Working with Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

The book "Working with Emotional Intelligence" is the result of research and studies by author Daniel Goleman on the influence of emotional intelligence in the workplace.

From there, he concluded that the high-performance of an organization depends essentially on the emotional skills of each employee within it. Unity, motivation, synergy, persuasion and self-control are what, in fact, make up the true characteristic of a leader.

Continue reading this PocketBook and check out the best insights from the "father" of emotional intelligence applied to the professional world!

About the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence"

"Working with Emotional Intelligence" is a work by Daniel Goleman that was published in 1998. After his great success with "Emotional Intelligence", the author decided to write a book that talks about how soft skills are more important than hard skills within an organization.

The book provides examples of companies in the professional field and valuable tips for you to develop your emotional skills, as well as train your team to grow with you.

About the author Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is known worldwide as the "father" of Emotional Intelligence, even having a book with this name, "Emotional Intelligence". He holds a PhD from Harvard and currently holds a chair at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

He has received several awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, for his great contribution to the history of psychology during his career.

Daniel is also the author of the bestseller, "Focus".

To whom is this book indicated?

"Working with Emotional Intelligence" is indicated for employees to corporate directors, who wish to obtain better performance at work with the help of behavioral skills (soft skills).

Main ideas of the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence"

• Emotional intelligence is more important than rational intelligence to achieve high performance at work;
• Emotionally intelligent employees have great potential to develop initiative, team leadership, adaptability and emotional hierarchy;
• Self-control consists of self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation;
• "Empathy is our social radar";
• To develop a new intellectual understanding, you need to change the habits of thinking, feeling and behaving;
• Traditional assessment tools, such as satisfaction and commitment surveys, may not offer the best analysis;
• During the job interview, emotional skills are much more taken into account than rational intelligence.

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Overview: Beyond specialized knowledge

In the first part of the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence", Daniel Goleman tries to explain that emotional intelligence is more important than rational intelligence to achieve high performance at work. And that applies to any type of work.

The author states that, today, employers look for employees who:

• Know how to listen and speak;
• Be creative in getting around a problem;
• Be confident, motivated to achieve goals, have a career plan;
• Know how to work in groups and have interpersonal skills;
• Be organized;
• Have leadership potential.

Such skills cannot be achieved through technical knowledge of business, physics, medicine, etc.; they start from the dominance we have over ourselves and from the correlation we have with the area in which we operate.

If we see no sense in what we do, in addition to having money and success, we are likely to find ourselves constantly unmotivated.

According to Goleman, emotionally intelligent employees have great potential to develop:

• Independence: initiative and adaptability;
• Interdependence: team leadership, influence;
• Emotional hierarchy: knowing how to prioritize emotions due to circumstances.

Overview: Self-control

According to the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence", the first step towards self-mastery is self-awareness. Being aware and careful about who you are and what you want in life is the key to developing the following behavioral skills:

• Emotional awareness: consists of knowing your emotions and the reasons for feeling them, recognizing their impact on your actions and performance, and having a concrete vision about your goals and values;
• Critical self-assessment: consists of recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, learning from experiences, being open to constructive criticism to continually improve;
• Self-confidence: consists of being firm about your decisions, even in situations of uncertainty, as well as recognizing your value and abilities to work in your favor.

Author Daniel Goleman explains that the second step is to develop the ability to adjust (aspects and reactions) to situations and events. Self-regulation consists of the competencies:

• Self-control: knowing how to deal with stress impulses and emotions to remain positive, resilient and focused, even under pressure;
• Reliability: being ethical about your actions, authentic and true to your standards and able to admit your mistakes;
• Responsibility: commit to your goals and promises and be organized and careful in your work;
• Adaptability: being flexible regarding your perspectives and strategies under the circumstances, as well as being able to deal with multiple demands, knowing when to prioritize a certain task;
• Innovation: generating innovative and original ideas and solutions, being willing to take risks, analyzing from different points of view.

Motivation is also important to fit our work in a context that makes sense for our life and our purpose and, thus, we seek to improve more and more. Motivational skills are:

• Continuous improvement: people with this competence challenge themselves to always improve their performance and seek information and new possibilities to perform their work;
• Commitment: they make sacrifices to meet a company's goal, carry out their activities for the sake of a greater good, look for opportunities that are consistent with the group's mission;
• Initiative: people with initiative are always willing to seize opportunities, achieve results beyond their goal and practice unusual tactics to achieve them;
• Optimism: they are persistent, even when they encounter obstacles along the way, they do not live in fear of failure, but in hope of success.

