Customizing My
Emotional Spin Cycle:
Instructions
for this report: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy15/g15report1.html
Class link : www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy15/g15classhome.html
This book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Coleman, is a very informational book about emotional intelligence. The part that I liked and learned the most from this book was the section on people skills. I thought that communication, leadership, and collaboration with others were the three main points for acquiring people skills. These types of concepts are not embedded into us, it is obtained through time and practice. For example, someone might have a gift of drama. Meaning, they are not scared of going in front of an audience and speaking. But to be a good communicator, you have to have confidence, be organized, have facial expressions and gestures, and have a bright voice. With practice, this person will gain more confidence, organization, better facial expressions and gestures, and have a brighter voice. This is how you can distinguish a good communicator from one that needs more practice. Having good communication skills then can make you a better leader.
“The artful leader is attuned to the subtle undercurrents of emotion that pervade a group, and can read the impact of her own actions on those currents. One-way leaders establish their credibility is by sensing these collective, unspoken feelings, and articulating them for the group, or acting in a way that tacitly shows they are understood. In this sense, the leader is a mirror, reflecting back to the group its own experience.” (Coleman, 185). An effective leader is one that is warm, outgoing, emotionally expressive, democratic, and trusting. Leaders, then down the ranks, will see the type of effective leader you are and the rippling effect will occur. By contrast, less effective leaders were harsher and more disapproving, legalistic and uncooperative, distant and irritable. And so their subordinates were also like that. But to be an effective leader, you have to be tough. Someone has to tell people what to do, hold people to their obligations, and be explicit about the consequences. Consequence building, persuasion, and all the other arts of influence do not always do the job. Sometimes it comes down to simply using the power of one’s position to get other people to act.
Leaders must be clear and firm if they want to be better leaders. If they are not clear and firm, then workers don’t know what’s expected of them. One sign of an assertive leader is the ability to say “no,” firmly and definitively. Another is to set an expectation of high standards for performance of quality and insist people meet them, even publicly monitoring performance, if necessary. An example of a tough-effective leader is someone that calls for a meeting at 7:00 p.m. However, his/her colleagues came in a few minutes late. The leader was not happy because the meeting was at 7:00 pm, not 7:05 pm, so he cancelled the meeting and rescheduled. Then he told his workers he can’t accept this behavior and next time they better be on a time and prepared, or there’ll be hell to pay.
These issues of communication and leadership are relevant in today’s society like the whole terrorist attacks and now the treat of Anthrax. Osama Bin Laden has great communication and leadership skills, because he can get so many people to follow his beliefs and thoughts. However, they are all for the wrong reasons, that is from an Americans point of view. Now more than ever, must our president, George W. Bush must be an effective leader and communicator. If he does not, then America will panic and there will be total chaos and disorder. But our president has dealt with this horrific attack well and has made some crucial decisions. We will see if his decision to bomb Afghanistan was the right one. The after effect of this attack has unified America, which can only help everyone recover.
Collaboration with others will help you survive in society. To be cohesive with others, you can’t be selfish and obnoxious. You need to be polite and civilized. If people can work together, they will get things done more efficiently and have bigger and better ideas than the individual. Statistics have shown that group work by far exceeds individual work. For example, Robert Kelley of Carnegie-Mellon University has been asking people working at a wide variety of companies the same question for many years. What percentage of the knowledge do you need to do your job is stored in your own mind? The answer, in 1986 it was 75%. But in 1997, the percentage slid down to 15%-20%. No doubt this reflects the explosive growth of information.
This would be a good statistic for every teacher out there to understand because then they could give us collaborative exams. We do get group presentations and projects, which does reflect the group’s intellectual capacity. However, collaborative group test taking isn’t showing isn’t showing the individual students knowledge of the topic which would be against school policy. Although, it would relive a lot of stress and anxiety which almost all students have if the curriculum was switched to collaborative learning.
This book also focuses on the psychology of the brain too much. It could have been better if the author didn’t emphasis everything with the brain. But I thought the strength of the book were the sections of the emotionally intelligent organization and people skills. We need to learn both of these concepts to survive in this cruel world because if you are not prepared when you get into the real world, you will be considered weak and the weak does not survive.
At www.amazon.com, there were some people who didn’t like the book because it was all anecdotes, with very little advice. This reviewer said, “Like many reviewers before me, I bought this book thinking that it will suggest ways one can go about improving one’s emotional intelligence. However, what I ended up getting is endless anecdotes.” But the majority of the reviews were pretty good (four to five stars out of a possible five stars) and people liked what the book had to offer about emotional intelligence.
In conclusion, this is a great book with lots of information that can help you through your life. Everyone, ranging from children to elders should read this book because it can’t hurt you to broaden your vision. If children read this book, they will grasp information that will definitely help them get a job, meet new people, and succeed in life, as they get older. Not necessarily saying if you read this book that will happen. However, your chances of getting ahead in life are greater than the child who doesn’t read this book.