For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge of flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities...The low achievers found pleasure and flow in socializing, not in studying.

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

style leader circumstances

True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it.

Daniel Goleman

pain helping-others mean

If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.

Daniel Goleman

smart emotional self

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.

Daniel Goleman

our-world compassion self

Research shows that for jobs of all kinds, emotional intelligence is twice as important an ingredient of outstanding performance as cognitive ability and technical skill combined.

Daniel Goleman

emotional skills jobs

Empathic, emotionally intelligent work environments have a good track record of increasing creativity, improving problem solving and raising productivity.

Daniel Goleman

track creativity intelligent

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

optimistic succeed people

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

fighting broken people

Empathetic people are superb at recognizing and meeting the needs of clients, customers, or subordinates. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They listen carefully, picking up on what people are truly concerned about, and respond on the mark.

Daniel Goleman

empathy people needs

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

Daniel Goleman

tasks attention needs

Great leaders, the research shows, are made as they gradually acquire, in the course of their lives and careers, the competencies that make them so effective. The competencies can be learned by any leader, at any point.

Daniel Goleman

careers wisdom leadership

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

Daniel Goleman

incompatibility aspect successful

School success is not predicted by a child's fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.

Daniel Goleman

teacher children school

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.

Daniel Goleman

emotional self thinking

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention.

Daniel Goleman

empathy compassion simple

Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings. This is part of teaching emotional literacy - a set of skills we can all develop, including the ability to read, understand, and respond appropriately to one's own emotions and the emotions of others.

Daniel Goleman

emotional teaching teacher

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.

Daniel Goleman

empathy skills important

As much as 80% of adult "success" comes from EQ.

Daniel Goleman

adults leadership

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

Daniel Goleman

distraction focus way

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

Daniel Goleman

empathy emotional zero