The Twelve Best Emotional Intelligence Books to Read This Year

If you are reading this, you are probably aware that emotional intelligence is a critical ability for not only effectively navigating life, but also being a positive influence on the world around us.

Check out some of these statistics:

• 90% of top performers at work have high emotional intelligence (TalentSmartEQ).
• Emotional intelligence accounts for nearly 90 percent of what moves people up the ladder when IQ and technical skills are roughly similar (Daniel Goleman).
• Over 10 years ago, it was found that highly emotionally intelligent people make $29,000 more per year than those lower in emotional intelligence. On average, every point increase in emotional intelligence adds $1,300 to an annual salary. (TalentSmartEQ; With inflation, these figures would be significantly higher today.)
• 75% of managers use emotional intelligence to gauge an employees’ readiness for promotion and eligibility for a raise (Lee Hecht Harrison Penna).

But, developing emotional intelligence is easier said than done.

One of the reasons why developing emotional intelligence is difficult is because it is not a Doing Side skill, it is a Being Side ability. Stated differently, our emotional intelligence abilities are directly regulated and controlled by our internal operating system (i.e., our Being Side), and if we want to elevate in our emotional intelligence, we need to upgrade our internal operating system. (For more on this, check out this article: Emotional Intelligence 3.0 – The Next Phase of EI Thought and Development.)

Yet, while developing emotional intelligence is not easy, it is possible.

In what follows, I want to share with you the 12 best emotional intelligence books for helping us upgrade our internal operating system for more elevated levels of emotional intelligence.

Books to Elevate Your Emotional Intelligence

The framework that I like best for defining emotional intelligence is below. It identifies that there are four factors of emotional intelligence:

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness
• Relationship Management

I am going to leverage this framework to identify the best books for developing in each of these four factors:

If you want to pick up any of these books, here they are:

Self Awareness

• Success Mindsets: Your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership by yours truly
• What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
• Now, Discover Your Strengths: The Revolutionary Gallup Program That Shows You How to Develop Your Unique Talents and Strengths by Gallup

Self Management

• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
• Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours by Shirzad Chamine

Social Awareness

• I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships by Michael Sorensen
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
• Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown

Relationship Management

• The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by The Arbinger Institute
• The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
• Lift: The Fundamental State of Leadership by Ryan Quinn

Comment below if there are any books that I have not included that you have found helpful for elevating your emotional intelligence.

Want to Elevate Your Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence

If you are interested in doing deep work to help the leaders in your organization elevate their emotional intelligence, let’s connect.