Motivation aside, if people get better at these life skills, everyone benefits: The brain doesn't distinguish between being a more empathic manager and a more empathic father.

The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 'The Human Moment,' about how to make real contact with a person at work: ... The fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person.

My hope was that organizations would start including this range of skills in their training programs - in other words, offer an adult education in social and emotional intelligence.

Smart phones and social media expand our universe. We can connect with others or collect information easier and faster than ever.

People learn what they want to learn. If learning is forced on us, even if we master it temporarily, it is soon forgotten.

Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own.

There are some surprising payoffs with only a few minutes' practice, like eliminating the loss of concentration that multitasking usually brings. Short daily mindfulness practice in beginners also improves memory, to the point that a group of students who volunteered for a study got significantly better scores on their graduate school entrance exams.