FIRO-B
Developed by William Schutz in 1958, Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation - Behaviour (FIRO-B) is a theory of interpersonal relations. The basis of his theory (and in line with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) was that beyond our bees for survival, food, shelter and warmth; we have interpersonal needs that strongly motivate us. He called these needs in terms of behaviours: Inclusion, Control and Affection. We both Express these behaviours to others and Want these behaviours from others to different levels. Because these are needs, they motivate us to act in certain ways until these needs are met. more....
MBTI
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then the Myers Briggs Type Indicator has been greatly flattered. I suppose in developing it Briggs & Myers were in turn flattering Carl Jung and the original work it was derived from. I love the MBTI (for a comprehensive description check the wiki) and am aware of other tools that have built on the same principles that people argue are better/simpler/easier but you can't train in all of them and a comprehensive knowledge of one is better than a shallow knowledge of many. I find it a fantastic development tool that helps people to not only develop much better self awareness from which they can make better choices, it really helps people to appreciate the differences in others for what they are, differences and not faults. For more on this fantastic tool click here
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of EI here. Daniel Goleman has published many books on the subject thought his original work, Emotional intelligence, is a bit dry and I prefer his books written with co-authors, particularly Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence
which is a must.
The key argument is that only about one-third of
performance is due to technical skill and cognitive
ability while two-thirds is due to emotional
competence (Goleman, 1998). (In top leadership
positions, over four-fifths of the difference is due
to emotional competence.) more....