When the darkness is seen as a necessary prelude to the creative light, one is less likely to ascribe frustration to personal inadequacy or label it as bad.

There is a newly coined word in the English language for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist. The word is 'pizzled': it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off.

Empathic, emotionally intelligent work environments have a good track record of increasing creativity, improving problem solving and raising productivity.

Although traditional incentives such as bonuses or recognition can prod people to better performance, no external motivators can get people to perform at their absolute best. . . .Wherever people gravitate within their work roles, indicates where their real pleasure lies—and that pleasure is itself motivating.

IQ and technical skills are important, but emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership.

Leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways.

The emotional brain is highly attuned to symbolic meanings and to the mode Freud called the 'primary process' - the messages of metaphor, story, myth, the arts.