Authors: Bradberry Terry and Greaves, Jean

Publisher: TalentSmart – 255 pages

Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar

This book is unique in the large number of well-known and bestselling authors who have written much praise for it. It also carries a lot of credibility and value for readers from the large number of strategies it offers to develop their emotional quotient or EQ. Those well-structured strategies – 66 in number – are presented in very well-defined ways in over two-thirds of the entire length of this book.

It would be obvious to anyone that one of the keys to success in a business or career is intelligence, and more specifically one’s intelligence quotient or IQ which is measurable. Of course, knowledge in your field of work is important as well. That knowledge could be acquired through schooling or through experience. And the way you utilize your knowledge and intelligence to solve problems is how I would define IQ.

But anyone who has dealt with people – especially with a large range of people in terms of intelligence and emotionally maturity – knows that people skills are critical to success.

The authors of this book aim to help you increase your EQ. They first help you better understand you, particularly your emotional strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. They want you to achieve your fullest potential for success in any endeavor by helping you develop your emotional intelligence, particularly the four core EQ skills everyone possess, namely, self-awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management.

The earlier bestselling book of Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves – Emotional Intelligence Quick Start

was translated into 23 languages and sold in more than 150 countries. They have written for or have been covered by top-notch publications such as Business Week, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, U.S News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

They are co-founders of Talent Smart, a global think tank that has among its clients, more than 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies. This company is the world’s largest provider of emotional and intelligence tests and training.

The authors write that they have tested more than half a million people in the last decade “to explore the emotions play in daily living. One of the conclusions they derived from this huge amount of testing is that just about a third of the people – 36 percent – were able to accurately identify their emotions as they were being tested. The thoughts and behaviors of these people were being controlled by their emotions yet they could not spot them and use those emotions to their benefit.

Success requires making good decisions, the authors point out. And good decisions emanate from two self-knowledge and emotional mastery. Ironically, all our emotions are derivations of just five core feelings: anger, fear, happiness, sadness and shame. In the book is an excellent chart that illustrates these five feelings, each in three levels of intensity, to arrive at the entire range of emotions. So achieving emotional mastery should not be so difficult, I presume once you know these five basic feelings.

You have your education, experience, intelligence and knowledge to become successful in your field of work. But you may or may not achieve your goals. These resources may still be inadequate. If you lack a well developed EQ, that could be what is holding you back.

Have you seen brilliant and well-educated people struggle through life? Have you seen people who barely finished high school, scored very low on their IQ test, have had very little work experience, have virtually no knowledge in any field, but end up making a lot of money, a big measure of success? Chances are they developed a keen sense of emotional intelligence.

Of course, it would be foolish to assume that you have adequate emotional intelligence, whether you think you are a success or not. The best way to know is to read this book, especially the part with the 66 proven strategies to increase four parts of your emotional intelligence. They are, as we stated earlier: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

Bradberry and Greaves have created an excellent source of knowledge on, and a very valuable tool for raising your emotional intelligence level, which can make you more fulfilled at work, at home and within your social circles. Get it and improve that aspect of your mind, to acquire happiness.