Elizabeth A. Leib

By Elizabeth A. Leib

Since fall of 2008 I’ve been working as a Parent Liaison for Hillsborough County Schools. I was reminded recently in a meeting involving parents and school staff how important it use our emotional intelligence to create positive interpersonal relationships. Plenty of research about the way children learn supports the idea that social emotional skills facilitate learning. Teachers who attend to the emotional context of their students are more likely to be effective with a wide variety of kids – not just the “good” ones.

Being effective in working with people in any professional role has as much to do with subject matter proficiency as it does in something author Daniel Goleman calls “emotional intelligence”. In his book of the same name, he expands the traditional definition of intelligence based on narrowly defined IQ tests to include a new category marked by traits such as self-awareness, impulse control, persistence, self-motivation, empathy and social deftness.

Although much has happened in the fields of neurology and brain research since the book was published, its core insights remain relevant for anyone working with people. For anyone who cares about honing social emotional skills, I think you’ll find this book a valuable resource.