Emotional Intelligence

A friend recently asked me what should I do to develop and enhance my Emotional Intelligence during 2019. Big question, with so many different avenues. I thought in this post I would outline just some of ways you can explore EI and also enhance your own EI.

First off do some reading. This article available on line is a good start. It comes from the book: Emotional Intelligence – New Perspectives and Applications. I find a lot of other articles online when googling don’t really tell you too much and are pretty basic.

What you really need to do is get a good book. Dan Goleman has written some of the most detailed stuff out there. His first book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, is pretty heavy going and mainly about the research behind EI. I prefer the second book, Working with Emotional Intelligence. Much more practical and has many useful tips. A more updated version from Travis Bradberry, Jean Greaves, Patrick M. Lencioni is Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Ok, so enough of the reading. Unfortunately there really isn’t any video’s that I would recommend once you get the basic concepts as they all repeat the same stuff. Any long video of Dan Goleman is good though, even though most of his great stuff is behind paywalls.

Why not do a few courses. Even better do them for free. Right now, Coursera has program Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence. Remember when you enrol to just Audit the course (option at the bottom) and you will not pay anything unless of course you want to. This course is by Richard Boyatzis who is one of the educational leaders in EI. Edx has a program on now called, Empathy and Emotional Intelligence at Work. FutureLearn has a program coming up (no date yet) called Emotional Intelligence at Work. If you like a face to face program you can enrol in AIM’s Leading with emotional intelligence. I have delivered this program many times and it is very effective. Has a good assessment built into it (GENOS) but it is about EI and its application to leadership.

Outside of the stuff above you can then venture into many different areas including mindfulness etc. Bill Gates recommended this book (one of his top 5): The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, by Andy Puddicombe. This is on my list for 2019 but I’m into meditation – really does improve your EI.

There are many online EI assessments which aren’t bad but they do suffer in that it is your own assessment of your own EI. That is flawed particularly if you are not self aware. This is another tangent, but try out the Character Strengths assessment – not exactly EI but closely related. Takes awhile to complete but worth it. Longer the assessment generally the better validity.

Ok – so get into it. Any other things that any of you want to know about? Just let me know.