The Case for Emotionally Intelligent Leaders

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By: Daniel Goleman

Goleman, author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence, has a new book, Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day.

John Murphy had just become head of Progressive Insurance’s customer-relations division when he began vocally championing emotional intelligence (EI) among the regional heads and the 7,000 agents who sold policies. 

Then he made a controversial move: He required top-tier leaders to get emotional-intelligence assessments. At first, he recalls, there was resistance: “It was hard for leaders to hear they weren’t where they wanted to be” on this crucial set of people skills.

But he persisted, dedicating annual leadership meetings to the topic, and emphasizing key elements like emotional self-management and empathy. After all, talking about insurance means smoothly handling difficult topics like death. And that kind of upsetting conversation requires both deft emotional self-management and empathy. As Murphy said, “Relationships are the heart of everything we do.”

Murphy, now in a new role at Progressive, was not alone. Leaders at entities from Microsoft to MD Anderson, the nation’s preeminent cancer-treatment center, have championed the emotional-intelligence skill set—or its key components—for their leaders. On his first day as Microsoft’s CEO, for example, Satya Nadella sent a company-wide memo urging that empathy with customers be a key skill set going forward.

Even an engineering-driven company culture like Microsoft’s needs emotional intelligence, in addition to highly honed technical skills. Consider a study at a multinational manufacturing company whose engineers rated each other on their effectiveness. Turns out IQ and cognitive abilities did not predict their effectiveness—but emotional intelligence did.

"If leaders’ success depends on the performance of those they lead, then best to lead with emotional intelligence."

This personal skill set matters in businesses of all kinds. A massive study of more than 65,000 entrepreneurs found that emotional intelligence was twice as important as IQ in predicting their success.

In my new book Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day, co-authored with Cary Cherniss, we’ve harvested a critical mass of studies underscoring how essential EI is to high-performance leadership.

While mental abilities and business expertise have long been prized in the top echelons, emotional intelligence is increasingly viewed as crucial to success too. A Harvard Business Review study of postings for C-suite positions over nearly two decades found that demand for soft skills (like emotional intelligence) rose by 30 percent, while the need for hard skills dropped by 40 percent.

No wonder: The art of leadership means getting work done well through other people. And if leaders’ success depends on the performance of those they lead, then best to lead with emotional intelligence.

There are four parts to emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and putting all that together for managing relationships well. The boss people love exhibits these qualities.

Take empathy. There are three varieties of empathy, each based in different brain circuitry. The first is cognitive empathy, knowing how the other person thinks; this lets you message that person in language he or she understands. The second is emotional empathy, sensing how he or she feels. With this empathy you keep interactions smooth.

And the third kind of empathy, technically called “empathic concern,” means you care about that person. This kind of empathy builds trust, strengthens relationships, and makes guiding and inspiring someone come naturally to a leader. As Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn Ferry, recently wrote: “It’s a fact of life and leadership: When people are noticed, they know someone cares. And when they know someone cares, they feel valued. And when they feel valued, they will believe they are indeed part of something bigger than themselves…. We all want—and need—to be seen, especially today.”