Goleman Quotes & Sayings

Not that leaders need to be overly "nice"; the emotional art of leadership includes pressing the reality of work demands without unduly upsetting people. — Daniel Goleman

Whenever we feel stressed out, that's a signal that our brain is pumping out stress hormones. If sustained over months and years, those hormones can ruin our health and make us a nervous wreck. — Daniel Goleman

your personal strengths, as a leader? — Daniel Goleman

Comparing the three domains, I found that for jobs of all kinds, emotional competencies were twice as prevalent among distinguishing competencies as were technical skills and purely cognitive abilities combined. In general the higher a position in an organization, the more EI mattered: for individuals in leadership positions, 85 percent of their competencies were in the EI domain. — Daniel Goleman

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. — Daniel Goleman

Our journey begins in Part One with new discoveries about the brain's emotional architecture that offer an explanation of those most baffling moments in our lives when feeling overwhelms all rationality. Understanding the interplay of brain structures that rule our moments of rage and fear - or passion and joy - reveals — Daniel Goleman

We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. — Daniel Goleman

Research by Harvard's Howard Gardner, Stanford's William Damon, and Claremont's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi zeroed in on what they call "good work," a potent mix of what people are excellent at, what engages them, and their ethics - what they believe matters.18 — Daniel Goleman

A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"
His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence."
"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."
Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.
"And that,"said the monk "is heaven."
The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur. — Daniel Goleman

People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for the failure, ascribing it to some characteristic they are helpless to change. — Daniel Goleman

Making choices that improve things for all of us on the planet is an act of compassion, a simple act we can do any time we go shopping. — Daniel Goleman

Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels. — Daniel Goleman

The brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many of those who commit violence never learned these skills. If you know a young person who lacks them all, that's an important pre-incident indicator, and he needs help. — Gavin De Becker

The task of worrying is to come up with positive solutions for life's perils by anticipating dangers before they arise. If we are preoccupied by worries, we have that must less attention to expend on figuring out the answers. Our worries become self-fulfilling prophecies, propelling us toward the very disaster they predict. — Daniel Goleman

People learn what they want to learn. If learning is forced on us, even if we master it temporarily, it is soon forgotten. — Daniel Goleman

Character, writes Amitai Etzioni, the George Washington University social theorist, is "the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires."14 — Daniel Goleman

Gifted leadership occurs when heart and head
feeling and thought
meet. These are the two winds that allow a leader to soar. — Daniel Goleman

Emotional intelligence does not mean merely "being nice". At strategic moment it may demand not "being nice", but rather, for example, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfortable but consequential truth they've been avoiding. — Daniel Goleman

In the new workplace, with its emphasis on flexibility, teams and a strong customer orientation, this crucial set of emotional competencies is becoming increasingly essential for excellence in every job in every part of the world. — Daniel Goleman

Evolutionary theory holds that our ability to sense when we should be suspicious has been every bit as essential for human survival as our capacity for trust and cooperation. — Daniel Goleman

The book is a dialogue between The Dalai Lama and a group of scientists about how we can better handle our destructive emotions and how to overcome them. — Daniel Goleman

Simply paying attention allows us to build an emotional connection. Lacking attention, empathy hasn't a chance. — Daniel Goleman

No birthday, concert, hangout session, or party can be enjoyed without taking the time to distance yourself from what you are doing to make sure that those in your digital world know instantly how much fun you are having. — Daniel Goleman

I don't think focus is in itself ever a bad thing. But focus of the wrong kind, or managed poorly, can be. — Daniel Goleman

Remember, empathy need not lead to sympathetically giving in to the other side's demands - knowing how someone feels does not mean agreeing with them. — Daniel Goleman

Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are remarkably potent biologically, almost as powerful as those to our very survival. — Daniel Goleman

We learn best with focused attention. As we focus on what we're learning, the brain maps that information on what we already know making new neural connections — Daniel Goleman

The social brain is in its natural habitat when we're talking with someone face-to-face in real time. — Daniel Goleman

When it comes to exploring the mind in the framework of cognitive neuroscience, the maximal yield of data comes from integrating what a person experiences - the first person - with what the measurements show - the third person. — Daniel Goleman

Just seeing someone express an emotion can evoke that mood, whether you realize you mimic the facial expression or not. This happens to us all the time - there's a dance, a synchrony, a transmission of emotions. This mood synchrony determines whether you feel an interaction went well or not." The — Daniel Goleman

Leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways. — Daniel Goleman

Daydreaming defeats practice; those of us who browse TV while working out will never reach the top ranks. Paying full attention seems to boost the mind's processing speed, strengthen synaptic connections, and expand or create neural networks for what we are practicing. — Daniel Goleman

However, I began meditating at about that time and have continued on and off over the years. — Daniel Goleman

