quick handbook on EQ and loved that book, it was an eye opener. When i picked this book i was looking for a step forward and concrete action items to improved EQ. While i like the book and there is an online password that lets you get your EQ score, i think the tips on improving EQ are a little shallow.
The author talks about 4 parameters that influence EQ: Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. This is all good but then the tips on its improvements are really a list of action items but only a page or 2 on each action item, which to me is shallow. There should be more detailed plan on improving EQ with stories etc to support it.
The foreward calls for reading this book twice, lets see if my opinion defers 2nd time around.
Thanks.
3 Stars Not Impressed
Emotional Intelligence boils down to two things: Separating logic from emotions, and understanding people first. The “tips” themselves are not very helpful. Books like “How to Meet Friends and Influence People” and “7 Habits of Effective People” are much more helpful to apply in your everyday life. The “test” that is included is hardly an objective measure of emotional intelligence, yet the book relies heavily on this “test”. Some of the tips in the different sections are helpful, but some are mindless drivel. I expected much more out of this book, but I was severely disappointed with the lack of logic (!) in the suggestions. Half the book is made up of the author proving that Emotional Intelligence is important, the test is definitive, and your rung in social society is dependent on emotional intelligence. Hopefully you won’t make the same mistake as I did.
1 Stars Bookie the Worm
First off I made a huge error in the purchase process when deciding to buy this book or not. I failed to read all the comments.
After having read the book I find two things about the book that really bugs me.
1.) The authors succinctly attempts to describe man in a neatly packaged deal that incorporates as its only content your intelligence, your emotional inteligence, and your personality. They state that your IQ and your personality are static and are incapable of changing throughout the course of your life. Only your emotional intelligence can be manipulated. I wholeheartedly disagree with them. Your actual ability to process material at faster rates may not change over the course of your life but the way you process the material can be managed. For instance, your brain may be a Pentium 4 chip (although more and more lately I think kids behave more like a 386) and your intelligence may be closely related to your brain’s ability to process information, but intelligence is so much more than natural abilities to process raw data.
If you learn how to manage and process information differently then you don’t necessarily need a faster and more intelligent brain to improve your level of intelligence. To say that people are only as smart as the day they were born is like saying water can only be water in it’s three physical states. You neatly draw attention to the mundane fact that yea water can only be gas, liquid, or solid, but water can be so much more than that. Sometimes intelligence is not merely the physical state but also the intent and action behind it as well. Water can be soup, soda, coolant, etc… You may be a Pentium4 but be able to perform better than a duo core chip with a fragmented hardftive by bettering and refining yourself through the process of learning thusI think intelligence can be increased overall. If they insist that intelligence is purely your speed and rate of processing of your brain then perhaps they should then stop referring to intelligence and simply call it brain power.
In addition, they say your personality is stable throughout your entire life and thus cannot be changed. I’m certain everyone here on Amazon either has known someone who has changed their personality (ie going from being introverted to introverted or vice versa) or have experienced it yourself. When I was a kid I hated meeting people and crowds because I was a shy kid. I didn’t know a lot of stuff to say and when teachers and professors asked me to read out loud or give a presentation to the whole class forgettaboutit! I didn’t like parties or going clubbing (at first) and would rather go play chess at Starbucks.
Then through a process of experiencing life and learning life skills and communication skills and just knowing more information I was able to change. I thrive on public speaking and I love going out and meeting people (although I actually can find enjoyment in either staying home or go on a social outting depending on the weather, my mood, who is going, and where we are going all plays a role in my deciding if I’m introverted or extroverted at the time).
My problem with the authors is that they seem to pigeonhole people and say that people cannot change intellectully nor can they change their own personality or characteristic traits. If this was realy the case then a cheater/liar/thief/murderer/DUI can never change their ways because that’s their personailty (characteristic flaw is weakness in resisting lust, impulse, greed, etc…). I’ve known people who are serial cheaters in college and couldn’t keep their @$@! In their pants (women too not only guys… Actually know more women that cheated than men). Now they are married with kids and are committed to their relationship. As they have stated as to why they cheated and gave into their temptation it’s because they were young and felt reckless and wanted to experience. They still have impulses but overall they don’t feel the urge to act out the impulse anymore because they’ve been there before and they prefer stability now.
According to them the Holy Grail of change can only happen through changing your EQ. This is completely a biased point of view. In the book they make bold statements that state “people who are low in EQ and job performance can match their colleagues who excel in both - solely by working to improve their EQ.”
So what they are saying is by improving only on your EQ while disregarding knowledge and improvement on skillsets you will perform just as well as that colleague that operates with a superchip processor with an IQ of 175 and has high EQ with a your presumably slower processor. Gypsies once sold medicine in the past offering people cures saying that the only thing that can save them is the stuff the are peddling. Shameless self-promotion if you ask me. Imagine for a second two physicists, an average but still very smart physicist who has an relatively average IQ of 129 and a low EQ and Einstein who is both high on IQ and EQ. The authors’ stance is that if the average physicist improves his EQ to that of Einstein’s or better he will achieve the same as Einstein. Right and if you dress a pig up as cow te pig would fetch the same price at a cattle auction. It’s still about substance when grading even success right? The first physicist still would not achieve as much as Einstein would. What I have a problem with the authors here is that they almost recklessly and foolishly push the idea that EQ is the one and only thing (or at least the one thing that has the absolute most impact) that determines whether people perform admirably at a job. This is a reckless stance because there will be people out there that would actually believe that their lazy no-knowledge butts would start performing like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs while disregarding the fact that both Jobs and Gates continually improve upon themselves in very non-EQ ways.
2.) Besides Who Moved My Cheese and How Full is Your Bucket I can’t recall another book that has bigger print than this book. EQ is a very important and complex subject that cannot be adequately covered in this short book. I’m with other reviewers in regards to this. It’s like them telling you to boil water and throw the chicken in to make chicken soup. How long do I boil it? How about the amount of seasoning? Do I shred the chicken or cut up into pieces? Maybe I should buy precut pieces? I know making chicken soup is slightly more complicated than simply boiling water and throwing chicken in it. To me this is indicative as to their basis of information that they are presenting in this book. Too narrowminded and shortsighted to be taken seriously. Afterall, you wouldn’t buy a cookbook that explains the reasons for cooking and why people get sick from undercooked food but then when showing you the recipe all it tells you is to start throwing things in the crock pot but not telling you the amounts to use or what cut of meat or how long to cook right?
Another indication that the authors are a bit shallow in their content and commitment in writing an actual book of well informed and useful substance is their online EQ quiz. I’ve seen more indepth quizes on cereal boxes. And just in case you’re thinking it’s not about the size but the quality of the content questions… No. They hve like 3 or 4 questions regarding each of the four EQ competencies. After you answer the handful of questions they magically tell you how you rate emotionally.
Not good. Wouldn’t recommend reading this book. Actually read it if you want but don’t buy it.
5 Stars Outstanding
I was very impressed with this book. It’s the first I’ve seen that actually shows you how to increase your emotional intelligence, rather than just explaining what emotional intelligence is. It’s filled with strategies to increase each of the four emotional intelligence skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. I found the strategies very helpful, particularly because the books gives access to an online test that (based upon your results) tells you which strategies will increase your EQ the most.
The authors use excellent anecdotes to illustrate various concepts, and their research is compelling and original. Some of the information on emotional intelligence and job title (e.g. CEOs have the lowest EQs in the workforce, on average), is very revealing. My favorite anecdote in the book is the riveting story of a surfer who survives a run in with a 5,000 pound great white, by using his emotional intelligence.
All in all, an outstanding read that’s a great value at $13!
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