Book Review: Emotional Intelligence

This is an overview of the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Goleman's bio: Goleman was born in Stockton, California and earned his PhD at Harvard. For many years he was a science journalist at the New York Times. He is currently an independent/freelance author.

Key point: Your emotional intelligence (EQ) can matter more than your intelligence quotient (IQ)

In this book author Daniel Goleman sets out to add light to an issue that goes back to at least the days of Aristotle. Goleman says that Aristotle's challenge, laid out in his book The Nicomachaen Ethics, is for us to manage our emotional life with intelligence. Goleman writes, “As Aristotle saw, the problem is not with emotionality, but with the appropriateness of emotion and its expression.”

Have you ever been so angry, frustrated or anxious that you couldn’t think straight? If you have, then your brain has experienced an emotional high-jacking. And this experience should have given you some idea as to why Goleman claims that control of our emotions (emotional intelligence) can be more important than the often tested Intelligence Quotient (IQ). What good is all the smarts in the world if your brain is constantly being overtaken by your emotions? Ever known a person with genius level knowledge who’s angry, bitter, crass, condescending, nervous or sad and listless? A person can have a tremendous grasp on information and book smarts but very little control over their emotions.

What is an emotion and what are they for? According to Goleman, “All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us” Emotions result from the wiring in our brains. And these connections can be formed, and reformed, from the cradle to the grave.

“The interactions of life's earliest years lay down a set of emotional lessons based on the attunement and upsets in the contacts between infant and caregiver,” says Goleman. Speaking about children with low emotional intelligence he writes, “Despite their intellectual potential, these are the children at highest risk for problems like academic failure, alcoholism, and criminality – not because their intellect is deficient, but because their control over their emotional life is impaired.” The goal is to be able to identify when we're thinking with our emotional brain versus when we're thinking with our rational brain. Then we'll be able to adjust to the mix that's best suited to the situation at hand.

Researchers conducted a study with about 450 boys from Somerville, Massachusetts. These boys were surveyed as youth and then followed into adult life to monitor their development. The results were surprising. Goleman writes, “To be sure, there was a general link (as there always is) between IQ and socioeconomic level at age forty-seven. But childhood abilities such as being able to handle frustration, control emotions, and get on with other people made the greater difference.”

So, what are we to do? Goleman explains, “Socrates's injunction 'Know thyself' speaks to this keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.” Reflecting on Aristotle's challenge Goleman writes, “A sense of self-mastery, of being able to withstand the emotional storms that the buffeting of Fortunes brings rather than being 'passion's slave,' has been praised as a virtue since the time of Plato.”

It would be impossible to give any sort of exhaustive list on techniques for handling emotions. However, let's point out a few related to anger. Goleman quotes some results from the research of Diane Tice, “Tice found that reframing a situation more positively was one of the most potent ways to put anger to rest.” Goleman also mentions, “One way of defusing anger is to seize on and challenge the thoughts that triggered the surges of anger.” The last one I'll mention, in the case of anger, is Goleman's reference to the findings of University of Alabama professor Dolf Zillman. Goleman writes, “Distraction, Zillman finds, is a highly powerful mood-altering device.”

Therapists will sometimes talk to of a 2-D solution to coping with our emotions. The first D stands for Distract. One way to handle emotionality is by distracting yourself from the emotions' accompanying thoughts. It's what professor Zillman was talking about in the previous paragraph. This is what a good friend will do for you while you're heart-broken after having been dumped by your significiant other. The other D stands for Dispute. This is what Diane Tice was referring to when she mentioned, “reframing a situation,” and, “challenge the thoughts.” Disputing gets to the meaning of things. So if an old friend ignores you at a party you might become sad with thoughts like, “I can't believe Susan didn't say hello. I guess we never were that good of friends.” You might dispute those thoughts by coming up with a more charitable explanation of Susan's behavior. You might tell yourself, “Ya know, Susan always has been rather shy and introverted. Maybe she's so nervous about all the people here, she didn't even notice me.” Disputing is definitely more difficult than distracting but its effects are generally longer lasting, except in the case of rage. Disputation doesn't really work with high levels of anger, you're only option is distraction. Specifically you want to remove the person from the thing they feel is making them mad.

Back to the work of Diane Tice, “Tice found that ventilating anger is one of the worse ways to cool down.” That's really something to consider because a lot of people think it's a good idea to vent. Hopefully if you chose to vent you keep in mind that emotions are contagious. Others can become angry from the simple fact that you're angry. And a dangerous escalation my ensue.

