Building the Powerful Self builds Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a far potent predictor of job, educational, and personal success than IQ.  EQ is the ability to:

• Understand one's own emotions
• Regulate them for productive behaviour
• Muster high levels of motivation
• Understand the emotions of others.

EQ can be increased significantly through learning and acquiring skills.  The regular practice of the skills taught in Building the Powerful Self automatically increases emotional intelligence.

Teamwork, leadership,negotiation, success, and safety require regulation of resentment and anger.  Unregulated resentment and anger inevitably lead to sub-par performance, sandbagging, back-stabbing, subversion, power struggles, sabotage, and sometimes violence.

Basic Skills for Building the Powerful Self:

• Developing the Powerful Self
• The Laws of Power
• The Weak Modes of self
• The Power Modes of self
• Switching to Power Modes
• Staying in Power Modes
• Learning a skill to regulate anger and anxiety
• Creating and monitoring genuine self-esteem
• The power of responsibility v's the powerlessness of blame
• Immunity from put downs, sleights, racism, sexism
• Converting criticism into power, performance, and competence
• Solutions, solutions, solutions.

Building the Powerful Self need not replace current job training.  For optimal effect, the 18-hour program should occur prior to or in the beginning of existing training programs for best results.

The following "soft skills" have been identified as necessary for success on the job:

• Responsibility
• Sociability
• Self-management
• Integrity/honesty
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Self-worth
• Serves clients
• Works with diversity 

The dilemma is that the "soft skills" are not directly teachable.  They follow from emotional regulation skills, which allow workers to act in their long-term best interest.

Emotional regulation skills provide the ability to convert guilt, shame, and anxiety into interest and enhanced job performance, instead of resentment, anger, and boredom.  With emotional regulation mastered, the "soft skills" require little additional instruction.