Emotional Intelligence for Everyone Else

Some are born emotionally intelligent. These lucky few possess an intuitive emotional quotient (“EQ”). It’s like they speak a secret language wordlessly from birth. 

For everybody else: Welcome, please have a seat! 

You’ve come here to increase your EQ after painful or disappointing encounters and perhaps two or more divorces. You may have been advised of an EQ deficiency by a manager. A colleague may have politely suggested you’re a bit difficult to work with.

Has any evidence cropped up in other aspects of your emotional life? Has a romantic partner or family member alerted you to the need to polish your emotional skill set?

Even after years of therapy, are you still feeling a little rough around the edges? None of that matters now, my friend. If your heart is open, even if it’s a little broken, you’ve come to the right place. 

Join me on this journey as we learn about how relationships and feelings affect us in our work and empower us in our careers. Come with me as we grow more emotionally intelligent together. 

What Are People Saying?

"Matthew is fiercely loyal, just, and kind. To work with him is to know your worth." --Samantha

"Matthew helped me achieve my goal of getting hired faster than I expected." --Marie

"All that [paid] content is career-changing. So, so glad you came across my LinkedIn home page. :) ...have never read such useful and immediately applicable content." --Amy

What Can EQ Do For You?

• Supports resilient teams
• Stronger relationships
• Predicts job performance
• Resolves interpersonal conflicts
• Supports DEI and understanding 
• Eases remote/global collaboration 

This book is 50+ pages long, more than 14,000 words. It's been read thousands of times by my LinkedIn and Substack readers as I've serialized the material over the past several months. I've since revised, expanded and enhanced the material after tons of praise and terrific feedback from that community.

It's now packed with more content, new exercises, more diagrams, and additional action items to help you develop your own EQ skills and vocabulary. It's even more effective at helping you hone and practice your capacity for emotional intelligence at work.

Whether you're a leader, a worker, a collaborator, or someone looking to level up at work, this will prepare you to become a more thoughtful and sensitive person.

Here are the four chapters of the text:

• Self-awareness: Be aware of your emotions. Regulate your reactions to stressful situations. Be aware of patterns of behavior, and interrupt them when necessary. Understand your need for recognition, and inventory your capabilities and opportunities to improve.
• Empathy: Understand the feelings and experiences of others before making decisions that affect them. Adopt the perspective of your team members or collaborators. Ask questions to gain understanding about the experiences of others before you act or react. 
• Respect: Leaders show respect by prioritizing worker safety. Understand workers’ need for emotional safety by ensuring their dignity is preserved at all times. This includes difficult conversations such as criticism or termination. The respect that leaders are shown flows from the respect they show to their workers, the consistency of their behavior, and the elevation of professionalism in their style and tone.
• Compassion: A compassionate person puts their empathy and respect to work. They use their understanding of somebody’s needs to get off their butt and help out. Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga describes a Decency Quotient (“DQ”) as the genuine desire to do the right thing for employees and customers. Compassionate leaders put down the tissues and make decisions or take action to help out those who need it.

Part 4, Compassion, contains special sections related to working with chronically ill, people of color, and LGBTQIA communities. I do not speak for those communities. It's always best to gain perspective directly from people who represent marginalized communities whenever possible.