Optimal
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  • Published: 23 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241609033
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $36.99

Optimal

How to Sustain Excellence Every Day

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
23 Jan 2024
EBook
11 Jan 2024
Audiobook
11 Jan 2024
Hardback
11 Feb 2024
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Bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman & Cary Cherniss reveal practical methods for applying the principles of EI to more readily enter an optimal state of high performance and satisfaction, offering a roadmap to being at your best, every day.

There are moments when we achieve peak performance: an athlete plays a perfect game; a business has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. But these moments are often fleeting, and for every amazing day, we may have a hundred ordinary and even unsatisfying ones. Fulfillment doesn’t come from isolated peak experiences, or elusive ‘flow’ states, but rather from many consistent good days. So how do we sustain performance, while avoiding burnout and maintaining balance?

In Optimal, Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss reveal how emotional intelligence can help us have a great day, any day. They explain how to set a realistic, attainable goal of feeling satisfied that you’ve had a productive day — to consistently work at your ‘optimal’ level. Based on research of how hundreds of people build the inner architecture of having a good day, they sketch what an optimal state feels like, and show how emotional intelligence holds the key to our best performance.

Optimal is the culmination of decades of scientific discoveries bearing on emotional intelligence. Enhanced emotional intelligence pays off in improved engagement, productivity and more satisfying days. In this book, you’ll find the keys to competence in emotional intelligence, and practical methods for applying this skill set more readily. It will equip you to become a highly effective leader and enable you to build an organizational culture that empowers workers to sustain high performance.
  • Published: 23 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241609033
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $36.99
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About the authors

Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence. He received his PhD from Harvard and reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for the New York Times for twelve years. He was awarded the American Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist and journalist. He is a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Centre (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago), co-chairman of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, and a member of the board of directors of the Mind & Life Institute. His book Emotional Intelligence was on the New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half, with nearly 6,000,000 copies in print worldwide in thirty languages.

Praise for Optimal

In the age of AI and machine intelligence, emotional intelligence is more important than ever for building a company culture that brings out the best in people and drives success. Anyone leading a team or organization should read Optimal—it will open your mind and show you the inner balance and skill set that we all need to face the future.

MARC BENIOFF, chair and CEO, Salesforce

No one has done more to help us understand the applications of emotional intelligence than Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss. In Optimal, they provide a lively overview of how to use emotional intelligence to optimize the performance of individuals, teams, and entire organizations, synthesizing more than three decades of findings. This book deserves to be studied by managers, coaches, therapists, affective scientists, and many others.

PETER SALOVEY, Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology and university president, Yale University

Powerful and deeply researched, Optimal offers actionable tools and insights that are essential to unlocking your potential, achieving stable success over time, building high-performing teams, and cultivating the most important leadership quality of all, emotional intelligence. From now on when I see a copy of this outstanding book on someone’s desk, their stock will have risen in my eyes.

OSCAR MUNOZ, former CEO, United Airlines, and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Turnaround Time

Optimal describes how emotional intelligence, a strong sense of purpose, innovation, and systems thinking bring us to an optimal state, necessary to address our personal, organizational, and global challenges—essential wisdom for our times.

JONATHAN ROSE, CEO, Rose Companies

Optimal offers a masterclass in emotional intelligence and sustainable high performance. Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss skillfully combine cutting-edge research, engaging examples, and practical insights that are both illuminating and actionable. Their expertise has been invaluable in helping us develop emotionally intelligent and EPIC leaders at Amazon—ones who lead with empathy, purpose, inspiration, and connection. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to enhance their leadership skills, relationships, and overall success—both professionally and personally.

RICH HUA, worldwide head of EPIC Leadership, Amazon Web Services