Emotional Intelligence - Managing Emotions To Make A Positive Impact On Your Life And Career

Emotional Intelligence – Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career (2014) by Gill Hasson – Capstone – Good Condition

Apparently, having emotions is unavoidable.

Managing them, however, is optional.

In Emotional Intelligence – Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career, Gill Hasson explores the useful modern concept that success is not determined solely by intelligence, qualifications or knowing how to produce a convincing spreadsheet. It also helps enormously if you can recognise what you are feeling, understand what other people are feeling, and avoid replying to an irritating email while temporarily possessed by rage.

The book looks at emotional intelligence as a practical skill: understanding your own emotions, managing reactions, developing empathy, communicating effectively and dealing with other human beings without every minor disagreement escalating into a diplomatic incident.

This is particularly relevant in the workplace, where people are routinely expected to remain calm, reasonable and professional despite meetings, deadlines, misunderstandings, vague instructions, impossible clients, malfunctioning technology and colleagues who reply-all unnecessarily.

Hasson takes the subject away from abstract psychology and concentrates on what emotional intelligence actually looks like in everyday life. How do you recognise the emotion behind a reaction? How do you respond rather than simply react? How do you deal with criticism without mentally composing somebody’s obituary? How do you communicate clearly when the other person appears to have misunderstood something you considered painfully obvious?

The underlying principle is straightforward: emotions are information.

They tell us something about what we value, fear, resent, want or expect. Problems arise when we either ignore them completely or allow them to take over the steering wheel.

The emotionally intelligent person is therefore not someone who wanders through life in a state of perfect serenity, smiling gently while everybody else throws office furniture. They still become annoyed, disappointed, nervous and frustrated. They are simply rather better at noticing what is happening before deciding what to do next.

The book also examines empathy, one of those qualities everyone agrees is desirable until somebody is actually required to practise it with a difficult person.

Understanding another person’s perspective does not necessarily mean agreeing with them. It may simply mean recognising why they are behaving as they are, which can make negotiation, management and everyday communication considerably easier.

There is plenty here for the workplace, but the ideas apply equally well outside it. Family arguments, friendships, relationships, customer service, awkward conversations and all the other situations created by placing multiple human beings in the same environment can benefit from a little emotional awareness.

Published by Capstone in 2014, this is a practical self-development title rather than a dense academic treatise. It is designed to be used, not merely admired from across the room while promising yourself that one day you will become a more emotionally intelligent person.

Readers can therefore expect accessible explanations, practical suggestions and the occasional uncomfortable recognition that the person causing difficulties in a particular situation may not always be somebody else.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning it has experienced previous ownership without apparently becoming emotionally overwhelmed by the process.

ISBN 9780857085443.

Ideal for readers interested in personal development, management, communication, workplace psychology, leadership or simply learning how to navigate everyday interactions without turning every irritation into a constitutional crisis.

Also suitable for anyone who has ever typed an angry message, stared at it for thirty seconds, deleted it and thereby demonstrated more emotional intelligence than they realised.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where emotions are acknowledged, passive aggression is discouraged, and books are generally allowed to express themselves freely.

Keep browsing: See more Self-Help books Other books by Gill Hasson