Overview: Interpersonal skills

Author Daniel Goleman says that "empathy is our social radar". It is because of it that we connect with the feelings and needs of others. And it can be applied in the professional world as well.

For example, through it you can be aware of the customer's needs, understand the perspectives of your co-workers, in addition to cultivating diversity and having the ability to develop others in the company.

By understanding what others feel, you can learn to deal with them. And a powerful tool for that is influence. With persuasion, you are able to convince a customer to purchase your product in a negotiation, for example, or to add followers, within the company, to your cause.

People who try to be influential without being empathic are usually those who always use the same tactic to convince others, and almost always fail. They fail to arouse interest from the other party and are ignored.

Knowing how to deal with the emotions of others also gives you the ability to send a clear and appropriate message to each type of person and time, as well as becoming a good leader who inspires and guides people for development.

The ultimate competence takes you to a fundamental aspect within an organization: teamwork. Through interpersonal skills, you can strengthen ties between members, expand networking and create synergy in your team.

At the end of this part of the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence", Goleman shares the five secrets of success, according to Burt Swersey:

1. Report;
2. Empathy;
3. Persuasion;
4. Cooperation;
5. Consensus building.

Overview: A new learning model

Author Daniel Goleman says that to develop a new intellectual understanding, you must not focus only on rational knowledge. It is necessary to change the habits of thinking, feeling and behaving.

For this, he brings a guide on how you can train emotional skills applied to the professional branch in your company or team. Here are a few:

• To evaluate the work, show people that focus on the points of improvement to achieve excellence, evaluating them systematically;
• For self-assessment, they must analyze the strengths and weaknesses to know what needs to be addressed properly. The assessment must be done carefully, so it is important that they use emotional intelligence;
• For employees to stay motivated, you must show how training will reward their careers;
• Encouragement can come in the form of appreciating changes that are consistent with the organization's values;
• Show examples of highly effective people to see them as a benchmark.

Know that the change in habits does not happen overnight, so it will take time for your team to start incorporating a new mindset.

The book "Working with Emotional Intelligence" advises to collect the results and show how their progress has been so that, thus, they can advance to a new level of training and, consequently, of emotional skills.

Overview: The emotionally intelligent organization

Daniel Goleman highlights the fact that many companies believe they are evaluating their employees correctly, through satisfaction or commitment surveys. However, the author says that mistakes can be generated by such traditional tools.

In this way, he highlights emotional competencies as the most effective metrics in performance evaluation, and many of them have been lacking in companies.

For example, you could assess how the individual's mood impacts their results and how often it has been; or measure your employees' motivation in the face of challenges or obstacles.

Have you ever stopped to analyze how your employees have dealt with demands under pressure? Are the results satisfactory?

Diversity is also essential within a company; people must see differences as opportunities for new achievements. In addition, empathy and bonds between people must be constantly strengthened.

If you think that emotional skills are not taken into account at the time of a job interview, know that you were wrong!

To exemplify, the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence" brings the fact that a potential consultant is evaluated within four capacities, and only one of them is about rational intelligence. Are they:

• Cognitive: solve logical problems, analytical skills;
• Interpersonal: teamwork, self-confidence, presence;
• Results: having initiative, energy, a sense of urgency;
• Personal adjustment: honesty, motivation, sociability, modesty.

How to get low performance

• Work overload;
• Little autonomy;
• Greedy rewards;
• Loss of interpersonal contact;
• Injustice;
• Conflict of values.

What do other authors say about it?

In "Unlimited Power", Tony Robbins explains that usually a successful person walks in a more upright, more imposing way, showing confidence and self-esteem.

"Soft Skills based Leadership" is a compilation of articles by several professionals. The work emphasizes that emotional intelligence determines our response to the experience we are living. This response can be impulsive or controlled. To develop this skill, we need self-knowledge.

Finally, the authors Paula Marques and Ricardo Cayolla, in "The Super-Human Age", say that human beings make decisions using very little the rational way, as they are emotional and end up being driven by impulses.

Okay, but how can I apply this to my life?

• Know who you are and what you feel, to understand what you want in life;
• Be responsible and adaptable to challenges;
• Always seek to improve, having commitment to your work and optimism to achieve the best results;
• Try to understand not only what you feel, but also what other people feel to develop interpersonal skills;
• Encourage and train your team to develop emotional skills;
• Use soft skills as parameters to assess the performance of your employees.

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