If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of.

Travis Bradberry

Grit is that 'extra something' that separates the most successful people from the rest. It's the passion, perseverance, and stamina that we must channel in order to stick with our dreams until they become a reality.

Travis Bradberry

Success Dreams Wit

More than half of people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate an employee's success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts.

Travis Bradberry

Time Success Relationship

Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.

Travis Bradberry

Time Yourself Yours

Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, 'What if?' and 'Why not?' They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.

Travis Bradberry

Wisdom Wit Why Not

Mistakes and pressure are inevitable; the secret to getting past them is to stay calm.

Travis Bradberry

Tin Them Takes

As important as it is to learn how to deal with different kinds of people, truly toxic people will never be worth your time and energy - and they take a lot of each. Toxic people create unnecessary complexity, strife, and, worst of all, stress.

Travis Bradberry

Time Your You

Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.

Travis Bradberry

War Relationship Intelligence

People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.

Travis Bradberry

Wit Use Us

Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people's buttons.

Travis Bradberry

War Us Unaware

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.

Travis Bradberry

Life Art You

Everyone knows that life isn't fair. Saying it's not fair suggests that you think life is supposed to be fair, which makes you look immature and naive.

Travis Bradberry

Life You Yin

Leadership is a mindset in action. So don't wait for the title. Leadership isn't something that anyone can give you - you have to earn it and claim it for yourself.

Travis Bradberry

Leadership Yourself Yours

With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you're challenged because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.

Travis Bradberry

Hope Change You

Get to know the job intimately that you're applying for. Don't just read the job description - study it and picture yourself performing every task required of you. When you interview, framing your responses so that you reveal your significant knowledge about the job gives you a massive advantage.

Travis Bradberry

Knowledge Age Yourself

People who fail to use their emotional intelligence skills are more likely to turn to other, less effective means of managing their mood. They are twice as likely to experience anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and even thoughts of suicide.

Travis Bradberry

Intelligence Experience Who

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don't leave jobs; they leave managers.

Travis Bradberry

Age While Very

People like to know you're listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows not only that you are listening but that you also care about what they're saying. You'll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking good questions.

Travis Bradberry

Respect Good Car

It's through a leader's actions - what he or she does and says on a daily basis - that the essence of great leadership becomes apparent.

Travis Bradberry

Leadership Great Through

Emotional self-control is the result of hard work, not an inherent skill.

Travis Bradberry

Work T Skill

There is no upside to making a disparaging remark about a colleague. If your remark is accurate, everybody already knows it, so there's no need to point it out. If your remark is inaccurate, you're the one who ends up looking like a jerk.

Travis Bradberry

Your You Who

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

Travis Bradberry

Chewing gum actually lowers your cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for stress. But chewing gum doesn't just reduce stress, it also makes you more alert and improves your performance in memory-oriented tasks. It does so by increasing the blood flow to your brain and alerting your senses.

Travis Bradberry

Nobody's perfect. Even the most successful people make serious mistakes.

Travis Bradberry

People lie in everyday conversation to appear more likeable and competent. While men and women lie equally as often, they tend to lie for different reasons.

Travis Bradberry

I don't know anyone who couldn't use a little boost in their energy and self-control.

Travis Bradberry

Liars hate silence, so they often try to fill it up by talking more than they need to. They provide far more information than was needed or asked for.

Travis Bradberry

Influential people have a profound impact on everyone they encounter. Yet, they achieve this only because they exert so much influence inside, on themselves.

Travis Bradberry

'What if?' statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you'll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control.

Travis Bradberry

The best way to avoid falling prey to the opinions of others is to realize that other people's opinions are just that - opinions. Regardless of how great or terrible they think you are, that's only their opinion. Your true self-worth comes from within.

Travis Bradberry

Successful people often exude confidence - it's obvious that they believe in themselves and what they're doing. It isn't their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first.

Travis Bradberry

Regardless of the magnitude of the decision, our brains make it hard for us to keep the perspective we need to make good choices.

Travis Bradberry

When influential people speak, conversations spread like ripples in a pond. And those ripples are multidirectional; influencers inspire everyone around them to explore new ideas and think differently about their work.

Travis Bradberry

Leadership and management are not synonymous.

Travis Bradberry

Drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up spikes your energy levels physically and mentally. Lemon water gives you steady, natural energy that lasts the length of the day by improving nutrient absorption in your stomach.

Travis Bradberry

No one always or never does anything. People don't see themselves as one-dimensional, so you shouldn't attempt to define them as such.

Travis Bradberry

Many companies restrict Internet activity so heavily that it makes it difficult for people to do online research. The most obvious example? Checking the Facebook profile of someone you just interviewed.

Travis Bradberry

The next time you need to win someone over to your way of thinking, try nodding your head as you speak. People unconsciously mirror the body language of those around them in order to better understand what other people are feeling.

Travis Bradberry

If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of.

Travis Bradberry

If you struggle with putting things into perspective, just ask yourself two simple questions: What's the worst thing that could happen as a result of this? Will this matter in five years? Your answers should put a stop to cataclysmic thinking.

Travis Bradberry

One thing an exceptional employee never says is, 'That's not in my job description.' Exceptional employees work outside the boundaries of job descriptions.

Travis Bradberry

Few things kill likeability as quickly as arrogance. Likable leaders don't act as though they're better than you because they don't think that they're better than you. Rather than being a source of prestige, they see their leadership position as bringing them additional accountability for serving those who follow them.

Travis Bradberry

'What is your desired salary?' The unwritten rule when it comes to salary is this: whoever proposes a number first loses. When you interview, you should never feel pressured to answer this question. Simply let your interviewer know that the most important thing to you is how well you fit the position.

Travis Bradberry

When it comes to getting promoted, you want to present yourself in a way that feeds into the biases that bosses have about what makes someone promotable. You're already doing the hard work, so why not frame your effort in such a way that it increases your chances of obtaining the position you want?

Travis Bradberry

Exceptional employees don't possess God-given personality traits; they rely on simple, everyday EQ skills that anyone can incorporate into their repertoire.

Travis Bradberry

There is a time in the life of every predicament where it is ripe for resolution. Emotions provide the cue to act when a problem is big enough to see, yet still small enough to solve. By understanding your emotions, you can move adeptly through your current challenges and prevent future ones.

Travis Bradberry

Companies need to have rules - that's a given - but they don't have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order.

Travis Bradberry

Taking time to contemplate what you're grateful for isn't merely the 'right' thing to do. It also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%.

Travis Bradberry

Being a good leader requires remembering that you're there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn't to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism - they insist on it.

Travis Bradberry

The biggest mistake most people make when it comes to listening is they're so focused on what they're going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what's being said.

Travis Bradberry

People often cover their mouths when lying. A hand on the mouth or even a touch of the lips shows you that they are lying because this unconscious body language represents a closing off of communication.

Travis Bradberry