Why EVERY Manager Should be Trained in Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the secret to inspired leadership. Discover how developing EQ helps managers communicate with empathy, build trust, and create a positive, high-performing workplace culture—where people feel seen, valued, and motivated to give their best

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a quotient used to measure how in-touch someone is with their emotions. This is a fairly abstract thought, and there are methodological problems with measuring it — even more so than with IQ.

But while that’s true, it is also widely accepted that EQ is something that exists, and that is extremely important when it comes to taking charge and instructing your followers. It’s something that every manager should be trained in.

A Real-Life Example

To illustrate this point, consider a real-life example of someone who was put in a leadership position with poor emotional intelligence.

This person was an editor whose job it was to read through writing from journalists, and then to make corrections ready to print. If the corrections were extensive, they had the option to send the work back to the person who wrote it.

For their very first job, the editor received a large article that a journalist had written over the course of several days. The writer was proud of this work and had worked extremely hard.

But the editor found several faults with the formatting, the grammar, and more. So what they did, was to make a public example of the writer. They pulled them up to their desk in a crowded office and then explained loudly to the entire team how they had failed to listen to the writers’ guidelines, how they had used the wrong capitalization in their title, how they had failed to properly link out to other websites, and how they had clearly missed several typos.

They made no mention of the many positive points of the article, and they were rude about the overall quality.

The Impact of Poor Emotional Intelligence

The result? The writer felt completely underappreciated for the work they had put in. Not only that, but they felt humiliated in front of their co-workers, and they felt especially aggravated that this was coming from someone brand new that they had never worked with before.

The next time that the writer had to deliver a similar piece of work, they spent significantly less time and effort on it, and therefore delivered an inferior product. Not only that, but they took much longer than necessary to correct the mistakes.

How It Could Have Been Handled

How could this have been handled? The editor could have spoken to the writer privately, they could have started by thanking the writer for their work and pointed out some of the qualities that made it a great piece of work. Then they could have mentioned that there were a couple of small issues, and that if they could be corrected as soon as possible, then the work would be good to go.

The difference here is HUGE — and over the course of countless interactions and countless months, it can completely transform a workplace.

EQ is Critical to Leadership!

Emotional intelligence isn’t just a “nice to have.” It’s a core leadership skill that determines how well teams perform, how engaged they feel, and how willing they are to grow.

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