EGO vs. EQ: How Top Business Leaders Beat 8 Ego Traps with Emotional Intelligence

by Jen Shirkani

In Ego vs. EQ, Jen Shirkani shares strategies for using emotional intelligence (EQ) as a primary prevention tool to avoid career derailment. The executive leadership failure rate is high: two in five CEO's fail in the first 18 months on the job and two thirds of business' will disappear just a decade after founding. This book teaches you how to identify the most common reasons for leadership ineffectiveness, including the cascading consequences they create, and learn tools to prevent them.

Drawing on real-life anecdotes from the author's 20-years of coaching and consulting, Ego vs. EQ provides research and case study examples in an easy to understand, practical format and is ideal for anyone currently in an executive leadership role, including business owners, or those wanting to become a dynamic future leader.

Gildan Media and Bibliomotion are proud to bring you another Bibliomotion Audiobook. Featuring exceptional content for today's listener, these notable audiobooks contain the essential tools that can be applied to every facet of your life.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Self Help

Audiobook

First published October 29, 2013

About the author

I am Jen Shirkani and my books are written to help you be more successful in life by leveraging the power of a behavioral science called emotional intelligence or EQ. Ego vs EQ is ideal for executive leaders or business owners who want to learn ways to increase their productivity, have more motivated employees and achieve success. Choose Resilience tells my story of struggle and provides tools to help you get out of your comfort zone to increase your stress tolerance, influence and happiness. Thank you for your interest in my content and I would love to hear from you.

Reviews

[Edival Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eu gostei do livro pois todos nós de uma forma ou de outra caímos em uma das armadilhas do Ego e assim ele vence a batalha sobre a inteligência emocional.
As oito armadilhas são: Ignorar Feedback que vc não gosta, Acreditar que o seu conhecimento técnico é mais relevante que sua liderança, cercar-se de cópias sua, não abrir mão do controle, ser cego pelo impacto que vc causa na organização, subestimar o quanto você é observado, perder contato com a linha de frente, retornando ao seu jeito antigo de ser.
Se você é líder e na tem problema com nenhuma dessas armadilhas não precisa ler mas se você for humano provavelmente tem problemas com algumas delas:).

[J. Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are several interesting points, but overall you will gain more knowledge about EQ if you read one of the standard books on it (e.g. by Goleman or Stein). It is way too verbose, but the "in a nutshell" summaries at the end of the chapters made up for it. I would recommend reading only those summaries!

[Will Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 8 ego traps are recognisable to everyone. I could either name me or someone else for all of them. In reality, we all have weaknesses that we exhibit to greater or lesser extents all the time. This book is about being self aware and then using that awareness to improve. I wish I could send these 8 ego traps to my company's board, but then, as the book states, truly honest feedback so often doesn't go up the ladder, exacerbating the ego traps.

[Steve Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Please note that my reviews aren't really review, they are more like my cliff notes that I take while reading books.

I didn't love this book. Perhaps if it was the first book on EQ I'd read, I would have but I felt like there was a lot of stuff I knew and she repeated things too many times which annoyed me, she repeated things too many times which annoyed me (see what I mean?). I did like that she used the same format for each chapter, so practicing things and creating a habit was easier.

3 components of EQ
Recognize - Know yourself - strengths, weakness, communication style, moods, and how people see you vs how you think they see you.
Reading situations accurately - connect to people from their perspective (empathy)
Responding - self control - choose appropriate response - adapt to others instead of one size fits all or making them adapt to you.
Impulsiveness, anger, etc. are all things to be aware of. ADAH folks are often entrepreneurs.

The 8 Ego Traps
1. Ignoring feedback you don't like (blow off the bad feedback as if it doesn't matter)
2. Believing your technical skills trump your leadership skills. (he's a jerk but is really good)
3. Surrounding yourself with more of you. (no diversity of backgrounds or thought)
4. Not letting go of control (microimaging)
5. Being blind to your downstream impact ( you skip levels and it affects them an their bosses and sends mixed messages)
6. Underestimating how much you are being watched (your mood, attitude, words, etc. Will be followed for better or worse)
7. Losing touch with the frontline experience. Think Undercover Boss - you underestimate how hard their jobs are or how much financial or work changes - example removing phones - can affect people very differently when you are in their shoes.
8. Relapsing back to your old ways - making changes to the above traps and then slipping back into old habits. The bad news about this one is if people saw that you could mend your ways and then you revert back to your old ways, they are less tolerant of your actions. Why? Because before perhaps you didn't know or couldn't help yourself. Now they know you know and can help yourself, but figure you don't care enough or don't think you are willing to work at it anymore.


Other tips
avoid being sensitive to feedback. Learn to think of it as a gift so that you can grow.

If you're not getting negative feedback, it may not be because you're awesome. Instead it may be a sign that they think you won't listen, or will react poorly, or will hold it against them, so they choose to say nothing.

We all have blind spots and need the help of others to see them

By avoiding the above ego traps, you benefit in many ways like:
more free time instead of micromanaging and providing growth opportunities for you team and yourself
More diverse points of view, perspective, and sources of input
Increased humility and vulnerability

[Susannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure if you need an entire book to tell you that you should be outwardly minded in leadership and not a selfish bastage. Then again the Arbinger Institute has a whole series of videos and seminars on that topic, and yet thousands of people still flock to consume their content!

[Michelle Sauvageau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good nuggets and general reminders to think about for leading people, teams, and businesses. This was really written to and for executives, so there was less tangible details written for me as a middle manager, but all of these ego traps can happen to anyone and are good to have top of mind.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought provoking and a good reminder to avoid these ego traps. The anecdotes were the best part. Some of these were common sense though.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Shirkani identifies her target audience as the denizens of the C-suite, I found this book to be remarkably applicable to knowledge workers in general. Any occupation that entails cognitive expertise coupled with teamwork will doubtless experience the clash of ego versus EQ.

While I found found many other books on emotional intelligence (EQ) to be superficial, Shirkani uses the conflict with ego to plumb the depths of the topic. Each chapter pits a particular "danger" of ego against a "remedy" grounded in the development of emotional intelligence. I appreciate her insightful and coaxing strategies for developing emotional intelligence through a combination of self-reflection and external guardrails.

[Jim Serger · Rating 5 out of 5]

EGO vs EQ--or I am better than vs emotional intelligence. The author Jen Shirkani did a great justice to what it takes to lead. She looks into EGO and sheds light on a good EGO vs a mislead EGO. EQ on the other hand is emotional intelligence- it is understanding what we need to do when leading vs how we think we should lead. Her 8 EGO traps are seen as a guide to open our minds into the category of leading others--we must show the way, lead the way, be part of the way, and have understanding of the way. But to do those, we as the leader have to be a part of the EQ--emotional intelligence. That means we engage others, we say hi, we speak, we listen and we continue everyday to be seen part of the tribe and not just in charge. Great book and well received.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a really good read and some of my leadership should really read this book. My only hiccup would be how repetitive it would feel at times. Overall I'd recommend it to everyone and already have started spreading the word about it.

[Sam Schreiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good check up for any leader. I have to wonder how King David would have scored on this and how many of these were parts of his blind spots later in his reign. Maybe a sermon series some day....

[Kcthinker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want my employers to read this book.