Book SummaryEmotional Intelligence 2.0, by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize your emotions as well as the emotions of those around you, and your ability to use those emotions to develop your behavior and relationships. Unlike traits such as IQ or personality, you can develop EQ through practice and persistence.

Why Is EQ important?

Reason #1: EQ helps you process your emotions. Your brain is designed to prioritize emotions. Therefore, before you can have a rational thought, you have to process your feelings. Though many of your emotional responses may seem minor, they’re important because these reactions develop patterns of behavior.

Reason #2: EQ helps you manage triggers. Triggers are events that produce a significant emotional response. Triggers can cloud your judgment and prevent your rational brain from informing your decisions. High EQ skills allow you to recognize your triggers and avoid or effectively handle them.

Reason #3: EQ helps you control your thoughts and develop healthy habits. You don’t have direct control over your emotions, especially when something triggers them. However, you do have control over your thoughts. You can calm yourself down and handle your emotions by thinking about perspective, timing, and other EQ skills.

Reason #4: EQ helps you succeed. High EQ develops skills that directly correlate to success, such as navigating complex situations and keeping calm under pressure. One study found that:

• EQ relates to 58% of skill sets in the workplace.
• People with high EQs make an average of $29,000 more per year than those with low EQs.
• 90% of high-achievers have a high EQ.

You can develop a high EQ by developing the four pillars of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is your ability to identify your emotions as they occur and recognize your tendencies during different scenarios.

People with high levels of self-awareness:

• Recognize the people or situations that upset them
• Notice patterns of behavior in specific situations
  • For example, they may recognize that they get angry when someone wastes their time or nervous when a particular person enters the room.
• Embrace emotional outbursts as learning opportunities
• Take time to decipher the reasons behind their emotional responses
• Know what they do well, and what they don’t
• Understand the things that motivate them

Tactics to Develop Self-Awareness

Explore Your Emotions

Tactic #1: Understand the physical effects of your emotions. Close your eyes and examine different physical factors such as your heartbeat, breath, and muscle tension. Then, recall a memory that elicits a strong emotional response. Notice the way your body changes based upon that emotion. Recognizing physical responses allows you to quickly identify your emotions in your day-to-day life.

Tactic #2: Find the reason behind your emotion. Emotions act as a guide, pointing out things in your psyche or surroundings that you may not recognize otherwise. Assess why you're feeling what you're feeling. This helps you resolve any problems or tensions that are causing unwanted feelings.

Tactic #3: Embrace discomfort. Avoiding painful feelings only creates a short-term solution and exacerbates problems further down the line. When an uncomfortable emotion emerges, dive into your feeling and work through it. Once you understand why you’re uncomfortable, you can handle the uncomfortable emotion more effectively.

For example, you feel unfulfilled in your career but don’t want to deal with that emotion, so you try to push your feelings away by relying on constant external validation to provide you with fulfillment. Though this validation may give you a temporary reprieve, it doesn’t get to the core of why you feel the way you do. It essentially puts a band-aid over a deeper emotional wound that you need to eventually deal with.

View Your Emotions and Triggers Objectively

Tactic #4: Don’t identify your emotions as “good” or “bad.” Emotions aren’t “good” or “bad.” Judging a feeling only puts more emotions (such as shame or pride) on top of that feeling. This keeps your original emotion from developing and muddies your current emotional state.

Tactic #5: Know your triggers. Everyone has people and behaviors that push their buttons. Knowing what triggers you allows you to strategize for those situations. Be specific when noting your triggers. Identify people, activities, and environments that irk you. Then, mentally prepare yourself for the situation.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Tactic #6: Be specific about the message you send to the world. The clothes you wear, your physical demeanor, and your facial expressions all send specific messages and usually reflect your internal emotions. Understand the message your demeanor and appearance sends. This will help you understand why people interact with you the way that they do.

For example, if you go to work wearing dirty clothes and unkempt hair, people may assume that you don’t take your job seriously. For another example, if you don’t talk to anyone in your office throughout the workday, people may assume that you don’t want to be there.

Tactic #7: Invite feedback. When it comes to examining your behavior, you're inherently biased. Reach out to other people to get a truly objective picture of yourself and the ways you respond to certain situations or people.

Self-Management

After you’ve strengthened your self-awareness skills, you can begin to develop self-management. Self-management is the ability to use your self-awareness to manage your emotions and stay in control of your behavior.

People with high-levels of self-management:

• Control reactive behavior
• Do not allow their emotions to dictate their decisions
• Find peace with uncertainty
• Navigate...

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Summary Chapters 1-4: What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Human beings possess three defining characteristics: cognitive intelligence (IQ), personality, and emotional intelligence (EQ):

• Cognitive Intelligence (IQ) is how well you can learn new information.
• Personality is your preferences and traits such as introversion and extroversion.
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize your emotions, recognize the emotions of those around you, and use this awareness to guide your behavior and develop strong relationships.

For many years, people have correlated cognitive intelligence (IQ) with success in the workplace. However, workers with the highest IQs rarely outperform their colleagues with average IQs. In fact, people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70% of the time. If IQ is not a determining factor of success in the workplace, what is? Research now points to EQ.

Why Is EQ Important?