Well, any effort to maximize your potential and ability is a good thing. — Daniel Goleman

Women, on average, tend to be more aware of their emotions, show more empathy, and are more adept interpersonally. Men on the other hand, are more self-confident and optimistic, adapt more easily, and handle stress better. — Daniel Goleman

The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness. — Daniel Goleman

Although traditional incentives such as bonuses or recognition can prod people to better performance, no external motivators can get people to perform at their absolute best ... Wherever people gravitate within their work roles, indicates where their real pleasure lies - and that pleasure is itself motivating. — Daniel Goleman

The best leaders don't know just one style of leadership - they're skilled at several, and have the flexibility to switch between styles as the circumstances dictate. — Daniel Goleman

The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing. — Daniel Goleman

One aspect of a successful relationship is not just how compatible you are, but how you deal with your incompatibility. — Daniel Goleman

As a freshman in college, I was having a lot of trouble adjusting. I took a meditation class to handle anxiety. It really helped. Then as a grad student at Harvard, I was awarded a pre-doctoral traveling fellowship to India, where my focus was on the ancient systems of psychology and meditation practices of Asia. — Daniel Goleman

One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us. — Daniel Goleman

Once shoppers become empowered, we will facilitate industries thinking in completely new terms; for example, making products that are totally biodegradable. — Daniel Goleman

Emotional intelligence accounts for 80 percent of career success. — Daniel Goleman

Emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood. — Daniel Goleman

Every morning, I go off to a small studio behind my house to write. I try to ignore all email and phone calls until lunchtime. Then I launch into the sometimes frantic busy-ness of a tightly scheduled day. — Daniel Goleman

Want a happier, more content life? I highly recommend the down-to-earth methods you'll find in 'Mindfulness.' Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman have teamed up to give us scientifically grounded techniques we can apply in the midst of our everyday challenges and catastrophes. — Daniel Goleman

I would say that IQ is the strongest predictor of which field you can get into and hold a job in, whether you can be an accountant, lawyer or nurse, for example. — Daniel Goleman

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. — Daniel Goleman

Compassion begins with attention. — Daniel Goleman

When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills. — Daniel Goleman

The sweet spot for smart decisions, then, comes not just from being a domain expert, but also from having high self-awareness. — Daniel Goleman

Many people with IQs of 160 work for people with IQs of 100, if the former have poor intrapersonal intelligence and the latter have a high one. — Daniel Goleman

People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought. — Daniel Goleman

The worst period I ever went through at work," a friend confides, "was when the company was restructuring and people were being 'disappeared' daily, followed by lying memos that they were leaving 'for personal reasons.' No one could focus while that fear was in the air. No real work got done." Small wonder. The greater the anxiety we feel, the more impaired is the brain's cognitive efficiency. In this zone of mental misery, distracting thoughts hijack our attention and squeeze our cognitive resources. Because high anxiety shrinks the space available to our attention, it undermines our very capacity to take in new information, let alone generate fresh ideas. Near-panic is the enemy of learning and creativity. — Daniel Goleman

People's emotions are rarely put into words , far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels , tone of voice , gesture , facial expression and the like — Daniel Goleman

The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication. — Daniel Goleman

When the eyes of a woman that a man finds attractive look directly at him, his brain secretes the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine - but not when she looks elsewhere. — Daniel Goleman

The emotional brain is highly attuned to symbolic meanings and to the mode Freud called the 'primary process' - the messages of metaphor, story, myth, the arts. — Daniel Goleman

Tightly focused attention gets fatigued - much like an overworked muscle - when we push to the point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy. — Daniel Goleman

CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise - and fired for a lack of emotional intelligence. — Daniel Goleman

Albert Bandura, a Stanford psychologist who has done much of the research on self-efficacy, sums it up well: "People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong."24 — Daniel Goleman

Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership. — Daniel Goleman

the worry habit is reinforcing in the same sense that superstitions are. Since people worry about many things that have a very low probability of actually occurring - a loved one dying in a plane crash, going bankrupt, and the like - there is, to the primitive limbic brain at least, something magical about it. Like an amulet that wards off some anticipated evil, the worry psychologically gets the credit for preventing the danger it obsesses about. The — Daniel Goleman

Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it. — Daniel Goleman

It's the most important relationships in your life, the people you see day in and day out, that seem to be crucial for your health. And the more significant the relationship is in your life, the more it matters for your health.43 — Daniel Goleman

Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings - anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness - is a form of disease prevention. Since the data show that the toxicity of these emotions, when chronic, is on a par with smoking cigarettes, helping people handle them better could potentially have a medical payoff as great as getting heavy smokers to quit. — Daniel Goleman

While there I began to study the Asian religions as theories of mind. — Daniel Goleman

