Subtitled: A powerful new way to increase your emotional intelligence
Dr. Bradberry is also the author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, considered one of the central books on emotional intelligence, so I was pretty excited to see how this one would extend those ideas.
Emotional intelligence is getting more coverage in leadership as well as personal development lately, but let’s define it a bit just to get us singing out of the same hymnal, as my neighbors say.
Emotional intelligence, also known as EQ, is the ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others… and then to use this awareness to manage your behaviors and relationships.
Dr Bradberry goes into this in great detail in his first book and now in this one, he provides specific ways to strengthen our EQ.
The first part of the book is a recap of EQ and then an invitation for the reader to take an EQ assessment. The assessment is online and is free with the code provided. If you buy a digital version like I did, the code should be provided by the bookseller via email.
The report provided by the assessment describes the reader’s level for each of the four main areas of EQ and then suggests reading and practicing certain habits listed in the book.
Those habits (37 in all) make up the majority of the book. And Dr Bradberry recommends using the book as a workbook of sorts… that it’s not to be read from front to back all the way through, but instead to start with the habits the assessment report suggests. Once the reader has a good grasp on those habits, then the others would be easier to take in.
I enjoyed the experience of this book, assessment, the report from the assessment and then the suggested habits. The information itself was very familiar to what’s in his first book, but this book makes it very easy for the reader to actually apply emotional intelligence to our own individual lives.
So if you’re interested in emotional intelligence and expanding your own, give this book a read! And then let me know what your top takeaways are!
