The author of the bestseller Emotional Intelligence (1995) expands on his earlier work by documenting the significance of emotional intelligence in the world of work at both the individual and organizational levels. Goleman, formerly a brain sciences editor for the New York Times and now the CEO of a consulting firm, Emotional Intelligence Services, asserts that emotional intelligence, more than IQ and technical knowhow, gives a valuable competitive edge to organizations and is crucial to the success of individuals, and he buttressed this assertion by citing both research studies and anecdotal evidence.(For newcomers to the concept, a summary of emotional intelligence is included in Appendix 1.) Emotional intelligence encompasses both personal and social competencies. Among the personal competencies are self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, while the social competencies include empathy and the various skills for inducing desirable responses in others. Goleman analyzes the various aspects of each skill and has a seemingly bottomless cache of stories demonstrating how people with and without these skills operate. For his examples, he draws heavily on corporate America—Ford, Intel, IBM, Xerox, etc.—but with a sprinkling of more esoteric subjects: Mike Tyson, WWII’s Manhattan Project , and a generous sprinkling of foreign and multinational concerns. Happily, emotional intelligence is a quality that can be acquired. While not claiming to offer a self-help manual, Goleman presents specific guidelines for teaching emotional intelligence within an organization. Those wanting to set up such a training program and wishing more guidance than the basic principles offered here are invited to contact Goleman’s firm for practical assistance. While the various qualities making up emotional intelligence occasionally tend to overlap and blur into each other, and the many case histories come to have a certain sameness, Goleman’s essential message comes through loud and clear.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1998
ISBN: 0-553-10462-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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