Optimal

How to Sustain Excellence Every Day

Daniel Goleman, Cary Cherniss

$24.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Penguin Books Ltd
16 September 2025

Social, group or collective psychology; Psychology: emotions; Self-help & personal development; Advice on careers & achieving success; Popular psychology

More than twenty-five years on from the huge bestseller Emotional Intelligence, this book reframes the concept's importance for a new era, explaining how to create high performing individuals, teams and organisations

Emotional intelligence is now embedded in our public discourse- an idea so pervasive and important in our work, culture, politics and society that leaders such as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and New York City mayor Eric Adams have placed it at the heart of what they do.

Daniel Goleman's bestselling book Emotional Intelligence was the first to coin this idea and bring it to a mass audience. Now, more than a quarter of a century after it was first published, he and Rutgers professor of psychology Cary Cherniss take a fresh look at how emotional intelligence has evolved over the past few decades, reframing its importance in this definitive book.

Beginning with a dissection of what makes for individual success, Goleman and Cherniss then set out how high performance can be cultivated at every level, scaling up the concept to top team performance and outstanding organisations. Building on attributes such as self-awareness, a sense of meaning and emotional balance, high concentration and 'flow' states, they demonstrate that it is in our optimal moments that our mental clarity shines.

By: Daniel Goleman, Cary Cherniss
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 200g
ISBN: 9780241609040
ISBN 10: 0241609046
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 16 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Daniel Goleman (Author) Daniel Goleman, PhD, author of five New York Times bestsellers, is best known for his paradigm-shifting book Emotional Intelligence, a global bestseller, and has a long-standing interest in meditation dating back to his two years in India as a graduate student at Harvard. His books have been translated into more than forty languages. Cary Cherniss (Author) Cary Cherniss is Professor of Applied Psychology and Director of the Organizational Psychology program at Rutgers University. Cherniss specializes in the areas of emotional intelligence, work stress, leadership development, and planned organizational change

Reviews for Optimal: How to Sustain Excellence Every Day

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 *