Blurb

USA Today Bestseller

In his sixth business book, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and investor Gary Vaynerchuk explores the twelve essential emotional skills that are integral to his life—and business—success and provides today’s (and tomorrow’s) leaders with critical tools to acquire and develop these traits.

For decades, leaders have relied on “hard” skills to make smart decisions, while dismissing the importance of emotional intelligence. Soft skills like self-awareness and curiosity aren’t quantifiable; they can’t be measured on a spreadsheet and aren’t taught in B-schools or emphasized in institutions. We’ve been taught that emotional intelligence is a “nice to have” in business, not a requirement. But soft skills can actually accelerate business success, Gary Vaynerchuk argues. For analytical minds, it’s challenging to understand how to get “better” at being self-aware, curious, or empathetic—or even why it’s important to try. 

In this wise and practical book, Gary explores the 12 human ingredients that have led to his success and happiness and provides exercises to help you develop these traits yourself. He also shares what the “half” is—that emotional ingredient of leadership he’s weakest at and makes the most effort to improve. Working through the ideas and exercises in the book, he teaches you how to discover your own “halves” and offers insight on how to strengthen them. 

Gary’s secret to success is using these twelve traits in varying mixtures, depending on the situation. But how do we know when to balance patience with ambition? Humility with conviction? Gary provides real-life examples involving common business scenarios to show you how to use them together for optimum results. 

This iconoclastic book will help you refine your ingredients and improve your leadership capabilities. When implemented in the proper situation, these ingredients can help leaders land promotions, retain core employees, move faster than competitors, win the loyalty of customers, and build successful organizations that last. 

Review

This was my first time reading this book, and yet it was not. See, this book has been written several times by several different people. This just happened to by Gary V’s book. It is basically “here is a list of universally agreed upon good traits, and here are some “real world” examples of how or when to use them. If you have read a dozen or more self-help books, you have read at least a couple different versions of this.

Still, even rehashed formats and redundancy in a library arsenal can serve as nourishment refresher. Think of it as a snack for life improvement. The little nuggets like remembering to ask yourself where you rank in the world. Out of 7.5 million people, how many have it worse than you (perspective). Little nuggets like reminding yourself to take the time to write down what you are grateful for, asking people how they stay optimistic, writing down things you are not good at but want to be, etc. Gary V did not invent these, but they still should be done, or updated, whenever possible.

I did really chuckle at one line and the real world disconnect where he basically said “Maybe you would be happier with your work-life balance if you did less and only made $150k instead of $400k.” Bitch please. Most of us out here bust our butts for less than half of that $150k.