As far as what we should shoot for, Goleman says, “There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or another impulse to act.” This brings up a landmark experiment conducted by Columbia professor Walter Mischel. The experiment was conducted back in the late 1960's when Mischel was a professor at Stanford. The experiment is called The Marshmallow Test and it goes like this. Basicaly, children were offered one marshmallow which they could eat whenever they liked. However, the children were told if they can wait fifteen minutes, without eating the marshmallow, they will be give a second marshmallow to eat as well. The children with the willpower to wait for the second marshmallow ended up more successful in life on various measures. Mischel identified the essence of emotional self-regulation and he called it, “goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification.”

An important thing that might be on your mind is whether this information can help you. Do we come preprogrammed with a current level of emotional intelligence of is it something we can learn? Like many things, it turns out what you believe to be the answer to that question will become your reality. While we learn emotional coping mechanisms mainly from our parents or caregivers, we are definitelty able to improve our emotional intelligence if we choose to. Goleman writes, “There is ample evidence that emotional skills such as impulse control and accurately reading a social situation can be learned.”

Goleman refers to two great books that give great advice on the how-to's of emotional mastery. I have read both and hope to have overviews up on this site before too long. One is called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. Seligman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and was one of the original cognitive psychologists. The other book is Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi is a professor of psychology at the Claremont Graduate University. Flow is one of my favorite books of all time.

As you might expect empathy plays a huge roll in emotional intelligence. The words are practicing synonymous. Goleman explains, “Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings.” So we are reminder of the wisdom of the words from the Oracle of Delphi, “Know thyself.”

“Being able to manage emotions in someone else is the core of the art of handling relationships,” says Goleman. Paul Ekman is the professor at UCSF who discovered that we literally wear our emotions on our face. (Actually he built off of Darwin, but that's a discussion for another day) The faces we pull as a result of experiencing an emotion are hard-wired into our genes. We know this because Ekman discovered that the faces are universally recognizable regardless of culture or geography. Ekman wrote about this in his book Emotions Revealed. I've read it and I'll have a book report posted as soon as I can.

Goleman's is a book that overviews most of the cutting edge research on emotion. (Mind you, the book was written back in 1995) I can't get into every detail or touch every topic because this overview would be enormous. A shortcut is to mention references that you can pursue if interested.

In the area of intimate relationships and marriage Goleman cites two experts. One is John Gottman, at the University of Washington, and his book The Seven Principles for Making a Marriage Work. Gottman is a disciple of Ekman and his work is seminal. The other is Aaron Beck at the University of Pennsylvania and his book Love is Never Enough. Beck is the father of cognitive therapy. His work details a methodology for mastering our emotions and is highly recommended.

As you could imagine, emotional intelligence plays a big role in work and business life. Increased levels of emotional intelligence definitely improve our ability to manage and lead people. To get any meaningful done we must work in groups, mastery of emotion certainly assists in the group dynamic. Goleman writes, “The single most important element of group intelligence, it turns out, is not the average IQ in the academic sense, but rather in terms of emotional intelligence. The key to a high group IQ is social harmony.”

Work, as we know, is fundamentally changing. The organizational structure is becoming flat. No longer is the command-and-control strategy ideal. Instead of a chain of command people work horizontally to get things done. A lot of emotion goes into the desire to be higher up on the command ladder. People often find their self-worth in their title. Emotional intelligence is required to create, or allow, a horizontal organizational chart, focused on results.

In the world of physical health, you probably have heard about the link between stress and sickness. Goleman writes, “Stress suppresses immune resistance.” Stress comes from a number of things and all of them are emotions. We know about the role of stress but we use the wrong cure. Let's say someone has anxiety, our system is set up to deliver medication in the form of pills. But anxiety is not the body's reaction to a deficiency of Valium. Knowing the real cause can lead to the true solution. Anxiety is an emotion. What cognitive psychology teaches us is that our thoughts create our emotions. If we correct our faulty thinking patterns we can cure our emotional problems. Goleman states, “Like its near cousin optimism, hope has healing power.” For more depth read Seligman's Learned Optimism.

In closing I leave you with one more quote from Goleman, “The bedrock or character is self-discipline; the virtuous life, as philosophers since Aristotle have observed, is based on self-control.” The preeminent expert on self-control is a gentleman by the name of Roy Baumeister. Roy has written an excellent book titled Willpower and I highly recommend reading it.

More to come!

Permission to Dream (straight from the scientists)

There's a lot of talk, throughout the ether, of the need to think positively. We are constantly reminded of the need to have a positive mental attitude, a PMA. I'm rather negative on the idea. Just kidding. But, I must say, I'm not fond of the advice. The reason is because it's so vague and general as to be practically useless. While there is always a time and a place for bumper-sticker inspiration, there's also a big need for more depth and for specific techniques. One such technique I will give to you in this post.

