Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman grew up in a Jewish household in Stockton, California, the son of Fay Goleman (née Weinberg; 1910–2010), professor of sociology at the University of the Pacific, and Irving Goleman (1898–1961), humanities professor at Stockton College (now San Joaquin Delta College).

His maternal uncle was nuclear physicist Alvin M. Weinberg.

Goleman attended Amherst College, graduating magna cum laude.

He also attended the University of California at Berkeley through Amherst's Independent Scholar program.

He went on to earn a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University.

Goleman studied in India using a pre-doctoral fellowship from Harvard and a post-doctoral grant from the Social Science Research Council.

While in India, he spent time with spiritual teacher Neem Karoli Baba, who was also the guru to Ram Dass, Krishna Das, and Larry Brilliant.

He wrote his first book based on travel in India and Sri Lanka.

Daniel Goleman (born March 7, 1946) is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist.

For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences.

Goleman then returned as a visiting lecturer to Harvard, where during the 1970s his course on the psychology of consciousness was popular.

In his first book, The Varieties of Meditative Experience (1977) (republished in 1988 as The Meditative Mind), Goleman describes almost a dozen different meditation systems.

He wrote that "the need for the meditator to retrain his attention, whether through concentration or mindfulness, is the single invariant ingredient in the recipe for altering consciousness of every meditation system".

Goleman has received many awards, including:

David McClelland, his mentor at Harvard, recommended him for a job at Psychology Today, from which he was recruited by The New York Times in 1984.

In 1993 Goleman co-founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at Yale University's Child Studies Center, which then moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) the organization's mission is to introduce social and emotional learning into the education of students from preschool to high school.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) entails the methods by which children and young adults develop and use the knowledge, attitudes, and abilities required to comprehend and regulate emotions, and accomplish constructive goals, empathize with others, form and sustain beneficial relationships, and make ethical choices.

His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times Best Seller list for a year and a half, a bestseller in many countries, and is 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, and the Dalai Lama's vision for the future.

While there, he wrote the internationally bestselling book Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1995), which spent more than a year and a half on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Goleman gained widespread recognition for his contributions to the field of emotional intelligence, a notion that includes the abilities of self-awareness, managing one's own emotions, empathy, and social skills – essentially, how effectively we manage our emotions and understand the emotions of others.

His book Emotional Intelligence has been translated into 40 languages globally, was celebrated by TIME magazine as one of the top 25 most pivotal books in the realm of business management.

Goleman also co-founded Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (CREIO) in 1996.

The organization is dedicated to enhancing the understanding and application of emotional and social intelligence within organizations by fostering the creation and sharing of knowledge.

Currently he co-directs the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University.

He is on the board of the Mind & Life Institute.

Goleman was a science journalist at the New York Times until 1996, covering psychology, emotions, and the brain.

He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his work at the Times.

In Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1998), Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as IQ for workplace success, and made a similar argument for leadership effectiveness in Primal Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 2001).

Goleman's most recent bestseller is Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Harper, 2013).

In Goleman's Book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Harper, 2013) he discusses the secret to success, and how mindfulness allows us to concentrate on what's important.

Goleman explains that high achievers of mindfulness have mastered a "triple-focus," which encompasses three distinct types of attention: "inner," "other," and "outer."

"Inner" focus is about self-awareness, "other" focus pertains to empathy, and "outer" focus involves an understanding of our surroundings.

Goleman emphasizes that for business leaders, the practice of mindfulness is especially critical.

The essence of leadership depends on the successful steering of the collective focus.

This requires not only monitoring external developments relative to the organization but also engaging and guiding the focus of individuals both within and beyond the company's boundaries.