What every leader should know about emotional intelligence

“He just started crying. And none of us knew what to do.”

That’s how one employee described a recent team meeting. Their leader—calm, composed, and usually measured—was in the middle of thanking the team when his voice caught. A few seconds later, he began to cry.

No one said a word. Not out of judgment, but uncertainty on how to respond. Should someone offer support? Acknowledge it? Move on? The moment passed quickly, but it left a lingering discomfort in the room.

Later, the team found out he had been under intense pressure at work while also dealing with a serious family illness. It made sense. It didn’t change how much they respected him. But it underscored something deeper: how uncomfortable most of us still are with emotion in the workplace and how little we’re taught about how to respond.

This wasn’t a leadership failure. It was a moment of emotional visibility; one of humanity. But it revealed a gap: the absence of a shared emotional language, and the emotional intelligence needed to navigate hard moments with care.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and use emotions—both your own and those of others—in constructive and intentional ways. Based on foundational work by Salovey and Mayer and expanded by Daniel Goleman, EI includes four key dimensions:

1. Self-awareness: noticing and accurately identifying your emotional state
2. Self-regulation: managing your emotions, especially in high-stress or high-stakes moments
3. Social awareness: reading emotional cues in others and responding with empathy
4. Relationship management: using emotional insight to guide conversations, handle conflict, and build trust

Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean staying composed at all times. It means knowing what you're feeling, why you're feeling it, and how those feelings affect others. For leaders, it’s not a bonus skill, it’s essential.

History and context matter

Emotions rarely arise in isolation. They’re shaped by both what’s happening now and everything that came before, including stress outside of work, unresolved conflict, personal hardship, identity-based strain, and more. Emotional intelligence requires leaders to pause and ask: What else might be going on here?

The ability to recognize emotional context is what allows leaders to respond rather than react. And when a team understands this, it builds collective resilience. People don’t need to know all the details to offer care. But they do need permission to respond like humans.

The discomfort many feel around emotion at work isn’t a personal flaw, rather it’s a systems issue. Most workplaces haven’t taught people how to sit with emotion, acknowledge it, or move through it without shutting down or taking over. That’s what EI helps develop.

So what do we do? Building emotional intelligence at work

EI isn’t built in a single workshop. But it can—and should—be developed, especially among leaders. Here are four grounded practices to start building emotional intelligence into the fabric of leadership:

1. Normalize emotional reflection in leadership

Encourage leaders to regularly check in with themselves before major meetings or difficult conversations.

What am I feeling right now? Where is it coming from? Is this emotion helpful or harmful in this moment?

This self-awareness practice helps create a pause between feeling and action, something many emotionally reactive leaders skip.

2. Help leaders understand emotional impact

Use real (anonymized) scenarios to help leaders explore how emotion shapes team dynamics. Instead of just analyzing outcomes, ask how interactions felt. Where did trust break down? What signals were missed?

Emotional intelligence is not just about intentions. It’s about impact.

3. Create space for emotional context but hold healthy boundaries

It's important for leaders to understand and share context when necessary without burdening others. Acknowledging personal stress is fine. Offloading it onto the team is not. EI helps leaders find the line between transparency and overexposure.

Instead of: “I’m dealing with a lot right now so I’m not at my best,” Try: “I’m under pressure today, so I want to be extra thoughtful about how I show up.”

4. Make emotion part of team feedback culture

Most feedback focuses on behavior and outcomes. But emotional feedback—how something felt—is just as important. Build norms where team members can safely say: “That felt abrupt,” or “That tone was hard to hear.” And train leaders to respond non-defensively.

Teams that can talk about emotion can talk about anything.

Why it matters

When emotional intelligence is missing, people get hurt. This is even when no one means harm. One unacknowledged outburst can silence a team. A pattern of misattunement can push someone into burnout or stress leave. And when no one knows how to name what’s happening, trust erodes quickly and quietly.

But EI isn’t just about harm reduction. It enables better leadership, stronger collaboration, and more resilient teams. Leaders who understand emotion and who know how to respond rather than react create environments where people feel safer, recover faster, and do better work.

Emotion is always in the room. The question is whether your leaders are equipped to work with it, or afraid of it.