Emotional intelligence in leadership, often called EQ, is a leader's ability to understand and manage their own emotions and read the emotions of the people they lead. It rests on five traits: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Empathy is the foundation, and every one of the five can be trained.
- EQ means awareness of your emotions, control over them, and the empathy to read your team.
- Some people are born with a strong emotional radar, and everyone can build it.
- Work on it in three steps: awareness, intention, action.
- EQ shows up most in the hardest moments, when chaos makes others react fast.
What is emotional intelligence in leadership?
My co-host Arturo Gomez has led teams for 25 years. He describes EQ as an individual's awareness of their emotions and of self, the ability to control themselves, and the ability to motivate themselves and others. Empathy sits underneath all of it. Social skills let you engage, drive and exchange emotion with the people you lead.
My own EQ started with self-awareness. As an entrepreneur relying completely on myself, I realized I was in charge of every area of my life, my emotions included. Over time I built a fortress inside to handle the highs and lows.
Why is emotional intelligence important for leaders?
People respond to leaders who care. Arturo sees the highest levels of motivation when people are brought together in a way that feels like love and positive energy. A tyrannical leader resonates with nobody.
EQ is also what lets you switch styles. Sometimes a moment calls for discipline and authority, and sometimes it calls for compassion. Knowing which one a person needs takes understanding their emotions and controlling your own. That skill sits underneath all the types of leadership styles.
It reaches well past work. Your EQ shapes every relationship you have, including the ones at home.
What are the five traits of emotional intelligence?
| Trait | What it is | How to build it |
|---|---|---|
| Self-awareness | Taking your own internal temperature | Meditation, to listen, calm down and focus |
| Self-regulation | Control over your reactions | Invite feedback and keep the loop open |
| Motivation | The drive to push yourself and others | Ask who you want to be and what legacy you want to leave |
| Empathy | Feeling what someone else feels | Step back and stand in the other person's shoes |
| Social skills | Connecting with and moving people | Put yourself in uncomfortable rooms on purpose |
Arturo compares EQ to spackling a wall. A leader with high EQ spots the gaps on the team and fills them with energy and support.
How do you improve emotional intelligence as a leader?
I break it into three steps you can practice every day.
- Awareness. Listen and notice your surroundings and everyone around you. You can't give the right response if you aren't listening.
- Intention. Think before you react. Slow things down, even if it only takes a split second.
- Action. Once you've processed it, decide how to best handle the situation. The more you work this muscle, the stronger it gets.
So often EQ is going to come in the most in the hardest times.
Rob Cressy, Episode 4
What does low emotional intelligence look like?
Leaders get into trouble when they react quickly and pop off. They miss the temperature in the room and lose their cool when there's chaos all around them. Another sign is letting small irritations pile up. Small stuff plus small stuff turns into a giant boulder rolling downhill.
Can emotional intelligence be learned?
Yes. Arturo believes some people are born with a higher internal emotional radar, and that every trait can still be trained and fine-tuned.
He learned it the hard way with public speaking. He could connect with everyone in a room within half an hour, yet speaking to a large audience made him deeply uncomfortable. He got past it by accepting every invitation to speak.
I took improv at Second City for the same reason. Improv teaches you to get comfortable being uncomfortable, think on your feet, and listen. If you're already planning your next line, you aren't together. "Yes, and" means we're in this together.
How do you build EQ into your daily routine?
I design myself, emotions included, around the person I want to be. My morning works like a computer's boot sequence, and part of it is a list of I am affirmations: I am worthy. I am positive energy. I am flexible and fluid. Everyone is better off for having interacted with me. Reading them daily reboots my awareness and intention.
Three books help too. It Takes What It Takes by Trevor Moawad teaches neutral thinking, never too high or too low. Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within round it out. For the self-awareness side, see self-leadership.
Why does emotional intelligence matter more in the AI era?
As AI drafts more of the work, the human part of leadership carries more weight. I lead human first and AI enabled. Let AI draft and keep the judgment human. EQ helps you notice when someone on your team feels uneasy about the change, and empathy tells you to talk openly about where AI is used. Start with AI for leaders.
Do this today
- Slow down on purpose. In your next conversation, one on one or in a group, let life happen in front of you and observe the pace at which everyone talks.
- Ask for feedback. Invite one person to tell you how you come across, so your view of yourself meets theirs.
