Book Review:
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Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman |
Reviewed by Patrick E. Merlevede, M.Sc.
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Daniel Goleman did us the favor to bring the term emotional intelligence within the attention of millions of people. This term he borrowed from Peter Salovey (Yale) might have remained hidden for some more time if millions of readers hadn't decided to buy this book. You'll find, condensed in one book, the research done by a few hundred people between 1975 and 1994 xplaining why EQ is important and what it does to people. Unfortunately, with only this book at hand, it's hard for the reader to work on the solution. The main recommendation is that the US Government should spend time and money to add Emotional Intelligence to the curriculum of the US Education system. The risk is that one might conclude that is too late to learn emotional intelligence once you leave college! Luckyly, the research of 7EQ team (and of the NLP communicty in general) has proven that one kan keep improving. |
As by coincidence, the topic of emotional intelligence is "the study of what makes people successful". Goleman contributes success in life to one’s emotional intelligence, as opposed to the intelligence measured by the IQ tests. As NLPer, this rises an important question "How big is the difference with NLP?" Or, in other words, can NLP offer the answers to the issue brought to the public attention?
This article, rather than just reviewing Goleman’s book, aims to give you the "reframe"!
Goleman borrows Salovey’s definition of Emotional Intelligence. It consists of 5 elements: knowledge of your own emotions, regulating one’s emotions, self-motivation, recognizing one another’s emotions and the art of human relations. From the courses entitled "7 lessons in Emotional Intelligence", which I have been teaching for the last year, I’ll share my answer with you.
The knowledge of one’s own emotions, as well as the management of it, corresponds to the NLP concept of state management, combined with the principles of the Circle of Excellence. Indeed, in NLP courses students will learn the relationship between External Behavior, Internal Processing and Internal State. Using anchoring, association and dissociation as building blocks, we teach how to manage your state and how to use successful states from the past as resources.
Self-motivation is the result of several NLP models. Using Meta-programs and logical levels, we can show how people motivate themselves, and how compatible they are with their environment. For instance, an employee whose core beliefs are not shared within his company, will experience some friction, which will lead to the development of stress and to de-motivation, even if the person has a strong internal reference. The TOTE-model, in combination with well-formed outcomes are two other building blocks that lead to self-motivation for the realization of plans.
Recognizing emotions in another person can be learned be teaching people calibration. Rather than concluding that a certain body posture always has a certain meaning, we will try to find out which non-verbal signals correspond to a certain internal state in the person. A second element Goleman puts under this category is empathy, what we know as the second of the perceptual positions.
The perceptual positions and the meta-mirror technique in particular is a useful tool for gaining understanding of human relations. The principle of rapport and rapport building techniques help the NLP practitioner in improving his relationship with his environment.
Even if NLP offers a lot of answers, to my knowledge only Leslie Cameron-Bandler and Michael Lebeau made an attempt to deal explicitly with the topic. Their book "The Emotional Hostage" (1986) seems to be the book Goleman forget to read. My personal experience is that a person without previous knowledge of NLP can be taught NLP’s answer to Goleman’s book in about 24 course hours. We have the concepts available for teaching models, rather than just giving some tips and tricks as is done by books like "Executive EQ" (Cooper, 1997). Moreover, applying what we learned from NLP training will help us to get a high score in EQ-tests like to one Cooper presents.
I’ve also noticed that Emotional Intelligence is a powerful marketing instrument. It is a term that everybody understands and it becomes difficult to find people who haven’t heard of the book. This is the main merit of Goleman’s work. He succeeded in what NLPers haven’t been able to achieve over the last 25 years: explain to a broad audience that success requires more than classic IQ. It is up to the NLP community to take the challenge and bring out the word that we have the answer that Goleman fails to deliver.
© 1998 / Patrick E. Merlevede, M.Sc.
This review appeared in NLP WORLD, Volume 5, Issue 2 (July 1998)
Patrick E. Merlevede, M.Sc. is a free-lance NLP trainer specialized in emotional intelligence and a consultant in knowledge management (modeling). His upcoming book "7 lessons in Emotional Intelligence" still waits to be translated to English. He can be reached through Acknowledge CV, Bardelare 18, B-9971 Lembeke, Belgium, fax +32 (9) 378.48.88 and by e-mail at PatrickM@7eq.com.
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The
Emotional Hostage : Rescuing Your Emotional Life by Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Michael Lebeau |
Since I wrote this review, Goleman published a sequel: "Working with Emotional Intelligence"
- Return to the homepage of "7 lessons in Emotional Intelligence"
- Return to the homepage of "Merl's World on NLP"
- We also reviewed "Emotional Hostage" for you. Go to Merl's NLP Library
Page last modified on: 22 mrt 2001