ABOUT

Hey there and welcome!

I’m Justin Bariso, and I help organizations and individuals develop their emotional intelligence.

My thoughts on leadership and EQ have been featured by TIME, NBC, Forbes, Business Insider, and others—and my weekly column on Inc.com draws over a million readers a month. I’m also the author of “EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide to Emotional Intelligence,” an international bestseller that’s been translated into over a dozen languages.

I founded EQ Applied to help others harness the power of emotion for good.

My story

Raised in a multicultural environment, I learned to see the world through different sets of eyes. I was fascinated by the way a single news report could inspire very different emotional reactions in others, based on factors like their age, background, and upbringing.

When I was just 20 years old, I moved to New York and spent the next 13 years working for a very mission-driven nonprofit organization. There, I benefited from amazing mentors who taught me how to use principles like servant leadership, empathy, and the skillful use of feedback to build teams that foster on trust.

In 2011, I moved to Europe and began my own consulting agency, where I work with a wide range of companies, from startups to the Fortune 500.

Why emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions. I like to describe it as making emotions work for you, instead of against you.

When I began working in the field of emotional intelligence several years ago, I found that much of the research was hard to understand and impractical.

I wanted to be different.

So, I worked to simplify the research and make it relatable. I used stories from the news to show what emotional intelligence looked like in the real world. And I drew from my own experience to illustrate how EQ works.

Those experiences included my work, where over decades I had helped (and learned from) countless teams across various industries. They also included my home life, where I’d learned (and am still learning!) how to navigate my own emotions—along with those of my wife and three kids.

Over time, and with the help of many other brilliant people, I’ve developed a series of tools and methods I use to simply and effectively teach the core principles of emotional intelligence. Together, we go beyond simply understanding how emotions work. The true goal: to continually develop your EQ and learn to use it in every situation.