Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ is a self-help book written by Daniel Goleman in 2005. In this Emotional Intelligence summary, we will dive deep into Daniel Goleman’s perspective on rational and emotional intelligence.
What is emotional intelligence? Why is it so important? How does it affect our destiny? What effect does it have on our success? Can emotional intelligence be developed? In this book by Daniel Goleman, all of our questions are answered.
Emotional Intelligence Summary with 20 Lessons Learned
Here are the 20 lessons to learn from Emotional Intelligence Summary:
#1 Rational and Emotional
It is mentioned in the book that there are two different bits of intelligence. Throughout our lives, we make decisions by being influenced by these two types of intelligence. Who we are, what we do, our reactions depend entirely on it. The underlying reason for our very clever actions or our irrational but feel-good behaviors depends on these two types of intelligence.
#2 IQ Isn’t As Important As We Think
IQ can’t get you beyond being a good employee. It makes you graduate from school, but it can’t find you a job. When you go to the job interview, your diploma cannot answer the questions during the interview. You need to have good communication with the person who will hire you. It all depends on your emotional intelligence.
#3 Areas of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is responsible for our motivation, awareness, empathy, and relationships. They’re all interconnected, and if you’re bad at one, you’re more likely to be bad at the others.
#4 The Emotional Brain Is Stronger
The outer upper part of our brain is the part where we make rational decisions, while the lower part is the part where we make emotional decisions. No matter how rational beings we may appear, we can very easily be deceived by the emotional brain. We can find excuses to trick the rational brain into doing what the emotional brain wants.
#5 Others’ Feelings
Thanks to our empathy, we can truly understand how others are feeling. If we could not distinguish between happy or angry people, there would be incredible chaos. Beyond these two basic emotions, we must develop an ability to empathize. In the absence of empathy, our communication aspect is affected very badly.
#6 Motivation
Our motivation, which enables us to endure the problems we face for a long time, is also a product of emotional intelligence. We can convince ourselves that we can solve problems. We can remain optimistic and have hope for the future.
#7 Awareness
One of our most difficult aspects to develop is our awareness. We must practice understanding how we truly feel. We must ask ourselves questions. We must listen to ourselves.
#8 Relationships
Relationships cannot be let go. It must be managed. This requires mutual tolerance and understanding. If you know how to resolve conflicts, it turns into a happy relationship for both parties.
#9 Negative and Positive Emotions
Our emotions change every moment, but the longer negative emotions stay, the more negatively they affect our lives. It prevents us from being successful in our work and relationships. Fortunately, these feelings are not difficult to change. You can learn to turn negative emotions into positive ones.
#10 Productivity
When your emotional intelligence gets stronger, your creativity starts to increase. Regardless of your field of work, you will start to see serious differences in your productivity. It will increase your performance. Longer hours allow you to work with the same efficiency.
#11 Emotional Intelligence Is The Key To Success
Since we cannot live a life independent of our emotions, the higher our emotional intelligence, the higher our quality of life will be. We know that successful managers are experts in managing their emotional intelligence. You can also take them as an example.
#12 Leadership
A commander cannot direct an entire army by saying “we are going to war”. You can’t manage a team by just saying what to do. You need to understand your team’s current feelings and level of motivation. You should encourage them to work. You have to use your emotional intelligence for all of these.
#13 Teams
Average talent teams that get along well with each other are more productive than gifted teams that don’t get along. It doesn’t matter how well a team with low emotional intelligence is in control of the numbers. They can’t even decide what to try to do.
#14 Stress
Difficulties at work and in our relationships put us under stress. Stress makes it difficult for us to find solutions to problems. When we can’t find solutions to problems, we get more stressed. To get rid of this dead end, we need to know how to manage our stressful situations.
#15 Marriage
The secret of long and happy marriages is sincerity in your feelings. If your marriage was not built on this basis of intimacy from the very beginning, it will begin to crack over the years. Even small problems become unsolvable. You have to be emotionally open at the beginning of the road.
#16 Leadership
Leadership does not mean dominance. Leading your colleagues to a common goal and making them believe in the reality of this purpose. Successful leaders are those who can keep their team’s motivation alive for many years. You have to make them desire the work to be done.
#17 Emotions Are All Normal
Anger, hatred, love, happiness… You can understand when and under what circumstances these feelings will emerge by following yourself. You may have these feelings depending on how you interpret the events you encounter. The important thing is to be able to react independently of your feelings. You may find yourself making promises that you cannot keep because you are happy, or you may resort to violence when you are angry.
#18 Being able to Express Your Emotions
Not everyone’s level of empathy can be very good. You may be in a difficult situation immediately. You may feel bad, but people may not understand it. In these situations, you may need to express your feelings a little more directly.
#19 You Are Not Your Emotions
Keep doing what you need to do, no matter how you feel. Success is achieved by people who cannot give up no matter what their feelings and thoughts are. Don’t let your feelings affect your actions.
#20 Timing
As soon as you feel a different emotion, try to think before you act. Because emotional intelligence moves faster than rational intelligence, it can make you act irrationally and make you say any unnecessary words.
Top 10 Quotes from Emotional Intelligence
1. “The last decade has seen a steady drumroll of reports like these, portraying an uptick in emotional ineptitude, desperation, and recklessness in our families, our communities, and our collective lives.”
2. “Sociobiologists point to the preeminence of heart overhead at such crucial moments when they conjecture about why evolution has given emotion such a central role in the human psyche.”
3. “All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is more, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.”
4. “Love, tender feelings, and sexual satisfaction entail parasympathetic arousal—the physiological opposite of the “fight-or-flight” mobilization shared by fear and anger.”
5. “The most ancient root of our emotional life is in the sense of smell, or, more precisely, in the olfactory lobe, the cells that take in and analyze smell.”
6. “Actors, of course, are artists of the emotional display; their expressiveness is what evokes a response in their audience. And, no doubt, some of us come into life as natural actors. But partly because the lessons we learn about display rules vary according to the models we’ve had, people differ greatly in their adeptness.”
7. “When two people interact, the direction of mood transfer is from the one who is more forceful in expressing feelings to the one who is more passive. But some people are particularly susceptible to emotional contagion; their innate sensitivity makes their autonomic nervous system (a marker of emotional activity) more easily triggered.”
8. “When girls play together, they do so in small, intimate groups, with an emphasis on minimizing hostility and maximizing cooperation, while boys’ games are in larger groups, with an emphasis on competition.”
9. “The slowness of men to bring up problems in a relationship is no doubt compounded by their relative lack of skill when it comes to reading facial expressions of emotions. Women, for example, are more sensitive to a sad expression on a man’s face than are men in detecting sadness from a woman’s expression.”
10. “Not all angry children are bullies; some are withdrawn social outcasts who overreact to being teased or to what they perceive as slights or unfairness.”
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Animated Summary
Daniel Goleman on Increasing Your EQ
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