emotional intelligence

One of the things that happens as boys are growing up is they learn about a very restrictive version of masculinity, a list of things that you’re not allowed to do or say. Particularly around emotions: You’re allowed to be angry, and you might be able to cry if something’s really bad — like a sports team you’re on loses a really important game, or... See more

Harris says we need to dispel the myth that emotional intelligence is a soft skill, she says EQ is a strength because it takes strength to master oneself, and to humble yourself enough to see another person’s perspective.

Just get good at paying attention to bodily sensations. It might help to actually try saying things out loud, or writing them down, just going through a list of everything you notice about how your body feels right now. What you will tend to notice over time is that there are certain characteristic familiar patterns of how you are feeling.

When I train leaders in empathy, one of the first hurdles I need to get over is this stereotype that empathy is too soft and squishy for the work environment. It’s easy to debunk that. There are decades of evidence showing that empathy is a workplace superpower.

Employees who believe their organizations, and especially their managers, are empathic... See more

Let’s say someone has both a high-functioning theory of mind and an overflowing well of compassion. What then? Well, this is what Hoffman calls “empathic over-arousal.” A person will feel so worn down by the intensity of other people’s emotions that it wears them down — it turns their distress into my actual distress. This might not seem like a bad... See more