Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence: Best Practices, Case Studies, and Strategies

Chapter 4. When Enhanced EI is Associated with Leadership Derailment

Howard Book

Emotional intelligence (EI) is not a new concept, and its beginnings can be traced back as far as Marcus Aurelius' second-century text, Meditations. If we fast-forward to the last half of the 19th century, what we currently view as EI was the mainstream of numerous writings such as Emerson's Self Reliance (1841), Thoreau's Walden (1854), and Smiles' Self Help (1859), all of which continue to sell briskly even today. If we limit our view to books written between 1900 and 1964, we witness the publication of immensely successful books that, without using the term EI, also deal with this concept: Shinn's, the still popular, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), ...