4S Model: Surroundings

“No man is an island.”  This is the first line of John Donne’s famous poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” written back in 1624 as part of his private notes, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

Also popular in corporate circles is the story of a butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane:  a small event far away that creates a large impact.  While some of the nuance is usually lost, the point remains that we can be affected by events outside ourselves.

Surroundings are important, as they determine in large part what the effect will be of actions we take.  The better we know our surroundings, the more effective we can be.

View&Stew: it's all about EQ

Emotional Intelligence is Cool

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist by trade. He's also a bestselling author, sometimes Harvard professor, and even wrote for the New York Times for a while. For the past decade and a half, his focus has been on intelligences beyond the standard measure of IQ, “intelligence quotient.”