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Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ Paperback – September 27, 2005

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#1 BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be smart, with a new introduction by the author

“A thoughtfully written, persuasive account explaining emotional intelligence and why it can be crucial.”—USA Today

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds”—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.

Drawing on groundbreaking brain and behavioral research, Goleman shows the factors at work when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well. These factors, which include self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy, add up to a different way of being smart—and they aren’t fixed at birth. Although shaped by childhood experiences, emotional intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened throughout our adulthood—with immediate benefits to our health, our relationships, and our work.

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Emotional Intelligence could not come at a better time—we spend so much of our time online, more and more jobs are becoming automated and digitized, and our children are picking up new technology faster than we ever imagined. With a new introduction from the author, the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition prepares readers, now more than ever, to reach their fullest potential and stand out from the pack with the help of EI.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Publishing Group
Publication date

September 27, 2005
Dimensions

5.45 x 0.71 x 8.26 inches
ISBN-10

9780553383713
ISBN-13

978-0553383713
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Popular Highlights in this book

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In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.
Highlighted by 6,225 Kindle readers
The fact that the thinking brain grew from the emotional reveals much about the relationship of thought to feeling; there was an emotional brain long before there was a rational one.
Highlighted by 4,538 Kindle readers
People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change.
Highlighted by 4,112 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A thoughtfully written, persuasive account explaining emotional intelligence and why it can be crucial to your career.”—USA Today

“Good news to the employee looking for advancement [and] a wake-up call to organizations and corporations.”—The Christian Science Monitor

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

From the Back Cover

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until "Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"--the rational and the emotional--and how they together shape our destiny.
Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.
The best news is that "emotional literacy" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.

About the Author

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., is also the co-author of Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body, and Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence. 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The New Yardstick

The rules for work are changing. We're being judged by a new yardstick: not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other. This yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who will be hired and who will not, who will be let go and who retained, who passed over and who promoted.

The new rules predict who is most likely to become a star performer and who is most prone to derailing. And, no matter what field we work in currently, they measure the traits that are crucial to our marketability for future jobs.

These rules have little to do with what we were told was important in school; academic abilities are largely irrelevant to this standard. The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness.

This is no passing fad, nor just the management nostrum of the moment. The data that argue for taking it seriously are based on studies of tens of thousands of working people, in callings of every kind. The research distills with unprecedented precision which qualities mark a star performer. And it demonstrates which human abilities make up the greater part of the ingredients for excellence at work—most especially for leadership.

If you work in a large organization, even now you are probably being evaluated in terms of these capabilities, though you may not know it. If you are applying for a job, you are likely to be scrutinized through this lens, though, again, no one will tell you so explicitly. Whatever your job, understanding how to cultivate these capabilities can be essential for success in your career.

If you are part of a management team, you need to consider whether your organization fosters these competencies or discourages them. To the degree your organizational climate nourishes these competencies, your organization will be more effective and productive. You will maximize your group's intelligence, the synergistic interaction of every person's best talents.

If you work for a small organization or for yourself, your ability to perform at peak depends to a very great extent on your having these abilities—though almost certainly you were never taught them in school. Even so, your career will depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on how well you have mastered these capacities.

In a time with no guarantees of job security, when the very concept of a "job" is rapidly being replaced by "portable skills," these are prime qualities that make and keep us employable. Talked about loosely for decades under a variety of names, from "character" and "personality" to "soft skills" and "competence," there is at last a more precise understanding of these human talents, and a new name for them: emotional intelligence.

A Different Way of Being Smart

"I had the lowest cumulative grade point average ever in my engineering school," the codirector of a consulting firm tells me. "But when I joined the army and went to officer candidate school, I was number one in my class—it was all about how you handle yourself, get along with people, work in teams, leadership. And that's what I find to be true in the world of work."

In other words, what matters is a different way of being smart. In my book Emotional Intelligence, my focus was primarily on education, though a short chapter dealt with implications for work and organizational life.

What caught me by utter surprise—and delighted me—was the flood of interest from the business community. Responding to a tidal wave of letters and faxes, e-mails and phone calls, requests to speak and consult, I found myself on a global odyssey, talking to thousands of people, from CEOs to secretaries, about what it means to bring emotional intelligence to work.