Emotions are contagious. We've all known it experientially. You know after you have a really fun coffee with a friend, you feel good. When you have a rude clerk in a store, you walk away feeling bad. — Daniel Goleman

Stress makes people stupid." On — Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman has proven that two-thirds of the success in business is based upon our Emotional Intelligence as opposed to our IQ or our level of experience. As we look for the next crop of future CEOs, maybe it's time for America's corporations to start interviewing grads from the psychology master's programs rather than the M.B.A. programs. — Chip Conley

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. — Daniel Goleman

But the rational mind usually doesn't decide what emotions we "should" have ! — Daniel Goleman

Attention is a little-noticed and underrated mental asset. — Daniel Goleman

Others point to data showing that even as toddlers, 40 percent of American two-year-olds watch TV for at least three hours a day - hours they are not interacting with people who can help them learn to get along better. The more TV they watch, the more unruly they are by school age. — Daniel Goleman

Once when I was about 13, in an angry fit, I walked out of the house vowing I would never return. It was a beautiful summer day, and I walked far along lovely lanes, till gradually the stillness and beauty calmed and soothed me, and after some hours I returned repentant and almost melted. Since then when I am angry, I do this if I can, and find it the best cure. — Daniel Goleman

Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics — Daniel Goleman

In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels — Daniel Goleman

The human brain is by no means fully formed at birth. It continues to shape itself through life, with the most intense growth occurring during childhood. — Daniel Goleman

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. — Daniel Goleman

Experience, particularly in childhood, sculpts the brain. The — Daniel Goleman

For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when emotions hold sway. — Daniel Goleman

Life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself. — Daniel Goleman

Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own. — Daniel Goleman

Scheduling down time as part of your routine is hard but worth it, personally, even professionally. — Daniel Goleman

Brain studies of mental workouts in which you sustain a single, chosen focus show that the more you detach from what's distracting you and refocus on what you should be paying attention to, the stronger this brain circuitry becomes. — Daniel Goleman

From the vantage point of the brain, doing well in school and at work involves one and the same state, the brain's sweet spot for performance. The biology of anxiety casts us out of that zone for excellence. "Banish fear" was a slogan of the late quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming. He saw that fear froze a workplace: workers were reluctant to speak up, to share new ideas, or to coordinate well, let alone to improve the quality of their output. The same slogan applies to the classroom - fear frazzles the mind, disrupting learning. — Daniel Goleman

It's not the chatter of people around us that is the most powerful distractor, but rather the chatter of our own minds. Utter concentration demands these inner voices be stilled. Start to subtract sevens successively from 100 and, if you keep your focus on the task, your chatter zone goes quiet. — Daniel Goleman

There is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy ... They're controlled by different parts of the brain. — Daniel Goleman

Rapport demands joint attention - mutual focus. Our need to make an effort to have such human moments has never been greater, given the ocean of distractions we all navigate daily. — Daniel Goleman

Power dynamic operates in emotional contagion, determining which person's brain will more forcefully draw the other into its emotional orbit. Mirror neurons are leadership tools: Emotions flow with special strength from the more socially dominant person to the less. One reason is that people in any group naturally pay more attention to and place more significance on what the most powerful person in that group says and does. That amplifies the force of whatever emotional message the leader may be sending, making her emotions particularly contagious. As I heard the head of a small organization say rather ruefully, When my mind is full of anger, other people catch it like the flu. — Daniel Goleman

Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, for our feelings and reactions
rationalizations
justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of our emotional memory. — Daniel Goleman

I think the smartest thing for people to do to manage very distressing emotions is to take a medication if it helps, but don't do only that. You also need to train your mind. — Daniel Goleman

She had moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, lured by a job with a publisher. But the publisher was bought by another soon after, and she was left without a job. Turning to freelance writing, an erratic marketplace, she found herself either swamped with work or unable to pay her rent. She often had to ration phone calls, and for the first time was without health insurance. This lack of coverage was particularly distressing: she found herself catastrophizing about her health, sure every headache signaled a brain tumor, picturing herself in an accident whenever she had to drive somewhere. She often found herself lost in a long reverie of worry, a medley of distress. But, she said, she found her worries almost addictive. Borkovec — Daniel Goleman

We do not compete in our careers with people who lack the requisite intelligence to enter and stay in our field - but rather against the much smaller group of those who have managed to jump the hurdles of schooling, entry exams, and other cognitive challenges to get into the field in the first place. — Daniel Goleman

Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That's why they look alike. — Daniel Goleman

Academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil - or opportunity - life's vicissitudes bring. — Daniel Goleman

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. — Daniel Goleman

The people we get along with, trust, feel simpatico with, are the strongest links in our networks — Daniel Goleman

We need to re-create boundaries. When you carry a digital gadget that creates a virtual link to the office, you need to create a virtual boundary that didn't exist before. — Daniel Goleman