Book Review: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

ISBN: 0974320625
Published: June 16th, 2009
Publisher: TalentSmart
Read May 9th and 10th, 2014
Synopsis from Goodreads:

"Emotional Intelligence 2.0 succinctly explains how to deal with emotions creatively and employ our intelligence in a beneficial way."
--THE DALAI LAMA
For the first time ever in a book, TalentSmart's revolutionary program helps people identify their EQ skills, build these skills into strengths, and enjoy consistent performance in the pursuit of important life objectives. The book contains proven strategies from a decade-long effort to accurately measure and increase emotional intelligence. Trusted by upper-echelon leaders inside companies worldwide, these strategies will enable you to capitalize on the skills responsible for 58% of performance in all types of jobs.
Includes a passcode for online access to the world's bestselling emotional intelligence test, the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal®, which will show you where your EQ stands today and what you can do to begin maximizing it immediately.
Rooted in sound research involving more than 500,000 responses, this new edition of the test will:
--Pinpoint which of the book's 66 emotional intelligence strategies will increase your EQ the most.
--Reveal the specific behaviors responsible for your EQ scores.
--Allow you to test yourself a second time to measure how much your EQ has increased from your efforts.
The book's smooth narrative style turns rigorous research into memorable stories and practical strategies that anyone can use to his or her advantage.
With 90% of top performers high in EQ, and EQ twice as important as IQ in getting where you want to go in life, who can afford to ignore it?

Review:

This review is a bit hard to write as I don't really know how to judge this book. It's definitely easy to read, and it presents its information in an easy to understand way. It also does a very good job of explaining why emotional intelligence is so important and should be worked on.

The only downside to the book as far as I'm concerned is that its suggestions for improving your emotional intelligence were so broad that for many of them I didn't even know where to start. There were also so many suggestions that I didn't know where I should start from among them. I wish the suggestions had been a bit more straight-forward and more laid out because I just didn't know where I should begin. Also, I told myself I was going to choose one of the suggestions and start trying to apply it, but I've started that about five times now with no success. I just don't even think about it most of the time, and when I do, I don't actually feel like I'm doing anything that's making a difference.

Overall, I think this book is a good introduction to emotional intelligence and presents some great information. I just don't think it's going to actually help me improve my own emotional intelligence. Others may be able to get a lot more out of it.

I received this book for free through Goodread's First Reads.