We have long been taught that emotions should be felt and expressed in
carefully controlled ways, and then only in certain environments and at
certain times. This is especially true when at work, particularly when
managing others. It is considered terribly unprofessional to express
emotion while on the job, and many of us believe that our biggest
mistakes and regrets are due to our reactions at those times when our
emotions get the better of us. David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey believe
that this view of emotion is not correct. The emotion centers of the
brain, they argue, are not relegated to a secondary place in our
thinking and reasoning, but instead are an integral part of what it
means to think, reason, and to be intelligent. In The Emotionally Intelligent Manager,
they show that emotion is not just important, but absolutely necessary
for us to make good decisions, take action to solve problems, cope with
change, and succeed. The authors detail a practical four-part hierarchy
of emotional skills: identifying emotions, using emotions to facilitate
thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions—and show how we
can measure, learn, and develop each skill and employ them in an
integrated way to solve our most difficult work-related problems.