I first came across Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence in early 2000. At that time I was attending a course at work that taught us how to better interact with customers. Constantly dealing with demanding and emotional customers can be taxing after a while. One of my course mates bought this book to class and shared with us how it helped him access and utilise his emotions better.
I was sold. I loved what the book taught me about myself. The many lessons I picked up then held fast after so many years.
Yale Professor Peter Salovey (Goleman popularised EQ but Salovey came up with the concept some years ago) defines Emotional Intelligence as a person’s ability to recognize and interpret emotions and to use and integrate them productively for optimal reasoning and problem solving. Emotional intelligence should be distinguished from simply “emotional.” An emotional person may ......
