Book Review - Subject: People Management Skills

Title: Working With Emotional Intelligence
Author: Daniel Goleman
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-10462-4

Have you ever had an 'Ah ha!' moment? You know the kind…a moment where a real change was about to take place in your life and you were no longer going to be the person you are, but the person you would become. We've all had those moments. I've had those moments: the Kennedy assassinations, hearing a Martin Luther King speech for the first time, reading In Search of Excellence, seeing Tom Peters rant on stage. I had another one just recently, after reading Daniel Goleman's book, Working with Emotional Intelligence. I realized then that I would never go back to being the kind of manager I was.

EQ (emotional intelligence) is more than just a flavour of the month. It's a religion, an affirmation that there has been a fundamental shift in how we must manage people in the 21st Century. There are no longer glass ceilings just for women. There is, in fact, a glass ceiling, floor and walls for anyone who still believes that success will be based on one's technical abilities alone.

Daniel Goleman's much heralded work on the softer side of managing people has created a whole new cottage industry. His timing couldn't have been better. Downsizing or rightsizing-rightsizing sounds more humane, doesn't it? -has put added pressure on front-line managers and supervisors. Productivity is still the name of the game. Stakeholders demand that companies be profitable in the short term but be ahead of the curve for the long term. In order to do that, management must get more out of less.

Yet the majority of people entering the work force for the first time are determined to strike a balance between work and home life. September 11th has had a profound effect on how we all define success. A career is important, but at what cost? Do we work to live, or live to work? Most workers today are choosing not to embrace the world of their parents but instead, hoping to create a world of their own. Managers and supervisors need to understand this new focus in their drive for more productive employees.

Daniel Goleman writes: “The rules of work are changing. We're being judged by a new yardstick: not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle each other and ourselves. The new rules predict who is most likely to become a star performer and who is most prone to derailing. The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness”.

A Masters of EQ should be part of the curriculum offered at all business and management schools, and Goleman's book should be mandatory reading. Add it to your must-have list and ignore its teachings at your peril.