Emotional Intelligence

I've been reading this book called Tunne älysi - Älyä tunteesi by Mikael Saarinen (2001). It's a guidebook to developing your own and your work place's emotional intelligence. 

I have always thought that I have a quite good level of emotional intelligence but the book revealed that there are 15(!) different contenents to emotional intelligence (such as optimism, independancy, empathy etc...)So I guess also I have some introspectation to do. ;)

According to the book emotional intelligence is far more important than "regular" intelligence. I couldn't agree more! To succeed in life you have to listen and think about others, be empathic, kind, fair and so on. Because karma's a b**ch.

Emotional intelligence is also very important in our SOS-Lapsikylä-project because you have to be able to work with different kind of people. And do I even need to say that in charity emotional intelligence has a high role.
 

A good point in the book was that why do we ask (for example) our colleagues "why do you look so sad?/what's the matter?" when they are upset - instead of asking "why do you look so happy?" when they are doing well? :)

 - Tiina