Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman
Daniel Golemanis an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half, and a best-seller in many countries, in print worldwide in 40 languages. Apart from his books on emotional intelligence, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the ecological crisis,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth7 March 1946
CountryUnited States of America
IQ and technical skills are important, but Emotional Intelligence is the Sine Qua Non of Leadership.
Emotional self-control is NOT the same as overcontrol, the stifling of all feeling and spontaneity....when such emotional suppression is chronic, it can impair thinking, hamper intellectual performance and interfere with smooth social interaction. By contrast, emotional competence implies we have a choice as to how we express our feelings.
Life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself.
Overloading attention shrinks mental control. Life immersed in digital distractions creates a near constant cognitive overload. And that overload wears out self-control.
Our brain comes hard-wired with an urge to play, one that hurls us into sociability. A child's play both demands and creates its own safe space, one in which she can confront threats, fears, and dangers, but always come through whole. Play offers a child a natural way to manage feared separations or abandonment, rendering them instead opportunities for mastery and self-discovery.
When the darkness is seen as a necessary prelude to the creative light, one is less likely to ascribe frustration to personal inadequacy or label it as bad.
A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.
Attention is a little-noticed and underrated mental asset.
For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when emotions hold sway.
CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise - and fired for a lack of emotional intelligence.
Motivation aside, if people get better at these life skills, everyone benefits: The brain doesn't distinguish between being a more empathic manager and a more empathic father.
There is a newly coined word in the English language for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist. The word is 'pizzled': it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off.
But once you are in that field, emotional intelligence emerges as a much stronger predictor of who will be most successful, because it is how we handle ourselves in our relationships that determines how well we do once we are in a given job.
In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.