Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is the psychologist and science journalist who brought emotional intelligence into mainstream business language. His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list and is in print in forty languages, and the vocabulary it introduced, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skill, is now standard in leadership development worldwide.

He holds a doctorate in psychology from Harvard, where his research examined consciousness and contemplative practice. He then spent twelve years writing for The New York Times on the brain and behavioral sciences, and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for that work. The combination is unusual and it is why the material travels: he is a researcher who spent over a decade learning to explain research to non-specialists.

The Wall Street Journal has ranked him among the ten most influential business thinkers. He co-directs the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University and serves on the board of the Mind and Life Institute, so his stage material is connected to ongoing research rather than resting on a book published three decades ago.

His central claim for business audiences is a measurable one. Technical skill and cognitive ability are threshold requirements that get a person hired, but what separates strong performers from average ones at senior levels is disproportionately emotional and social competence. That framing is what moved emotional intelligence out of soft-skills training and into succession planning and executive assessment.

He speaks to organizations of every size and to university audiences on how social and emotional competencies affect professional performance, results, and personal satisfaction. Sessions are frequently booked for leadership development programs and executive education, where the audience is being assessed on precisely the competencies he studies.