Listen to the episode
Emotional Quotient
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Questions people ask
What are the five components of emotional intelligence?
Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Arturo Gomez calls empathy the underlying foundation.
Why do some leaders have higher EQ than others?
Arturo Gomez believes some people are born with a higher internal emotional radar. Everyone else can build it with meditation, feedback and practice.
How can a leader show empathy?
Step back from your own view and try to understand what the other person is feeling in their shoes before you respond.
What is the fastest way to improve EQ?
Practice slowing down. Notice, think, then act, and repeat it in every conversation until it becomes a habit.
Full transcript
Episode 4: Emotional Quotient
Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast for those who aspire to be a better leader. Alongside Arturo Gomez, I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic, EQ, which is Emotional Quotient, aka Emotional Intelligence. Arturo, can you tell us, what is EQ? Wow, well, I'll tell you it's a hot topic. Certainly across the board in all leadership circles, through the corporate environment down to politics, and every space that we interact, the idea or the conversation around EQ is happening.
It's something that's here. It's something that people are recognizing. And it really is, it just boils down to an individual's awareness of their emotions, awareness of self, their ability to control themselves, their ability to motivate themselves and others. Empathy is probably the underlying foundation of EQ. And then, social skills. So, the ability to actually interact, engage, drive, motivate, and feel and have this kind of inner exchange of emotion with the people that you're trying to motivate, trying to lead. And so, it's a big deal today in leadership discussion.
When I understood self-awareness. When I was completely reliant on myself to create everything, to do everything, to bring in my own money, I was like, wait a second. I understood that I was in charge of every single area of my life, and that included my emotions. And I always knew that there were certain things that I could control as an entrepreneur, and my mindset was one of them.
So, that's why I'm so positive. And then, as I continued to mature, I understood more about building that fortress inside to be able to handle the highs and lows that come with entrepreneurship. And that's really where some of these qualities exude themselves from a leadership side of things. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think it's, you know, for a lot of people, well, one, EQ was really never discussed 10 years ago.
I mean, it was really just kind of the concept of EQ was just starting to emerge. I think that there's a significant amount of people that have a natural-born tendency towards these particular qualities and traits. That's not to say, and I think we'll get into it today, that they can't be trained, fine-tuned, and worked out. But I do think that there's a lot of people that are born with these, you know, I'm going to go ahead and call them God-given talents.
And it's just a higher internal emotional radar that people have. And so, it is a quality, and these are qualities and characteristics that today are 100% needed to actually excel at the highest levels of leadership. So, let's get into why is this important? I know that you talked about a lot of the things, but this is something that can be easily swept under the rug by many people of like, oh, why do I need to work on this? But we really are realizing, and certainly right now, how emotional things can get in the highs and lows of business and life and relationships. And this isn't something that is only for business people.
It is for all of us, and even our own EQ in the relationships with our families is extremely important. And you really want to be able to carry yourself some sort of way and your awareness of the way that you're thinking and then responding to it. So, talk to us a little bit more about why you believe this is important.
I think it's, I mean, I think the overall importance stems from the idea of being able to motivate and guide and lead. And so, you know, people today don't, they don't want to be led by a tyrannical leader. I mean, that doesn't resonate with anybody anymore. And so, you know, and I think in the previous episodes, we, you know, we talked about the different attributes and styles of leadership.
And so, you know, there are moments in time where you have to use a different type of attribute. And whether it's a kind of a discipline or more of an authoritative type of component, that's fine. That's fine. But the idea or the act of being able to switch back and forth between these styles of leadership is in essence, this idea, this concept of being able to understand emotion, right?
Understanding what exactly is it going to take to motivate these, this group of individuals. And that goes back to that point of, of understanding their emotion, understanding your emotions, understanding the ability to control emotions. And so I think in today's environment, whether it's in corporate America or it's in any other, could be in athletics, people today, and it's not even today.
It's, I think this is, we've, we've always as humans wanted to be dealt like this. I think it's just finally now people are understanding that highest levels of motivation are achieved and pushed when people are kind of brought in together, brought in together and actually Coerced, motivated in a way that feels like there's love there and there's some energy, positive energy around that.
So now let's get to how we want to do it or how we can work on it. And I think another thing that's important that you talked about. So we talked about the previous styles of leadership, but we also talked about the importance of number one in being able to work on yourself as a leader. And certainly EQ is part of that. So for me, I really broke this down into three ways that I think about how you can work on EQ. Number one is awareness.
