I am currently reading a book by Daniel Goleman titled ' Emotional Intelligence and working with Emotional Intelligence' which I picked up on my regular trip to the local Crossword stores. In hindsight I must say it was a good pick going by the few chapters that I have been able to read through... Few pages inside and I am totally hooked...
This book has a unique approach to it all and varies a lot from run of the mill books of this genre which tries to utilise mere motivational techinques in underlying the value of EQ over IQ... But this book is all different in its approach as it goes on to explain the scientific credibility of such a 'qualitative' aspect of human behaviour and attitude as EQ...
Till date, the book goes on to argue, much emphasis was given to the Intelligence level of a person (which is again measured by the well founded and proved IQ score) and people generally scoring high on the IQ scale found favour among job givers.. However, it was seen, and no wonder all of us have also seen it happen, that the most intelligent people are not the most capable or for that matter the one with qualities required to be able to work in a team and make things happen... hence to the frustration of top management these so called bright people floundered in their jobs while relatively 'mediocre' people excelled in being able to achieve success through mere Patience, hard work and team building effort... The author underlined the abilities of these people in having more of EQ than IQ which helped them survive tough situation and circumstances and come out right on top...
The author goes on to cite studies and real life incidence on how if a person is low on EQ, simple circumstances can hijack the advantage from his/her side... It goes on to explain that through evolution the development of the brain has been a 'bottom up' process i.e the spinal cord first developed, then the base of the brain and then the body of the brain and so on... primitive brain in lower animals down the phylum in the animal kingdom has shown much of the sensory and motor function being done by the spinal cord and a very primitive brain.. The author argues, based on scientific evidence, that the lower part or the base of our brain resembles close to that found in these group of animals... and rightly so, as the brain stem is, as we were taught in the med school, called medulla oblongota which was kown as the 'love centre' of the brain which processed emotional responses in man.. as these centres, like in lower animals, are attuned to either fight or take flight, on any sudden confrontation or situation, the first thing they do is to put up a fight or flee the situation.. this even before the rational brain (the centre of which is situated in the main body of the brain) has time to rationalise and take an appropriate response.. later when the person realises his/her response triggered by the 'love centre', it is too late to make amends...
It may have sounded a bit jargon ridden in the previous paragraph, but simply put it means that any response to man is first scanned by a centre which takes impulsive and irrational decision which if given some time will be processed through the rational centre and result in a more proper response...
The book also says that sometimes people find themselves in fits of anger in a given situation, where their previous experience combined with the immediacy for action, sends an emergency signal to the rational brain to stop all rationalisation and summon all energy to tackle the impending 'obstacle/danger' in hand.. at those time the rational centre in the brain also loses the ability to 'rationalise' as a state of 'emergency' has already been declared and it is 'forced' to sign up...
It is such an absorbing read that even after 9 hrs of office and 1 hr of working out at the gym, I still take some time out to read it every night...
Will keep you updated about the battle between the E.Q and I.Q... :-)
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