Emotional Smarts!: Redefining Personal and Professional Competence

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

June Donaldson has drafted a rather confusing system for coping with
change. This book is an outline of that system, with enough detail to
make it clear that there’s nothing new here.

The system and its title Emotional Smarts! seem to have been designed
for the corporate seminar market. A catchy title, a sprinkle of
pop-psych jargon, lists and sublists—it looks tight, but doesn’t go
anywhere. The structure describes being emotionally smart as depending
on four skills: awareness, behavior, contact, and decision-making
(conveniently A, B, C, D). Each of these has subcategories such as
self-actualization, stress management, creativity, and reality
testing—17 in total. The individual topics, or components, are basic
to most change management material. Yes, we need to manage our stress.
Yes, we need to be optimistic. Yes, we need to know that assertiveness
is not aggressiveness. But do we need the preachy tone and the
condescending illustrations? Donaldson is trying too hard to sell a
system that still needs a lot of work.