Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands.

Why Perpetual recommends it
In Emotional Intelligence Habits, Travis Bradberry moves beyond diagnosing emotional intelligence and focuses squarely on the daily habits that separate people who understand EQ conceptually from those who actually live it under stress.
The book is organised as a series of short, standalone habits, spanning self-awareness, self-control, social awareness and relationship management, each one framed as a small adjustable behaviour rather than a big personality overhaul.
Bradberry is particularly useful on the habits that quietly undermine otherwise capable leaders: interrupting before someone finishes a thought, letting a bad mood leak into unrelated decisions, or avoiding a hard conversation until it becomes a bigger one than it needed to be.
We recommend this book as a practical companion to any EQ development work, because it turns a broad competency into dozens of small, observable habits that leaders and teams can actually practise and hold each other accountable to.
- Emotional intelligence is built through small, repeatable habits, not a single insight or personality trait
- Many leadership derailers are habitual micro-behaviours, not big dramatic failures
- Naming a habit specifically makes it far easier to interrupt in the moment
- Consistency under stress, not performance in calm moments, is the real test of EQ
Pick one habit that consistently derails you under pressure and commit to interrupting it for a single week, tracking how often you notice it before it happens rather than after.
We give this book three and a half out of five stars.