A full and inviting introduction to concept of emotional intelligence.
A comprehensive guide to the concept of “emotional intelligence.”
In this nonfiction work, the author, a clinical psychologist and founder of an international behavior analytics company, elaborates on the concept of “emotional intelligence” first popularized by Daniel Goleman in his 1995 bestseller of the same title. The term refers to a person’s emotional rather than intellectual acuity—the way, as Stein puts it, “some people who are so smart in some ways (who have book smarts) can be so dumb in other ways (lacking street smarts).” The author takes readers through the spectrum of emotions, from pleasure to shame to anxiety to anger, and throughout the book he employs the familiar format of the For Dummies book series: multiple short sections, bulleted points, highlighted insets, and a number of visual badges like “Remember,” “Activity,” and “Technical Stuff” (readers are repeatedly encouraged to track their development in a notebook). Every aspect of emotional life is covered, from family relationships to workplace dynamics. “Think of your relationship as a bank account,” Stein writes in his section on relationships. “The more goodwill you deposit, the higher your balance.” He frequently supplements his chapters with hypothetical scenarios dramatized like fiction, and his narrative voice is always clear and direct. Readers who’ve been familiar with the For Dummies series since its debut in 1991 will appreciate this pared-down straightforwardness. (“Anger is a hot emotion,” Stein writes in one passage, “it tends to burn out of control.”) Some of the author’s pop culture references are ill-considered, as when he writes, “Unless you’re Spock from Star Trek (and sometimes I have my doubts about him), somewhere within you, you have feelings” (the fact that Mr. Spock has repressed feelings is a defining quality of the character). Readers who reject the idea of emotional intelligence won’t be convinced here, but believers will find this a wonderfully inclusive overview.
A full and inviting introduction to concept of emotional intelligence.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781119988151
Page Count: 352
Publisher: For Dummies
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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