New year. New book. New research on Emotional Intelligence.

Every month, I share matters close to my heart, stimulating ideas, and some useful tips and leads. This month, I announce the arrival of my newest book on emotional intelligence.

Optimal Is Ready for Purchase

Today – January 9th – my new book “OPTIMAL: HOW TO SUSTAIN PERSONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE" – is available. My co-author, Cary Cherniss and I were co-chairs of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations . For this book, we have harvested mounds of data.

To give you a taste of new ideas and key points, here are quick summaries. You can learn more about any of these topics in the book. For now, here’s the overview:

• Recipe for a satisfying work day. It's better to have a steady series of “good days” - days where we do our best; are more productive, committed and engaged; feel good and enjoy our work; and connect with those around us. This is a far better goal than trying to perpetually get into “flow” or trying to match that one time we outdid ourselves.? The optimal state underlying a good day, compared to flow, is more realistically attainable – for instance by paying full attention to what we are doing rather than getting lost in distractions.
• The key to a good day. Emotional intelligence – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness or empathy, and relationship management or social skills – creates the inner conditions for an optimal day. Organizations measure ‘optimal’ through a lens that matters for a company: engagement, satisfaction, lower turnover, helping out beyond your specific role. ‘Optimal’ for the person means having a good day; for an organization it means doing well on measures like performance and engagement.
• IQ and EI. ‘Emotional intelligence’ (or EI) refers to a skill set different from, but complementary to, IQ. There are many models of emotional intelligence. We use the one developed by me and Richard Boyatzis , which highlights the competencies seen in star performers.
• Avoid Burnout. Constant stress without time for recovery leads to emotional exhaustion and eventually, burnout. There are two main strategies here: one would have you lessen the pressures that create the stress in the first place while the other is to boost your stress resilience by scheduling a daily time for an activity that helps recovery.
• EI is everywhere. Emotional intelligence has become part of the DNA of many organizations, most evident in the language used in their culture. The most effective leaders, team members, and workers are high in emotional intelligence.
• How to be an EI Leader. An emotionally intelligent leader knows how and why he or she feels, and manages those feelings effectively. Such a leader is empathic in every sense, and so can inspire and persuade direct reports as well as help them develop their own strengths as future leaders.??
• Why EI makes teams outstanding. Star teams display EI at the group level, visible in the norms for how the members relate to each other and to other groups that matter to them.? For instance, everyone on the team has a sense of belonging there, and they all feel comfortable being candid with one another.
• How to make your organization more emotionally intelligent. EI can best penetrate an organization if there is a high-profile champion, if performance reviews assess this dimension (not just your numbers, but how you get the numbers), and offer effective development programs in this skill set.
• The Future of EI. To best engage whatever the future brings, we will need emotional intelligence and cognitive abilities (of course), as well as creativity and innovation, and a meaningful sense of purpose. Plus, we’ll need to understand the systems that we need to change for the better.

Onward...

Today, at 1:30pm EST, Cary and I will be offering a live reading and Q&A session on the book.

You'll learn a practical method for applying emotional intelligence (EI) to more readily enter an optimal state of high performance and satisfaction — while avoiding burnout. And discover best practice insights on how EI can help us have a great day, any day.

Register here.

And if you can't make it live, register anyways and we will be sure to send you the recording!

Also...

Watch for short videos where we share content from the book.

Over the week, we will be dropping a series of short videos on LinkedIn in which I will share content from the new book. In case you missed it, here is the first one we published last week.

And...

Keep Your Eyes + Ears Open for Upcoming Podcasts

In the coming weeks, a series of podcast interviews will be released in which I discuss Optimal and the research and insights Cary and I arrived at during its writing. Among the many podcasts I will be appearing on, one to keep an eye out for is my interview with Dan Harris on the Happier Podcast. Dan and I are old friends and long-time colleagues. This will prove to be a good conversation full of rapport and shared interest!

Meanwhile, you can tune in now to my conversation with William Green on the Richer, Wiser, Happier Podcast now.

To close...

Leaders – or anyone else – can sharpen their emotional intelligence competencies by enrolling in the next round of the online Daniel Goleman EI Courses , which begins January 22, 2024. Sign up now if you want to be a part of the next cohort!