Friday, May 1, 2015

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence (with featured article "What Makes a Leader?" by Daniel Goleman)

There is no doubt now that having a well-honed emotional intelligence will make it easy for an individual to succeed, especially during this time when every opportunity to connect is available. This maybe one of the reasons why organizations such as Harvard Business Review continuously devote time, effort and financial resources to help our leaders all around the globe regardless of industry or occupation develop these sets of competencies.

In this book, HBR compiles the best collections of its magazine articles which deal with different aspects of emotional intelligence. Of course, the discussion of this subject will not be complete without citing the works of Daniel Goleman. Hence, the very first article you will read is What Makes a Leader. This article discusses the different components of emotional intelligence, namely, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. 

Other articles are also treasure-trove of wisdom. In the Price of Incivility: Lack of respect hurts morale-and the bottom lineChristine Porath and Christine Pearson talks about the negative effect of rude behaviors in different companies. While Diane Coutu deals with resiliency, Andrew Campbell and his other colleagues answer Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions.

I find each article helpful in its own right. There are things that make me think about the things around me. More importantly, the most important lesson I learned in this collection of articles is that being emotionally intelligent requires actual experience and practice. You cannot learn this by just reading this book. You must act on it and it a part of your behaviors. But first you must know what you need to practice. This book will help.