Hopefully you've heard of all the wonders of optimism. If you haven't, I suggest two courses of action. Either investigate the work of Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania or stay plugged into this blog. I will revisit the concept of optimism often because it is very beneficial to human health and flourishing. Seligman breaks it down very succinctly and speaks to the importance of what he calls “explanatory style.” In future posts I will explain the ins-and-outs of Seligman's theory because he is one of the most important figures in mind science.

For now, I want to give you a specific technique you can use to increase your levels of optimism. As everybody knows, difficulties and frustration are an every day part of life. Maintaining your optimism is a huge contributor to being, and becoming, a resilient and happy person. Hopefully there is no need for me to speak to the importance of happiness or resilience. So, what is the technique I'm speaking of? It's called the Best Possible Self exercise.

This technique was pioneered by Laura King, a professor at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Here's what King did in her experimental study on optimism. She instructed the study's participants to spend twenty minutes, each day, writing a narrative description of their “best possible future selves.” “Basically, this is a mental exercise in which you visualize the best possible future for yourself in multiple domains of life,” is how it is described by Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor who has replicated King's results. Stated differently, the participants spent twenty minutes writing about a future where all their goals had been realized (let's say ten years out, though you can vary that period of time.)

Dr. King found that “people who wrote about their vision for twenty minutes per day over several days, relative to those (the control group) who wrote about other topics, were more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence”. We now know that not only does optimism make us feel better, it also helps combat numerous diseases such as cancer! Might sound weird, but it's true.

So, I encourage you to give the Best Possible Future Self exercise a try. I understand it's kind of unnatural and there's a good chance you're going to have to force yourself to do it. I know I had to. But, I'm happy to report that it works! Some people might look down at day-dreaming as futile and wasteful. What I'm tell you is that scientists have hard data proving that daydreaming is good for us. Just make sure you do it in writing. As Lyubomirsky put it, “Because writing is highly structured, systematic, and rule-bound, it prompts you to organize, integrate, and analyze your thoughts in a way that would be difficult, if not impossible, to do if you were just fantasizing.”

I have a Word document, on my computer, that is getting really long. It's where I go to scribble down my BPS whenever I need a boost. And understand this. Back when I took Seligman's test, before I learned of Professor King's method, optimism was already one of my biggest strengths! I continue to do BPS because I've learned about optimism's central role in human health. I hope you try it too.

If you're experiencing resistance it might be that you don't have clear goals. Creating goals for yourself can be a scary thing. “What if I fail to achieve them?” is a question that might go through your head. What I'm telling you is that that fear is misplaced when you really understand the BPS exercise. Laura King didn't gauge whether or not her research participants actually achieved their goals. That had nothing to do with the experiment. All that mattered was the act of writing, twenty minutes a day, for several days. I hope you choose to give it a try. You're future self will thank you.

Book Review: The World is Flat

This is an overview of the book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Friedman's bio: Thomas Friedman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He holds a Master's degree, in Middle East studies, from Oxford University. Currently Mr. Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. Friedman has written numerous books and has won the Pulitzer Prize three times.

Main point: Friedman is using the title of this book as a metaphor. The point is to inform business people that the barriers to entry, in all industries, have been largely eliminated. This was caused by the explosion of telecommunications around the globe. So, the playing field has been flattened. People can participate, in the world of business, from all four corners of the globe. Competition is on the rise.

This book is the result of Friedman’s efforts to find out why so many American jobs were being shipped abroad to places like India. Friedman is a very intelligent individual and this book covers a lot of territory. While the premise is rather simple the scope of information is astounding.

Friedman drops a lot of information on the reader. Perhaps the information was so new it’s hard to develop a more concise and useful theory. If we stay on the topic of a flat world, we can make some progress. But Friedman tries to introduce some concepts such as reform wholesale, reform retail, and the triple convergence that simply clutter up his message.

This book is the result of a fairly simple inquiry. Friedman was trying to understand why so many American jobs were being exported to India. This is, no doubt, a sore subject for many Americans. It all boils down to a rather straightforward explanation. As the walls and barriers to communication are torn down, and information is able to flow more freely, the playing field of competition is leveled and the world becomes flat.

The catalyst for this flattening went unseen by most people. You may have heard of a now defunct company called Global Crossing. If so, it’s probably because GC was all over the news a few years ago along side many of the other corporate scandals, Enron being the most recognizable. Global's leader was a guy named Gary Winnick and people watched, through the media, as he was punished for his wrong-doings. What most people didn’t appreciate was the effects of Global Crossing’s business activities. You see, they were a big part of the hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested to put broadband connectivity around the world. Companies like Global laid endless amounts of fiber optic cable along the sea floor, thus connecting the continents through telecommunications. All of a sudden it was easier to place a phone call, through VoIP, from Calcutta to New York than it was to call a neighboring city in India. This is the essence of the world being flat. Barriers are being removed and the world is turning into a global marketplace.

