Goleman was born in Stockton, California, where his parents were college professors. His father taught world literature at what is now San Joaquin Delta College, while his mother taught in the Sociology department of the University of the Pacific. Goleman received his Ph.D. from Harvard, where he has also been a visiting lecturer. Daniel Goleman currently resides in the Berkshires. He is a co-chairman of The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, which recommends best practices for developing emotional intelligence abilities, and promotes rigorous research on the contribution of emotional intelligence to workplace effectiveness.

In addition, Goleman was a co-founder of The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago) which has a mission to help schools introduce emotional literacy courses. Thousands of schools around the world have begun to implement such programs. Goleman is also a member of the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, which fosters dialogues between scientists and contemplatives. His book, " Destructive Emotions" contains an edited selection of dialogues from The 8th Mind & Life Conference (Dharamsala, India from March 20-24, 2000} between the Dalai Lama and neuroscientists.The same with his book Healing Emotions which is an edited selection of dialogues from The 3rd Mind & Life Conference (Dharamsala, India, November 5-9, 1990). In both of these conferences Goleman has been the Scientific Coordinator.

Goleman authored the internationally best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence (1995, Bantam Books), that spent more than one-and-a-half years on the New York Times Best Seller list. Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as I.Q. for workplace success in "Working with Emotional Intelligence" (1998, Bantam Books), and for leadership effectiveness in "Primal Leadership" (2001, Harvard Business School Press). Goleman's most recent best-seller is Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006, Bantam Books).

The following quote is widely misattributed to R. D. Laing but appears in Goleman’s (1985) book Vital Lies, Simple Truths: "The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds." The following introduction prefaces the quote: “To put it in the form of one of R.D. Laing’s ‘knots’:” (p. 24): “Knots” being a reference to an earlier text by Laing (1972):. So it is in the form of Laing, and is consistent with Laing's thought, but is not by Laing. It is informed by Goleman's clinical psychotherapeutic experiences, but it speaks to the field of conflict psychology and facilitation as well. Goleman's book, "Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor," (2008, Jossey-Bass), co-authored with Warren Bennis and James O'Tool, argues for the benefits of transparency in organizations.

In his first book, The Varieties of Meditative Experience (1977), republished as The Meditative Mind in 1988, Goleman used sequential chapters to describe almost a dozen different meditation systems. These included Sufism, Transcendental Meditation, Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga, Indian Tantra and Kundalini Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, the teachings of Gurdjieff, and the teachings of Krishnamurti. He wrote that "the need for the meditator to retrain his attention, whether through concentration or mindfulness, is the single invariant ingredient in the recipe for altering consciousness of every meditation system" (p. 107). Noting that most methods of meditation were intended to foster concentration, he also wrote that "powerful concentration amplifies the effectiveness of any kind of activity" (p. 169).

Goleman has published a series of dialogues with More Than Sound Productions entitled "Wired to Connect" on the applications of social intelligence. Those already published include conversations with Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, renowned brain researcher Richard Davidson, Clay Shirky, an expert on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, film director and Educational innovator, George Lucas, and Paul Ekman, world renown psychologist on emotions. A topic of his discussion with Ekman was how to empathize with others, and how we can understand other's emotions as well as our own. Goleman suggests that in light of tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, we must learn how to empathize with others in order to help them. Goleman and Ekman are both contributors to Greater Good magazine, Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley.

Goleman has received many awards for his writing, including a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his efforts to communicate the behavioral sciences to the public. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.

Books authored by Goleman, Daniel.

• Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (2009) Broadway Business. ISBN 0385527829, ISBN 978-0385527828
• Social Intelligence: The New Science of Social Relationships (2006) Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553803525
• Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (2003) Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553381054
• Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance (2001) Co-authors: Boyatzis, Richard; McKee, Annie. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-1578514861
• The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace (2001) Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0787956905
• Harvard Business Review on What Makes a Leader? (1998) Co-authors: Michael MacCoby, Thomas Davenport, John C. Beck, Dan Clampa, Michael Watkins. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-1578516377
• Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998) Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553378580
• Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health (1997) Shambhala. ISBN 978-1590300107
• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1996) Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553383713
• Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception (1985) Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0747534136
• The Varieties of the Meditative Experience (1977) Irvington Publishers. ISBN 0-470991917. Later republished as The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience (1988) Tarcher. ISBN 978-0874778335.