The Emotionally Intelligent Office
A book outlining 20 key emotional skills for the workplace created by The School of Life for Business.
Modern businesses place huge emphasis on technical training, yet a lot of what determines the success or failure of an organisation has nothing to do with the traditional 'hard' skills taught at business school, but rather the sophisticated 'soft' skills that are key to emotional maturity.
The Emotionally Intelligent Office introduces us to twenty core emotional skills that can help businesses and individuals to flourish. They range from giving and receiving honest feedback and accepting that it's OK to fail, to addressing jealousies and insecurities within teams. We learn about how our childhoods continue to have an often unhelpful impact on how we deal with colleagues and the best ways we might speak so that others will listen.
This book is informed by the practical work that the Business division of The School of Life carries out, endeavouring to change the culture within organisations around the world by teaching teams the art of emotional intelligence.
- On Charm - 'A central reason why salesmanship often goes wrong is due to a feeling that the only way to prove acceptable to a buyer is through exaggeration. In all acts of successful selling, what matters is an honest foregrounding of a thing's actual virtues, and a confidence that these will prove enough.'
- On Effectiveness - 'The potential of daydreaming isn't recognised by societies obsessed with superficial productivity. Nonetheless, some of our greatest insights come when we stop trying to be purposeful and instead respect the creative potential of reverie.'