* * *

This search has taken me back to research I participated in while a graduate student, and then faculty member, at Harvard University. That research was part of an early challenge to the IQ mystique—the false but widely embraced notion that what matters for success is intellect alone. This work helped spawn what has now become a mini-industry that analyzes the actual competencies that make people successful in jobs and organizations of every kind, and the findings are astonishing: IQ takes second position to emotional intelligence in determining outstanding job performance.

Analyses done by dozens of different experts in close to five hundred corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide have arrived independently at remarkably similar conclusions, and their findings are particularly compelling because they avoid the biases or limits inherent in the work of a single individual or group. Their conclusions all point to the paramount place of emotional intelligence in excellence on the job--in virtually any job.

Some Misconceptions

As I've toured the world talking and consulting with people in business, I've encountered certain widespread misunderstandings about emotional intelligence. Let me clear up some of the most common at the outset. First, emotional intelligence does not mean merely "being nice." At strategic moments it may demand not "being nice," but rather, for example, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfortable but consequential truth they've been avoiding.

Second, emotional intelligence does not mean giving free rein to feelings—"letting it all hang out." Rather, it means managing feelings so that they are expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly toward their common goals.

Also, women are not "smarter" than men when it comes to emotional intelligence, nor are men superior to women. Each of us has a personal profile of strengths and weaknesses in these capacities. Some of us may be highly empathic but lack some abilities to handle our own distress; others may be quite aware of the subtlest shift in our own moods, yet be inept socially.

It is true that men and women as groups tend to have a shared, gender-specific profile of strong and weak points. An analysis of emotional intelligence in thousands of men and women found that women, on average, are more aware of their emotions, show more empathy, and are more adept interpersonally. Men, on the other hand, are more self-confident and optimistic, adapt more easily, and handle stress better.

In general, however, there are far more similarities than differences. Some men are as empathic as the most interpersonally sensitive women, while some women are every bit as able to withstand stress as the most emotionally resilient men. Indeed, on average, looking at the overall ratings for men and women, the strengths and weaknesses average out, so that in terms of total emotional intelligence, there are no sex differences.

Finally, our level of emotional intelligence is not fixed genetically, nor does it develop only in early childhood. Unlike IQ, which changes little after our teen years, emotional intelligence seems to be largely learned, and it continues to develop as we go through life and learn from our experiences—our competence in it can keep growing. In fact, studies that have tracked people's level of emotional intelligence through the years show that people get better and better in these capabilities as they grow more adept at handling their own emotions and impulses, at motivating themselves, and at honing their empathy and social adroitness. There is an old-fashioned word for this growth in emotional intelligence: maturity.

Why This Matters Now

At a California biotech start-up, the CEO proudly enumerated the features that made his organization state-of-the-art: No one, including him, had a fixed office; instead, everyone carried a small laptop—their mobile office—and was wired to everyone else. Job titles were irrelevant; employees worked in cross-functional teams and the place bubbled with creative energy. People routinely put in seventy- and eighty-hour work weeks.

"So what's the downside?" I asked him.

"There is no downside," he assured me.

And that was the fallacy. Once I was free to talk with staff members, I heard the truth: The hectic pace had people feeling burned out and robbed of their private lives. And though everyone could talk via computer to everyone else, people felt that no one was truly listening to them.

People desperately felt the need for connection, for empathy, for open communication.

In the new, stripped-down, every-job-counts business climate, these human realities will matter more than ever. Massive change is a constant; technical innovations, global competition, and the pressures of institutional investors are ever-escalating forces for flux.

Another reality makes emotional intelligence ever more crucial: As organizations shrink through waves of downsizing, those people who remain are more accountable—and more visible. Where earlier a midlevel employee might easily hide a hot temper or shyness, now competencies such as managing one's emotions, handling encounters well, teamwork, and leadership, show—and count--more than ever.

The globalization of the workforce puts a particular premium on emotional intelligence in wealthier countries. Higher wages in these countries, if they are to be maintained, will depend on a new kind of productivity. And structural fixes or technological advances alone are not enough: As at the California biotech firm, streamlining or other innovations often create new problems that cry out for even greater emotional intelligence.

