Introduction
I’ve spent most of my career surrounded by smart people, and it’s true that none of them got where they are by lacking intellect or technical skill. But I’ve found that the leaders who built the best teams, the ones where people actually wanted to show up and do great work, usually count emotional intelligence as one of their biggest strengths.
Knowing how to read a room, or how to make people feel seen without turning every conversation into a therapy session, is perhaps the most critical skill that separates great leaders from the rest. These leaders understand that managing people’s energy and trust is just as strategic as managing a P&L. They treat emotional intelligence as a true competitive advantage, which, from what I’ve seen, often leads to more successful teams and businesses being built.
Why the Smartest Person in the Room Isn’t Always the Best Leader
There’s a persistent myth in business that the most capable leader is the one with the sharpest analytical mind, but that’s not always the case. The right leader is highly dependent on the team and the task at hand. For a small team that is extremely focused on solving a single, targeted problem, a highly analytical leader can be a great fit to drive that team towards the solution. But often, as organizations scale, emotional intelligence becomes the more important leadership trait than pure analytical capabilities.
The leaders I’ve seen build genuinely high-performing teams at scale do things like asking questions before making declarations, or noticing when someone on the team has gone quiet and finding a way to bring them back in. They create an environment where people are willing to take risks, speak up, and challenge each other, because the leader has built enough trust that honesty feels safe.
I think about this through the lens of jazz, which I’ve played for over 40 years. The best bandleader is not always the most technically gifted musician on the stage. It’s the one who listens, who creates space for others to take risks, and who knows when to step forward and when to step back. That’s emotional intelligence in action, and it sounds just as good in a boardroom as it does in a jazz club.
The Research Behind It
A research study by Ćwiąkała, Gajda, and colleagues titled The importance of emotional intelligence in leadership for building an effective team examined how emotional intelligence competencies like self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills shape leadership effectiveness and team performance. Surveying 100 professionals across organizations, they found strong correlations between a leader’s emotional intelligence and their team’s trust, collaboration, and motivation.¹
Leaders who scored higher in emotional intelligence were consistently perceived as more empathetic, more ethical, and more capable of resolving conflict in ways that strengthened rather than fractured their teams. The researchers also found that ethical leadership, a direct byproduct of emotional intelligence, was a significant driver of employee motivation. And social competence, another core EI dimension, proved essential for aligning teams toward shared goals.¹
What struck me most about this research is its central conclusion: emotional intelligence is a core driver of interpersonal effectiveness, employee engagement, and sustainable business performance.¹ That framing matches my experience exactly. The leaders who build the most durable competitive advantages are the ones who create the conditions for everyone around them to think better.
What This Means for You
Whether you lead a startup of ten people or a division of ten thousand, emotional intelligence is the infrastructure your team’s performance is built on. Here’s where I’d start.
- Start with an honest self-audit. When was the last time someone on your team pushed back on one of your ideas? If you can’t remember, it’s probably because people don’t feel safe enough to challenge you. That’s an emotional intelligence gap, and it’s costing you more than you realize in missed opportunities and unspoken problems.
- Treat conflict as something to be valued. Most leaders instinctively try to minimize conflict. But the research shows that leaders with high emotional intelligence navigate conflict in ways that build trust and surface better solutions.¹ The goal is a team that disagrees productively.
- Invest in EI the way you invest in strategy. The researchers specifically call for organizations to integrate emotional intelligence training, coaching, and assessment into leadership development programs.¹ I’d go further: make it a hiring criterion. When you’re evaluating candidates for leadership roles, don’t just assess what they know. Assess how they make the people around them perform.
- Model it from the top. Emotional intelligence doesn’t trickle up. It flows down. If senior leadership treats empathy as weakness or self-regulation as optional, those signals cascade through the entire organization. Be the one to set the example for your entire organization.
In the Find A Way™ framework, I teach that innovation doesn’t start with a brilliant idea. It starts with the conditions that make brilliant ideas possible. Emotional intelligence is one of those conditions. It’s the invisible architecture that determines whether your team’s creativity flows or gets stuck. Build that architecture, and the ideas will follow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is emotional intelligence in a leadership context?
A: Emotional intelligence in leadership refers to a leader’s ability to recognize and manage their own emotions while also understanding and influencing the emotions of their team. It includes four core competencies: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills. Research shows that these competencies are strongly correlated with a leader’s effectiveness in building trust, resolving conflict, and motivating teams.¹
Q: Can emotional intelligence be developed, or is it something you either have or you don’t?
A: It can absolutely be developed. Unlike IQ, which is relatively fixed, emotional intelligence is a set of skills that can be strengthened through deliberate practice, coaching, and feedback. The researchers behind this study specifically recommend that organizations invest in EI-focused training and assessment as part of their leadership development strategy.¹ In my experience, the leaders who improve fastest are the ones who seek honest feedback from their teams and act on it consistently.
Q: How does emotional intelligence impact team performance specifically?
A: The research found that leaders with higher emotional intelligence build teams that are more collaborative, more trusting, and more motivated. They’re also better at resolving conflicts in ways that strengthen relationships rather than damage them.¹ From a practical standpoint, that translates to lower turnover, higher engagement, faster problem-solving, and a team that’s willing to take the creative risks that drive innovation.
Q: Is emotional intelligence more important than technical expertise for leaders?
A: You need both. Technical expertise gets you into a leadership role, and emotional intelligence determines whether you thrive in it. I’ve watched brilliant strategists fail as leaders because they couldn’t build trust or read the emotional dynamics of their teams. And I’ve seen leaders with solid but unremarkable technical skills build extraordinary teams because they excelled at the human side of the job. At the leadership level, EI is often the differentiator.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake leaders make when it comes to emotional intelligence?
A: Treating it as optional or secondary to “hard” business skills. The research is clear that emotional intelligence is a central driver of sustainable business success.¹ The second biggest mistake is confusing emotional intelligence with being agreeable. Leaders with high EI are actually better at having difficult conversations, holding people accountable, and navigating tension, because they do those things with awareness and skill rather than bluntness or avoidance.
Citations:
¹ Ćwiąkała, J., Gajda, W., Ćwiąkała, M., Górka, E., Baran, D., Wojak, G., Mrzygłód, P., Frasunkiewicz, M., Ręczajski, P., & Piwnik, J. (2025). The importance of emotional intelligence in leadership for building an effective team. arXiv:2510.07004.