Book Review: The Emotionally Intelligent Manager: How to Develop and Use the Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership

This book review is part of a series that covers the topic of Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. Emotional Intelligence is often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient or EQ. Reldan S. Nadler, Psy.D. is the Official Guide to Emotional Intelligence.nnThe Emotionally Intelligent Manager: How to Develop and Use the Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership, by David R. Caruso, Peter Salovey, is a valuable resource for people interested in Emotional Intelligence, and it is available through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.nnReviewsn“Emotions are a human asset. Caruso and Salovey show you how to increase your return on that asset. This is a marvelous work helping to legitimize emotions in the workplace.”n—Richard E. Boyatzis, professor and chair, Department of Organizational Behavior, Case Western Reserve University, and coauthor, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligencen n“The authors do a rare and important thing—they translate critical concepts from cutting-edge science into something that can be understood and used effectively at work every day. To succeed in today's workplace, managers, and their employees, need to have the emotional intelligence skills discussed in this book.”n—Sigal Barsade, professor, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania nn“A systematic, disciplined approach harnessing the value and unleashing the power of emotions in the workplace through the creation of a new franchise player—the Emotional Athlete. The optimization of this athlete will be the next real competitive differentiator on the corporate land scape.”n—Roseanna DeMaria, former first vice president, leadership & performance, Merrill Lynch and former senior vice president, enterprise risk, AT&T Wireless Services nn“This is an introspective guide to becoming a more effective manager. It demonstrates how tuning in to your emotions and those you work with and knowing how to manage them will help you succeed.”n—Lillian Vernon, founder, Lillian Vernon Corporation nn“Not just a description of emotional intelligence, this book maps out for managers across many kinds of organizations how to assess, learn, and apply these important skills.”n—Jean M. Broom, senior vice president, human resources and general affairs, ITOCHU International Inc. nn“This book is for everyone, not only managers but for every individual in organizations—you will find out just how important emotions are at work.”n—Masao Ueminami, manager, human resource and general affairs division, NEC Electronics Corporation nn"David and Peter take the 'mystery' out of Emotional Intelligence and allow the business person to find and practice ways of becoming a better and more effective leader using the knowledge and practice of emotions. Lots of practical applications for leaders written in a way that can immediately improve the EI capacity of those that choose to improve." - Janet Matts, Leadership Practice Director, Johnson & Johnson. nnBook DescriptionnWe have long been taught that emotions should be felt and expressed in carefully controlled ways, and then only in certain environments and at certain times. This is especially true when at work, particularly when managing others. It is considered terribly unprofessional to express emotion while on the job, and many of us believe that our biggest mistakes and regrets are due to our reactions at those times when our emotions get the better of us. David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey believe that this view of emotion is not correct. The emotion centers of the brain, they argue, are not relegated to a secondary place in our thinking and reasoning, but instead are an integral part of what it means to think, reason, and to be intelligent. In The Emotionally Intelligent Manager, they show that emotion is not just important, but absolutely necessary for us to make good decisions, take action to solve problems, cope with change, and succeed. The authors detail a practical four-part hierarchy of emotional skills: identifying emotions, using emotions to facilitate thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions—and show how we can measure, learn, and develop each skill and employ them in an integrated way to solve our most difficult work-related problems.