Daniel Goleman Quotes

I'd like to think my strengths are in connecting with people and the relationship aspect of this business.

I was a bartender for four years, and that was the best training that I had for learning how to approach people.

Relational skills are the most important abilities in leadership.

Most of us have jobs that require some handling of other peoples' feelings and our own, and in that sense, we are all partly flight attendants.

I'm engaged: I'm interested in other people. I think that's just as important as knowing how to do the job.

That's probably a problem for some people in this business, they don't like to listen.

Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

Tone is often the most important part of a conversation - and listening is so much more important than what you say.

Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.

In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?

I can be a good listener. I can ask the right questions a lot of the time.

I think I am quite a good listener.

For most of your career, what you're trying to do is to step into other people's shoes.

I'm a pretty good listener.

I feel like I'm a good listener.

Being a salesperson prepares you for just about everything in business: how to listen, empathize, and persuade; when to back off and when to step in; and, of course, how to close.

Sensitivity training is a fine idea but isn't taken seriously by those who need it most.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

The only way on Earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.

I spend most of my life just listening to people.

People of influence understand the incredible value of becoming a good listener.

You have to learn that people are always listening.

My personality does well with people who are deemed difficult. I don't know why it does but I just seem to get along with them. The more difficult the better.