Sensitive people get a bad rap. Research suggests that genes are responsible for the 15-20% of people who qualify as “highly sensitive.” Psychologist Elain Aron has studied this phenomenon extensively, and using MRI scans of highly sensitive people’s brains, she’s found that they experience sounds, feelings, and even the presence of other people much more intensely than the average person.

The 8-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

Mindfulness is an increasingly popular notion in the workplace, with companies such as Apple, Yahoo, Starbucks, and Google using it to their benefit. Google, for example, offers employees a 19-hour course on the subject, which is so popular that thousands of Googlers take it each year.

When it comes to communication, we all tend to think we’re pretty good at it. Truth is, even those of us who are good communicators aren’t nearly as good as we think we are. This overestimation of our ability to communicate is magnified when interacting with people we know well.

We all know that living under stressful conditions has serious emotional, even physical, consequences. So why do we have so much trouble taking action to reduce our stress levels and improve our lives?

Conviction in a leader is an incredibly valuable yet increasingly rare trait. It’s in short supply because our brains are wired to overreact to uncertainty with fear. As uncertainty increases, the brain shifts control over to the limbic system, the place where emotions, such as anxiety and panic, are generated.

But there’s a catch. Emotional intelligence won’t do a thing for you if you aren’t genuine. A recent study from

Why focus on emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the “something” in each of us that affects how we manage

When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge—there are only 24 hours in a day. Since even the best ideas are worthless until they’re executed, how efficiently you use your time is as important as anything else in business.

The average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, and if you don’t learn to organize them, they have the potential to wreak havoc on your productivity.

Hw many people have you spoken with today? Chances are that most of them lied to you—and that they did it more than once. It’s a hard fact to accept, but even your closest friends and coworkers lie to you regularly

Listening is a bit like intelligence—most everyone thinks they’re above average, even though that’s impossible.And listening is a skill you want to be great at. A recent study conducted at George Washington University showed that listening can influence up to 40% of a leader’s job performance.

A recent international study surveyed more than 500 business leaders and asked them what sets great employees apart. The researchers

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is

There are a ton of qualities that can help you succeed, and the more carefully a quality has been studied, the more you know it’s worth your time and energy.

Great leadership can be a difficult thing to pin down and understand. You know a great leader when you’re working for one, but even they can have a hard time articulating what it is that makes their leadership so effective.

Our brains are hardwired to make much of modern life difficult. This is especially true when it comes to dealing

Most of us have experienced that sickening moment when you realize you’ve made a serious mistake. Perhaps it was a typo that threw off a financial forecast, or maybe you forgot to reserve a venue for an important meeting that’s scheduled for the following day.

I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use a little boost in their energy and self-control.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham recently published findings from their exploration of 83 separate studies on energy and self-control.

What makes someone a leader anyway? Such a simple question, and yet it continues to vex some of the best thinkers in business. We’ve written several books on leadership, and yet it’s a rare thing to actually pause to define leadership. Let’s start with what leadership is not… Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or one’s position in the hierarchy of a company.

Some bosses are harder to forget than others. While bosses can be unforgettable because they make life miserable, the most memorable bosses stick with us because they change us for the better.

Between the two of us, we’ve spent 50 years studying what makes people successful at work. A persistent finding in both of our research is that your ability to handle moments of conflict has a massive impact on your success.

It’s pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something

Successful people often exude confidence—it’s obvious that they believe in themselves and what they’re doing. It isn’t their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first.

Influential people have a profound impact on everyone they encounter. Yet, they achieve this only because they exert so much influence inside, on themselves.

If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likeable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of

I expend a huge amount of my time and energy writing books and articles and working to keep my company innovative. I’ve developed an obsession with some of history’s most creative minds in the hope that I might learn some tricks to expand my own creative productivity.

A study at Strayer University found that most people think success is about achieving your personal goals.

We all reach critical points in our lives where our mental toughness is tested. It might be a toxic friend

The trick is to manage your stress/anxiety and keep it within optimal levels in order to achieve top performance. We

When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge—there are only 24 hours in a day.
Yet some people seem to have twice the time; they have an uncanny ability to get things done. Even when juggling multiple projects, they reach their goals without fail.

When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge—there are only 24 hours in a day.

Yet some people seem to have twice the time; they have an uncanny ability to get things done. Even when juggling multiple projects, they reach their goals without fail.

By Dr. Travis Bradberry & Lac D. Su, M.S. The Technical Manual for the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal reveals interesting findings from

You can’t build a strong professional network if you don’t open up to your colleagues; but doing so is tricky, because revealing the wrong things can have a devastating effect on your career.

One of the most popular Dilbert comic strips in the cartoon’s history begins with Dilbert’s boss relaying senior leadership’s explanation for the company’s low profits.

Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other

By Dr. Travis Bradberry Let’s face it, happiness and work do not tend to go hand in hand. A 2013

By Drs. Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves One of the most popular Dilbert comic strips in the cartoon’s history begins

By Nicole Wolfe At one point or another, no doubt, you’ve flipped through the channels and seen a zebra instinctively

Difficult people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and

By Lexi Herrera, M.S. and Dr. Jean Greaves   NBA basketball teams lean on the performance of marquee players, many

By Lac D. Su, M.S. It’s the heart of summer and, with so many of us spending more time on

By Dr. Travis Bradberry & Lac D. Su, M.S. Why is it that some leaders get so much from the

By Dr. Travis Bradberry, Lac D. Su, M.S. & Saakshi Arora, M.S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela,

By Alexandria Herrera, M.S. Jack Welch’s exit from the helm of General Electric in 2001 didn’t reduce the company’s performance

By Dr. Travis Bradberry When Rhonda Brown, Organizational Trainer for Covenant HealthCare, earned a certification to facilitate TalentSmartEQ’s Discovering Emotional

By Nick Tasler, M.S., Lac D. Su, M.S., & Dr. Jean Greaves The fifth most popular Dilbert comic strip in

Know anyone who wants to make more money? They’ll have to get in line. I think we’d all be hard-pressed

  By Nick Tasler, M.S. It’s no secret that job seekers will find slim pickings in their search for gainful

By Dr. Jean Greaves Four old friends head to dinner at their favorite restaurant to celebrate. After they consume their

By Dr. Travis Bradberry If you are an emotionally intelligent manager, you work hard to have good relationships with your

By Dr. Travis Bradberry Having emotional intelligence (EQ) won’t make you successful. But, using emotional intelligence habitually will help you

Rolling Stones guitarist Bill Wyman was once asked, “What is the question you get asked the most?” Wyman replied, “That’s

Work stress is as old as work itself. And so are the ways we respond. You can just imagine the

By Dr. Jean Greaves and Rob Fullerton, M.S. In TalentSmartEQ’s emotional intelligence (EQ) training programs, we often get questions about

By Nicole Wolfe and Dr. Travis Bradberry There you are, just sitting in the conference room minding your own business

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use

By Dr. Travis Bradberry When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, he recognized that emotional recovery must precede economic

By Dr. Travis Bradberry Arguments, disagreements, and differences of opinion in their various forms are unavoidable facts of life. Our

By Dr. Travis Bradberry These days, we’ve all been on the receiving end of a scathing email, as well as