You have to be someone who is listening and aware of your surroundings and everyone around you, because it's hard for you to give an appropriate response or reaction if you're not listening to the other people. And number two, you need to be intentional. So you need to be able to think before reacting and slowing down. And a lot of the emotional side of things, I think I do a good job of slowing the things down.
And so often the inverse of this where people get into trouble is when they react quickly or they pop off and their EQ is very low and they're not understanding how to best deal with the temperature in the room. Because here's the thing. So often EQ is going to come in the most in the hardest times. So when there's chaos all around you don't want to be spazzing out, but instead you want to be someone who sits back and thinks and reacts.
And all of this can be in split seconds, but it's a conscious thing. And the last part of this is action. So then you have the ability when you've thought about it and slowed down to process it correctly and be like, all right, how can I best handle this situation? And the more often that you do this and you work on that muscle, the better that you're going to get at this. Right. Yeah.
I mean, it's, you know, the idea of EQ is kind of like, it's almost like spackling the wall. It's like distributable energy, right? It's filling in gaps, filling in holes in the team where it's needed. And so somebody that's able to actually do that, again, has this crazy level of self-awareness and can bring those energy, that energy and support of other people. And so I think all of them are workable.
You know, when you look at the five, you know, identifiable traits that we kind of highlighted at the beginning, you know, you have this self-awareness component, right? And you have, and so that idea is just understanding internally what your motor needs and understanding internally, you know, basically taking an internal temp. The self-regulation component, that's just control. And, you know, you kind of just touched on that.
So, you know, motivation, empathy, social skills, all these things can be worked on. Okay. And so when you dive into each one of them individually, and so people are going to, you know, inherently ask, well, how do I do it? So the self-awareness piece, I would say for me, one motivation is, I mean, motivation, meditation, sorry. Meditation has been something that certainly has helped with that.
The part of, and so with meditation, I mean, fundamentally it's about listening. It's about calming down. It's about getting to a certain level of focus. The self-regulation component, I think to me is, can be, can be worked on if you invite others to really kind of give feedback, to allow that feedback loop to exist. And so, you know, our, our opinion of ourselves is always very different from the opinion that others are going to have of us. And so as we continue to try to hone in on these things and hone in on who we are to other people, I think it's really important to allow that feedback loop to exist and to ask, get feedback from others.
Motivation, you know, that's, that's the one thing that I think is, it's, it's not, you either have it or you don't. But, but I think that that carries a lot of weight and I think that that has a lot of truth. I think that people just need to dig down deep. And I think the meditation component will help with this. It's who do you want to be? Who do you want to be? What type of legacy do you want to leave?
And, you know, that's where you can find the level of motivation that I think is required to lead. But again, not everybody has it. Not everybody has it. And that's, that's okay. That's okay. And we talked about in certain episodes that, you know, some people aren't, aren't designed and cut out to be leaders of groups, but you can still find peace in leading yourself and understanding yourself and having a self-awareness that I think is a very, a tremendous quality.
And again, leading yourself is a very valid thing. Empathy is, you know, you can practice that again. And I get back to meditation, but I also really force people to just kind of take a step back and try to actually understand different points of view. Right. So this is how you feel. Take a second just to try to understand what this other individual is feeling in their shoes.
And so, you know, I think today, even, you know, after all the madness that we've had with the, with the civil unrest from the, from the protests and stuff like that. I think, you know, yesterday particularly was a day that I, that I felt like the entire country was actually trying to understand what the other person was feeling. And so, you know, empathy can be worked on. It really requires you to actually take a step back and try to understand what that individual is feeling.
You know, social skills, not everybody is designed to be a social butterfly. I think it's just kind of one of those things that it's a practice thing. It requires you to kind of throw yourself into the fire and, and certainly, you know, there's people that are very uncomfortable doing it. You know, I certainly was uncomfortable speaking in large groups and audiences for many years.
And it actually took me forcing myself to accept every invitation to go speak in front of an audience to actually get past it. And, and it was weird because I'm an extremely social person. You throw me in any room, I'll, I'll have connected with everybody by the end of, you know, half an hour. But, you know, when you, when I was, you know, given the chances and the opportunities to speak in front of a large audience, I just, it was something that I was very uncomfortable doing.
