The New Emotional Intelligence

Travis Bradberry argues that emotional intelligence, or EQ, strongly affects personal and professional performance. He opens with the story of Mick Fanning, a three-time world surfing champion who was attacked by a 14-foot great white shark during a live-broadcast competition at Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa, in July 2015. Fanning escaped without physical injury, but his brain's limbic system, the region where emotions are generated, flooded him with intense fear whenever he considered returning to the ocean. He forced himself back into the water within a week, yet post-traumatic stress, nightmares, and emotional triggers persisted. After further tragedies, including his older brother's unexpected death and a divorce, Fanning reached a breaking point but turned to family and friends, finding that talking about his struggles helped reason outweigh his feelings. Nearly a year later, he returned to Jeffrey's Bay, channeled his fear into determination, and won the event, an outcome Bradberry presents as emotional intelligence in action.

Bradberry explains that EQ operates at a neurological level. All sensory information enters the brain at its base and passes through the limbic system before reaching the prefrontal cortex, the rational brain behind the forehead. People therefore experience an emotional reaction to events before they can think rationally. Emotional intelligence depends on the flow of information between these centers; billions of microscopic neurons line this pathway, and repeated use strengthens it, a process scientists describe as "Neurons that fire together, wire together" (26). Bradberry distinguishes EQ from IQ, which is relatively fixed at an early age, and from personality, a stable set of preferences. EQ, he argues, is highly malleable. He defines it as the ability to recognize and understand emotions in oneself and others and to use that awareness to manage behavior and relationships, citing research showing EQ accounts for 61% of job performance and that people with high EQ earn on average $37,000 more annually.

The book organizes four EQ skills under two broader competencies. Personal competence comprises self-awareness and self-management. Self-awareness, the foundational skill, involves recognizing one's own emotions as they occur; Bradberry reports that only 36% of people can accurately identify their emotions in the moment. Self-management involves channeling those emotions productively and delaying short-term gratification for long-term results. The author includes a "Feelings Table" categorizing five core emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, and ashamed) across high, medium, and low intensities. Social competence comprises social awareness and relationship management. Social awareness means understanding others' emotions by reading body language, tone, and behavioral cues. To illustrate the brain's hardwired capacity for this, Bradberry describes a Tilburg University study in which people with cortical blindness—a condition in which the eyes function normally but the brain cannot process visual information—nonetheless mimicked emotions displayed in photographs, because signals branched off to the limbic system before reaching the visual cortex. Relationship management, the most advanced skill, requires all three preceding skills to work together.

Bradberry instructs readers to take his online Emotional Intelligence Test before beginning work on strategies. The test provides scores for overall EQ and each of the four skills, along with tailored recommendations. He then lays out an action plan: Readers should choose the skill for which they scored lowest, select three strategies from the corresponding chapter, and enlist an accountability partner.

The book's largest portion consists of 60 strategies across four chapters. The self-awareness chapter offers 18 strategies, including optimizing stress levels (citing Yale research showing prolonged stress shrinks gray matter responsible for self-control), monitoring oneself as if watching a movie character, defeating negative self-talk by writing down irrational thoughts, and developing a growth mindset, drawing on Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's research showing that people with a growth mindset outperform those with a fixed mindset even when they have lower IQs. Other strategies address the "anger funnel," which explains how people replace less tolerable emotions like fear or shame with anger; the importance of labeling feelings, citing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research showing that naming emotions activates the prefrontal cortex and calms the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing fear; and the impact of sleep deprivation, citing University of Rochester research on how the brain removes toxic proteins only during sleep.

The self-management chapter provides 15 strategies. Bradberry recommends delaying major decisions during emotional floods, noting that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a stage critical for mental recovery, replenishes neurotransmitters essential for problem-solving. He advocates learning to say no, citing University of California, Berkeley, research linking difficulty refusing requests to higher rates of stress and depression. A strategy on happiness cites University of California psychologist Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky's research showing that genetics account for about 50% of happiness, life circumstances 10%, and intentional behavior 40%. Bradberry also covers developing grit, drawing on University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth's research, and practicing mindfulness, citing a University of British Columbia meta-analysis showing mindfulness increases brain tissue density in regions responsible for self-control and resilience.

The social awareness chapter contains 13 strategies. These include active listening, drawing on psychologist Carl Rogers's concept of reflective listening; reading body language, citing UCLA research showing 55% of communication is nonverbal; and spotting true toxicity, characterized by hallmarks such as gaslighting (making someone doubt their own perception of reality) and emotional manipulation. Bradberry profiles nine types of toxic people. Other strategies address detecting lies, citing University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman's finding that 60% of people lie during a typical 10-minute conversation; trusting intuition, supported by a Salk Institute study in which participants' palms began sweating when reaching for losing cards well before conscious recognition of the pattern; and avoiding virtual communication blunders tied to what psychologist John Suler calls the "disinhibition effect," the tendency to behave less carefully when not face-to-face.

The relationship management chapter offers 14 strategies. Bradberry advises letting people know how one feels about them, noting that expressing care triggers the release of oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and trust, in both parties. He presents University of Washington research identifying four indicators that predict relationship failure with 93% accuracy: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. He offers "repairs," gestures of respect and concern during disagreement, as the antidote. Other strategies cover handling conflict assertively as a midpoint between passivity and aggression; forming strong connections, citing UCLA researcher Matthew Lieberman's finding that social connection is processed in the same brain area as physical pain; crushing cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and the halo effect, the tendency to let a strong first impression color all subsequent judgments; and surviving a bad boss, with profiles of seven types including Seagulls, managers who swoop in to create chaos and leave without helping resolve the problems they cause.

The book closes with a business case chapter. Bradberry presents a U.S. Air Force case study in which adding EQ testing to the recruiter selection process reduced annual turnover from 35% to less than 5%, saving $2.7 million per year. He also describes a Fortune Brands division project in which leaders completed EQ training with 360-degree feedback, a process of gathering performance input from supervisors, peers, and direct reports. Leaders who used all three optional follow-up methods saw significant bottom-line gains, while 82% of those who used none saw no improvement. Bradberry notes that his earlier research found EQ scores peaked at middle management and declined at the executive level, because organizations stopped emphasizing EQ above that tier, though he observes this trend has improved. He concludes that emotional intelligence can be developed by anyone willing to invest the effort, benefiting both individual careers and organizational outcomes.