As business changes, so do the traits needed to excel. Data tracking the talents of star performers over several decades reveal that two abilities that mattered relatively little for success in the 1970s have become crucially important in the 1990s: team building and adapting to change. And entirely new capabilities have begun to appear as traits of star performers, notably change catalyst and leveraging diversity. New challenges demand new talents.

A Coming Crisis: Rising IQ, Dropping EQ

Since 1918, when World War I brought the first mass use of IQ tests on American army recruits, the average IQ score in the United States has risen 24 points, and there has been a similar rise in developed countries around the world. The reasons include better nutrition, more children completing more schooling, computer games and puzzles that help children master spatial skills, and smaller family size (which generally correlates with higher IQ scores in children).

There is a dangerous paradox at work, however: As children grow ever smarter in IQ, their emotional intelligence is on the decline. Perhaps the most disturbing single piece of data comes from a massive survey of parents and teachers that shows the present generation of children to be more emotionally troubled than the last. On average, children are growing more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, more nervous and prone to worry, more impulsive and aggressive.

Two random samples of American children, age seven to sixteen, were evaluated by their parents and teachers—adults who knew them well. The first group was assessed in the mid-1970s, and a comparable group was surveyed in the late 1980s. Over that decade and a half there was a steady worsening of children's emotional intelligence. Although poorer children started out at a lower level on average, the rate of decline was the same across all economic groups—as steep in the wealthiest suburbs as in the poorest inner-city slum.

Dr. Thomas Achenbach, the University of Vermont psychologist who did these studies—and who has collaborated with colleagues on similar assessments in other nations—tells me that the decline in children's basic emotional competencies seems to be worldwide. The most telling signs of this are seen in rising rates among young people of problems such as despair, alienation, drug abuse, crime and violence, depression or eating disorders, unwanted pregnancies, bullying, and dropping out of school.

What this portends for the workplace is quite troubling: growing deficiencies among workers in emotional intelligence, particularly among those newest to the job. Most of the children that Achenbach studied in the late 1980s will be in their twenties by the year 2000. The generation that is falling behind in emotional intelligence is entering the workforce today.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 055338371X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; 10th Anniversary edition (September 27, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780553383713
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553383713
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.71 x 8.26 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Emotional Mental Health
- #21 in Emotional Self Help
- #179 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

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Daniel Goleman

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DANIEL GOLEMAN is the author of the international bestsellers Emotional Intelligence, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and Social Intelligence, and the co-author of the acclaimed business bestseller Primal Leadership. His latest books are What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters and The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education. He was a science reporter for the New York Times, was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and received the American Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award for his media writing. He lives in Massachusetts.

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Jeffrey How

Fantastic book for learning about emotional intelligence!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

In “Emotional Intelligence”, Daniel Coleman justifies the importance of emotional intelligence (or E.I.) in all areas of life. To help us understand what is happening when emotions occur, the book begins with an explanation of emotions and neural circuitry. As Coleman goes further into the topic, we learn why emotional literacy is extremely valuable in our love, family and work lives. Most importantly, this book offers helpful approaches on how to improve one’s emotional aptitude and fix negative emotions.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology, well-being, or personal development. Likewise, I believe that this book would be extremely useful for emotional personalities who are affected by chronic anger, anxiety, or depression, and who are looking to improve themselves by better-understanding their emotions and learning how to handle them.

My brief takeaways from the book:

What Is E.I.?
Coleman discusses emotional intelligence as one’s ability to identify, understand, and handle emotions in oneself and in others. There are two aspects to E.I.: internal and external. Internally, competencies include self-awareness, self-management, impulse control, mood regulation and more. Externally, E.I. relates to empathy, social awareness and the capacity to manage emotions in others.

The Brain
Coleman explains how emotions are highly dependent upon one’s neural circuitry; in particular, the balance between her “feeling” amygdala and “thinking” prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is the part of the brain that triggers emotional impulses and fight-or-flight responses. The prefrontal cortex is the emotional damper that inhibits impulses while simultaneously facilitating attention and working memory.

An amygdala overwhelmed by emotion and unable to be regulated by one’s prefrontal cortex can trigger what Coleman calls “neural hijackings”. Neural hijackings contribute highly to emotional deficiencies such as anxiety, anger and depression. A portion of one’s neural circuitry is genetic, but Coleman argues that temperament is not destiny. The brain is continuously shaped throughout a lifetime due to its neuroplasticity.