And so you have to force yourself to go into uncomfortable places to really fine tune some of these skills. And social skills is, is no different. But, you know, I think, I do think that they are all workable. Just, it's going to require some stamina and some resilience and some grit. And there's a lot that you talked about that I loved. So number one on the, how do people get comfortable being uncomfortable, public speaking, things like that.
For me, I took improv when I moved to Chicago. I don't even know why I did it. I was looking for something else to do and I took an improv class. And then it just so happened, I moved across the street from Second City, one of the best comedy training centers in the world. And I was like, huh, this would be a good skill for me to learn.
And that was exactly it, is I went there not to become a comedian, but to learn the skill set of someone who can get comfortable being uncomfortable, who can think on his feet, who can also, oh, by the way, listen. It's such a big part of improv because if you're not listening, if you're already thinking about what the person, what you're going to say, you're not going to be together. And that's the key is the yes and philosophy. We're in this together.
And another thing in terms of are people born like this or can you build it? One of the things that has been a big game changer for me is when I started to think about my life in terms of lifestyle design. I now design myself, emotions included, in terms of the person that I want to be. So how do I work on this every day? I think about my morning routine like a boot sequence for a computer.
What does it take for a computer to become the computer that you want it to be? And one of the things that I have is a series of I am affirmations that I wrote out. So, for example, I am worthy. I am positive energy. I am flexible and fluid. Everyone is better off for having interacted with me. So why do I do these things?
Because I need to, on a daily basis, reboot myself back up to say, listen, Rob, this is who you are and this is who you want to be. And this goes back to the awareness and the intention. Because if you can become more aware and intentional about the things that you want to be, emotions included, then you're going to have a better chance of being that person.
And the last thing that I want to add to this in terms of things that you can do, I've actually got three books that are related to the emotional side of things that are good. One of them, which is my favorite book this year, is It Takes What It Takes by Trevor Moawad. And what this is is about neutral thinking. And Trevor Moawad was Russell Wilson's mental coach.
And the best way I can describe this is, how can Russell Wilson throw four interceptions in a playoff game and then lead the Seahawks back to win over the Green Bay Packers? You're like, how does that happen? Because of the neutral thinking, it's not getting too high or too low. The second book would be Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. And what is that really about? Don't sweat the small stuff. So what's the small stuff? Anybody in a relationship or with coworkers. There's little things that just nag at you.
But guess what? Do you let that build the negative momentum? Or do you decide to say, you know what? This is a small stuff. I'm not going to remember this tomorrow, a year from now. But a lot of people harbor this small stuff where small stuff plus small stuff plus small stuff all of a sudden becomes like this giant boulder rolling downhill. And the last one, Awaken the Giant Within from Tony Robbins. Anybody who's ever read anything from Tony Robbins, there's certain emotional qualities that come with his mindset.
But those are three books that I highly recommend. It's awesome. Yeah, I think those are great recommendations. And, you know, I think people just need to dive into it and really just start experimenting with this whole concept. And there's a ton beyond the books that you just mentioned. There is a ton of literature nowadays about EQ, the impact that EQ has, and how to continue to develop yourself further along the path of increasing your EQ. So now let's get to the takeaway or the action item. And for me, my action item for the listener is to intentionally slow down.
And a good way that you can do this is when you're in a social setting, whether it's just you and one other person or in a group of other people. And I want you to consciously let life happen in front of you. And I just want you to observe. And the reason for this is what that's going to help you do is, one, work on your awareness. And then, two, work on your intention because you're intentionally slowing things down.
And what you're going to really notice is the pace in which everybody else around you talks and where their EQ is. Arturo, what about you? Do you have a takeaway or an action item? Yeah, I mean, it's more of a takeaway, less of an action item. But, you know, the importance that corporate and really the world is putting on EQ today just makes me think about the possibilities of the future.
If we really are saying that we want our leaders today and in the future to have empathy and to lead with these attributes that really are about understanding others and being able to communicate those things, it gives me hope and optimism about what lies for the future for our corporate companies and just for leadership in general. Because I think that possibilities are endless when people are actually managing and leading with strong EQ. And we want to hear from you. We're doing this podcast because we do want to help others. And one thing that really helps us is when you hit us back up and let us know what you think about these episodes. One thing that is really big to the success of podcasts is when people, if you like the show, if you get any value out of this, go on iTunes.
Give us a rating and review. Subscribe to the show because that's the way that we're going to be able to help more people. Plus, you know what? We really do want to hear from you.
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