Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

In fourth grade, it was Rebecca Lucken, Steven Sandness and Stacy Hill. Who amongst us would finish Mrs. Stoa’s math quiz first? It was always a race to see who would finish first. Fastest and most accurate…Then Mark Mazaheri shows up and drops into the accelerated reading class as we plowed through the color learning series. These classmates were considered to be smart – er. Most, if not all, of their parents were in academia associated with the local college. They had pedigree associated with high IQ. I was privileged to be associated with this group as we chased top of the class status on our way toward what we believed to be success by outperforming our gifted classmates.

From Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves write, “When emotional intelligence was first discovered, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the source of success-IQ. Scientists realized there must be another variable that explained success above and beyond one’s IQ, and years of research and countless studies pointed to emotional intelligence (EQ) as the critical factor.”

Greaves and Bradberry compile findings and research together to tell the comprehensive story of emotional intelligence today:
•The whole person is made up of IQ, EQ and personality but EQ is the only quantity that is flexible and able to change.
•To change or improve, one needs to understand the four basics; Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management.
•There is even an online test you can take to determine where you are today.

The book is filled with strategies in these four categories to improve your EQ.
-You can change
-You can increase your intelligence!
-Hey Ma! I’m (still) getting smarter.

Have a blessed weekend!