The Emotions
Emotions are physiological responses of the brain. Good moods and emotions help us stay motivated, optimistic, resilient, and resourceful. They contribute towards an ideal state or flow and facilitate our ability to think flexibly and associatively.

“Laughing, like elation, seems to help people think more broadly and associate more freely, noticing relationships that might have eluded them otherwise…”

On the other hand, negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and depression can drastically impede our working memory, intellect and performance. “Emotional Intelligence” focuses on the most common negative emotions: anger, anxiety, and depression. Each of these emotions is a different type of emotional hijacking on the brain. Coleman discusses, in detail, the treatment for such concerns. In short, solutions include methods such as self-awareness, cognitive reframing, and distraction techniques to fight toxic trains of thought before they ruminate further.

“Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose in the right way – that is not easy.”

In The Real World
A significant portion of “Emotional Intelligence” discusses the effects of emotionally illiteracy on the most important areas of our lives: relationships, family, work, school, and health. These chapters include numerous studies and examples on how emotional competencies affect one’s ability to be an effective manager, teammate, spouse and parent.

Most importantly, emotional states play a significant role in one’s physical and mental health. Coleman discusses the correlation of negative emotional states, such as stress and depression, with one’s susceptibility to (and ability to recover from) disease. For example, social isolation can affect mortality rates as much as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity!

E.I > I.Q.
“Those who are at the mercy of impulse – who lack self-control – lack a moral deficiency: The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character.”

Without discounting the fact that I.Q. is indeed important, especially for lower-rung technical jobs, Coleman debates that E.I. contributes significantly more to one’s overall success and quality of life, especially in “soft” domains such as health, love and relationships. In a family, it’s E.I., not I.Q., that influences how long a marriage lasts or how a child handles adversity. At the workplace, everyone at the top of the ladder is already filtered by technical expertise. So it is E.I. that helps the best and most effective leaders stand out. From a societal standpoint, an emotionally intelligent community will breed a moral culture where decisions are influenced by empathy and moral instincts as opposed to uncontrollable impulses.

“Academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil – or opportunity – life’s vicissitudes bring. Yet even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities. Ignoring emotional intelligence, a set of traits – some might call it character – that also matters immensely for our personal destiny”

If you've found this summary interesting. You should definitely go deeper into this lovely, informational book!

48 people found this helpful

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Emotional Mastery

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 19, 2006

Verified Purchase

Of all the books I have read in my entire life, Daniel Goleman's book on Emotional Intelligence was as difficult to begin as it was to put down. After numerous attempts to make it past the first chapter, I finally dedicated an entire week to the reading of this classic treatise on the importance of emotional awareness. Surprisingly it then only took three days to finish reading because I read constantly day and night, night and day.

The rare beauty of Daniel Goleman's writing is breathlessly intellectual all while retaining a centered approach to the research of his topic at hand. Not only has he brilliantly woven carefully placed threads of awareness into a coherent and comforting blanket of understanding, he uncovers truly helpful and practical applications.

From a deep ocean of emotional conflicts and social programming, ideas for healing appeal to our hunger for inner coherence. His work also explains why we long for positive nourishment in a negative world and why a range of skills beyond basic IQ serves to enable our success.

Daniel Goleman's writing is rich and intricate. He draws on a variety of well-known experts and personal interviews he conducted for The New York Times. His extensive interest in this topic reveals itself in the fluidity with which he combines the information so as to make it completely accessible to anyone willing to take the time to follow his logic page by page. He explores the disintegration of civility, biological patterns of emotional response and shows how the rational and emotional minds can work in harmony.

Practical elements include an understanding of feelings as they happen, how to manage emotions and how to handle emotions as they arise. Throughout, Daniel Goleman gives hope and explains why "lapses in emotional skills can be remedied." Anyone who deals with anger or depression will be especially encouraged while reading this book.

All too often we learn by experience and this book is filled with a variety of pathways stemming from emotions that either lead us to peace or conflict. Even while reading this book, you may be triggered numerous times and feel a wide variety of emotions.

