Reading Room - May 2016

This month's reading room selections are about emotional intelligence, required for today's leaders. These two books provide actionable information for assessing and improving your own emotional intelligence. Enjoy.

On Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Business Review). The concept of emotional intelligence (EI or sometimes EQ) has been around for some time now. The term was originally coined in 1964 by Michael Beldoch, but it was popularized in 1995 in a book by Daniel Goleman. An article b Golman the first of 10 outstanding chapters on various facets of EI. As the cover touts, if you only buy one book on EI, this should be it. It covers the basics of EI as well as why leaders make bad decisions, why process fairness is important, and the importance of EI in building highly functional teams.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves). This is an excellent, quick read. If you're new to the topic of emotional intelligence and want to get up to speed in a weekend, pick up this book.