That pretty much sums up the message of the title. Simple enough, right? But like I said, Friedman covers a lot of ground. The book does contains lots of information. But what we really need to understand is that globalization is real. Knowing the rules and how they have, and will, continue to change will be of great benefit to each of us.

Friedman does include a list of what he calls, “The ten forces that flattened the world.” I think the list adds confusion to the narrative but I will include it anyways. The ten forces are:
1. The falling of the Berlin wall in 1989
2. Netscape going public in 1995
3. The development of work flow software
4. Open-sourcing
5. Outsourcing
6. Offshoring
7. Supply-chaining
8. Insourcing
9. “In-forming”
10. The steroids are the new technologies that make it possible to perform each of the other nine forces in a way that is “digital, mobile, virtual, and personal,” as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is fond of saying.

You might notice Friedman coins the term in-forming. Being a new term it creates some confusion in his message. Simply put, in-forming is searching for knowledge. And in-forming has been made easier thanks to the likes of Google and others.

The fundamental message of the book isn’t necessarily a new one. Change is already upon us and the future belongs to those who embrace the power of change and adapt accordingly. The book goes on to say that protectionism and isolationism are short sighted strategies. Such strategies might maintain the status quo for a while, but would ultimately result in our demise. Or so says history.

Friedman is clearly advocating for education and, particularly, for education in the sciences and math. Tom says JFK had a vision of putting a man on the moon and he has a vision of putting every man and woman on a campus.

Mr. Friedman appears to be a very proud American who appreciates his country's preeminent role in the world. This book is really a call to action. Friedman is attempting to wake Americans up to the fact that we can't rest of our laurels. That the future of American greatness will be achieved not with bombs but with books (or rather ideas.) He clearly belongs to the camp which believes the pen is mightier than the sword. This particular book serves as a reminder that what made America great isn't enough to keep her great.

Barter Kings

Have you seen the TV show Barter Kings? It airs on A&E and I think it's worth watching. I'm not sure just how staged and scripted the show is, but that's not the point. I say Barter Kings is worth watching, for all people in sales, and anybody who has to negotiate in general. These guys obviously know what they're doing.

When you watch Steve and Antonio (the two main characters) negotiate a barter deal, it's ridiculous how often they clean the floor with their opponent. Being so one-sided it clearly indicates a lot of editing. But if you can ignore all the Hollywood magic there are plenty of gems to pick up. First, and foremost, is the importance of asking questions.

In every deal you'll hear one of the guys ask why the other party wants to get rid of (whatever it is they're offering for barter.) Like moths to a flame, the other person almost always answers. Then the boys use that information as the exact reason the deal (which in invariably lop-sided) should be done. It's salesmanship 101. At one point, I'm pretty sure I heard either Steve or Antonio mention they used to sell cars. It's a small wonder because they've obviously got some skills.

If you've been in sales for any length of time, you already know the importance of asking questions. One of my favorite paradoxes is, “Questions are the answer.” But just because we know the importance of questions doesn't mean we always remember to use them. We all know the importance of eating healthy, but we often seem to forget, don't we?

What questions do we ask? Good question! Why not reflect on the advice of Neil Rackham and his SPIN Selling method? This system came out a long time ago but it's still highly effective. The acronym stands for Situation Problem Implication Need-Payoff. I won't get into right now but I will soon be posting an overview of Rackham's book. Do you think that would be helpful? If you send me an email I will send you the SPIN overview right now. Do you think you could use that?

Over the years, I have read numerous definitions of what it means to be a salesperson. But, unfortunately, I've never read one that really sums it up. So I came up with a definition of my own. To me a salesperson is, “A self-promoting problem-solver who is paid to persuade people.” However you wish to think about it, solving problems is at the heart of what sales is all about. Knowing this it becomes much easier to create good questions. Just think of the problems your product or service solves and then develop questions around those problems. You want questions that will probe your clients for needs. You will also want questions that will develop those needs so as to make them strong enough to get action.

In the meanwhile, check out Barter Kings. It's a good reminder of the importance of asking questions. An interesting, and added, dimension is the fact that Antonio has Tourette's syndrome. You can tell when the negotiation is a bit tense because he'll tend to exhibit a tic. The way I look at it is why not learn something while you're being entertained? It's the reason I still love that show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.