Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

AUDIOBOOK

It took me a few months to get through this book because I was borrowing it from my library and the content is so heavy.

This book is very informative, but limited practical applications for adults. It felt more like a textbook rather than a self-help book. Many examples on how to help kids learn and express their feelings and emotions, but nothing for adults, at least nothing I can recall.

Overall, it's a good book, full of tons of information on how understanding our emotions is just as important as learning math. I'd recommend if you're nerdy and love the story behind the story.

Maybe it's because I've read a lot of self-help books, psychology books, business books, and have attended my fair share of professional development sessions, but I felt like this was a dryly-written synthesis of things I already knew. Now, I'm not saying I'm the pinnacle of emotional intelligence; I've just spent a lot of my adult life learning to understand and cultivate it as a super important part of one's social life. Maybe if this is your introduction to EI, you might find it useful. Or you might find it boring and difficult to get through, as I did.

This is one of those books where if you “get it” it's real. And if you don't, it's total BS.

Personally, I get it.

For example, I actually know someone that really does have PTSD. Goleman explains a plausible mechanism.

If you're a skeptic, you won't find anything useful in this book, so don't waste your time. If you're willing to consider personal experience as validation for his claims, read it and observe the world around you from a more emotionally significant perspective.


My personal experience? Predictability doesn't imply measureability. This makes the subject an art rather than a science. I'm just fine with that.

The premise of this book challenges the reader to be smart about ones own emotions and if those one works with. In doing so, people can accomplish more together. I have long believed this to be true, so this may be a case where I may only reinforcing my own belief more than developing new ones.

The abridged audio of this book was a bit frustrating to listen to. First, the production value was not what I'm used to. The reader at times sounded to be ending concluding a sentence only to continue with it, while sounding like starting a new sentence. Additionally, it is so abridged that this felt like seeing a country from the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird. It went by so fast that it was difficult to really absorb all the points and appreciate them.

This has whetted my appetite for the unabridged book and I plan to read it through one day.

3.5 stars. I can see why it was an important book, although it was hard to get through. With the number of books on EQ available now I imagine there are better options. Actually, I would venture that we're now approaching a new iteration of this in the form of mindfulness (self-awareness), particularly as a component of meditation practice.

So this might be the book that started it all, but I don't find it a must-read. I feel that the science and psychology, at least among the genres I read, is mostly common knowledge at this point.