I was happy to read about how crying can "lower levels of brain chemicals that prime distress." Many of the topics in this book help to explain why our emotions create various responses and how we can adapt, immediately address the problems or move from one emotional state to another quite quickly with very minimal effort. Even while reading I could feel my emotional state in a constant flux due to various topics bringing memories into my awareness. There are at least three ideas I'm already putting into practice and reading books to distract myself from negative emotions definitely works to change moods dramatically, as does exercise. You may find yourself underlining entire passages and then finally just circling an entire page to refer back to in moments of reflection.

What does it mean when someone lacks empathy?
What are the early warning signs of divorce?
Why can neglect be more damaging than abuse?
Why is the ability to control impulse the base of will and character?

The reasons for addiction, epidemic depression and rage are all addressed from a scientific perspective while at the same time taking practical matters into account. Why do emotional impulses so often supersede rational thought processes?

If you enjoy reading books on psychology, love, interpersonal relationships or communication, this is essential reading. Reading this book could be as essential to your success as a college education.

In the end, I think you can't truly be happy unless you find at least "one" person who really listens to your heart. Once you know what your heart is telling you and you find a place where your desires don't conflict with your rational mind, peace may begin to appear for moments at a time.

Specific religious beliefs are not taken into consideration due to the all-encompassing nature of this book. However, once you read this book in all its beauty, everything you believe will make more sense. Keeping a handle on your emotions then gives you more control over your self-esteem, which in turn can keep you alive.

Reading a book on emotions may be essential to your survival for to understand this aspect of life is truly enlightening. I would not have been able to understand this book in my 20s, but I definitely have enjoyed finding it before I turn 40. I feel like entire worlds will open up as I read additional selections. This is a true basis for understanding the desires of the heart and how we can temper passion with rational thought.

~The Rebecca Review

P.S. If you enjoy this book you may also enjoy "Conversations with the Conscience" by Sarkis Joseph Khoury. It is a very personal account of one man's journey through the rational and emotional mind and it has a very deep spiritual appeal that has universal significance. These two books have truly helped me understand life in all its conflict and beauty.

30 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Pirated copys are not acceptable

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

Pirated copys are not acceptable from the company like Amazon.
Verge shameful and very disastrous.
I ordered more than 5 books and 5 of them are pirated (copied from the orginal, Duplicate copy)

162 people found this helpful

Cyclops

A Great Eye Opener But Not A Guide OR Self Help Book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

I found this book fascinating and a real help in understanding both my own character and that of others and how their backgrounds may have shaped their personalities over years of learning how to survive emotionally. In short, it has made me be less judgemental about people and their attitudes, reactions and the way they handle situations.
The only thing I would say is that though the book is an eye opener to why we are the way we are and that perhaps it's not our fault, (or anyone else's for that matter) it is only an eye opener and an introduction to the possibility of change through understanding and further research and does not really offer any practical advice that can be applied by ourselves to ourselves to help self improve and the only advice to help with others, mainly children, is from what we can glean from the anecdotal evidence from various studies, groups and experimental approaches tried by various schools, universities and programmes. There is no summing up of all the findings to create some kind of guide as to how to help your children, or indeed yourself, to be a more emotionally intelligent being.

80 people found this helpful

Mini_mum

Font used to small

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

I have no idea about the contents of this book.
The font used to print the book is so small that, even with my glasses, I couldn't comfortably read it.
Its going back.

18 people found this helpful

James Coleman

Good for parents or expecting parents.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 30, 2022

Verified Purchase

Bought this book hoping to boost my EI in the workplace as I’m aiming for a leadership role. However, this book is largely based on baby, toddler, children and teenager behaviours and how our early life experiences shape future behaviours. It was good to understand why some people might be shy or confident, aggressive or passive, agreeable or non-agreeable but didn’t really give me anything practical to take forward. An interesting book nonetheless, slightly too long in my opinion (repeated itself a fair bit) but in conclusion not quite what I was after.

5 people found this helpful

Samir Patel

Essential reading and a book to keep

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

What an insight.

I only wish I had come across this book years ago.

Sometimes it gets to scientific, but for the most part it a good read ( not a book to enjoy). This book is a keeper. I will be adding to my permanent library. I will be reading this book over and over ( it that good).

It's given me a lot of insight into myself and why I am the way I am.

It shows how to understand how conflicts arise and how to reduce, disarm potential conflicts.

How to empathise and build a good self ethic.

21 people found this helpful

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