Reason #1: EQ helps you process your emotions. You have emotional responses to almost everything you experience in your day-to-day life. Though many of your responses may seem minor, they’re important because your reactions develop into patterns of behavior.

Your brain is designed...

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Summary Chapter 5: Self-Awareness

The first step to developing personal competence is self-awareness. Self-awareness is your ability to identify your emotions as they occur and recognize your tendencies during different scenarios.

People with high levels of self-awareness:

• Recognize the people or situations that upset them
• Notice patterns of behavior in specific situations
  • For example, they may recognize that they get angry when someone wastes their time or nervous when a particular person enters the room.
• Embrace emotional outbursts as learning opportunities
• Take time to decipher the reasons behind their emotional responses
• Know what they do well, and what they don’t
• Understand the things that motivate them

The Benefits of Self-Awareness, and the Cost of Its Absence

Shortform Exercise: Explore the Link Between Your Body and Your Emotions

Understanding how your body responds to emotions allows you to identify your feelings as they emerge. Use this exercise to explore the ways your body responds to different emotional stimuli.

Close your eyes for a minute or two and begin to observe the sensations throughout your body. Are you breathing deeply or shallowly? Are you tense? If so, where? How fast is your heart beating? List the physical sensations you're experiencing. Be specific.

Shortform Exercise: What Are My Core Values?

Knowing your core values allows you to make rational decisions based upon your beliefs rather than in-the-moment reactions. Use this exercise to solidify your core values and identify behaviors that go against your beliefs.

What are the core values that guide you? Examples of core values include: showing compassion, being a dependable colleague, putting your family first, fighting for your friends, pursuing your passion, and so on. List 2-5 of your core values.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Summary Chapter 6: Self-Management

After you’ve strengthened your self-awareness skills, you can begin to develop the second step of personal competence: self-management. Self-management is the ability to use your self-awareness to manage your emotions and stay in control of your behavior.

People with high-levels of self-management:

• Control reactive behavior
• Do not allow their emotions to dictate their decisions
• Find peace with uncertainty
• Navigate complex situations patiently
• See projects through to the end regardless of frustration
• Focus on long-term development

The Benefits of Self-Management, and the Cost of Its Absence

Shortform Exercise: Make an Emotion vs. Reason List

Differentiating between your emotional and rational brain will help you discover the best route forward when faced with a difficult situation. Use this exercise to make the distinction and clarify your decision-making process.

Think of an issue you're currently experiencing that requires you to make a decision. Describe it.

Shortform Exercise: Visualize Your Success

Visualizing yourself managing a situation well allows your brain to develop EQ skills before difficult situations arise.

Think of a situation in which you have previously had trouble managing your emotions. Describe it.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Summary Chapter 7: Social Awareness

Once you have developed personal competence, you can begin to build your social competence. Reminder: social competence is your ability to interact with people effectively.

The first step to social competence is social awareness. Social awareness is the ability to identify emotions in other people and understand the reasons behind them.

People with high levels of social awareness:

• Give others the opportunity to speak
• Actively listen
  • They stop what they’re doing and turn their full attention to the other person
• Pick up on cues that reveal emotion
  • For example, if someone’s hand is shaking as they speak to you, they may be nervous or angry.
• Take in important information without bias
• Adapt to the emotional climate
• Develop empathy for the people around them

The Benefits of Social Awareness, and the Cost of Its Absence

Shortform Exercise: Live in the Moment

A crucial aspect of social awareness is an ability to live in the moment. If you allow distractions to pull your focus, you won’t catch critical information.

Think of a recent conversation that you had in which you felt disconnected. Describe it.

Shortform Exercise: Plan for Interactions

Having a plan for social gatherings allows you to get out of your head and be more socially aware.

Think of a recent social event where you felt overwhelmed. In what ways did you feel overwhelmed? (Did your conversations feel stilted? Did you forget things? Did you feel uncomfortable?)

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Summary Chapter 8: Relationship Management

The second step to social competence and the fourth and final skill in EQ development is relationship management. Relationship management is your ability to develop relationships with other people.

People with high levels of relationship management:

• Connect with a multitude of people
• Interact with people frequently
• Find the benefits in every relationship
• Create an environment that promotes discussion and connection
• Handle stressful situations well
• Develop a strong rapport with coworkers—even with people they do not inherently agree with

The Benefits of Relationship Management, and the Costs of Its Absence

Shortform Exercise: Make the Right Impact

Good intentions and positive impact don’t always align. Make sure that your intention leads to the desired impact.

Think of a recent situation in which your good intentions ended up worsening a situation. This could be anything from a mistimed joke to an unclear objective. Describe your intention, the action(s) that you took, and the resulting impact.

Shortform Exercise: Handle Tense Situations Effectively

The way that you handle tense situations reveals a lot about your emotional intelligence. The higher your EQ, the better you are at navigating these situations while maintaining strong relationships.

Think of a recent disagreement with a colleague in which one or both of you began blaming one another for a problem. Describe it.

Shortform Exercise: Develop Personal Competence

Emotional intelligence requires that you first develop personal competence. Self-awareness and self-management create the foundation of EQ.

Reflect on a recent time a lack of self-awareness led to a poor decision. Describe it.