“Feeling” Leadership Gaps

Emotional Intelligence (EQi) — the capacity to recognize, understand, and manage one's own emotions and to read and respond to the emotions of others — is both a predictor of individual leadership success and a foundation for team cohesion. EQi research has found that the global workforce is experiencing an "emotional recession," and the problem is more acute for digital natives like Gen Z.*

Coming out of COVID everyone was dealing with the effects of relational disruptors. Social Distancing and Work from Home were trends that led to a major business decision for our Inpowering People services in 2023 - adding Emotional Intelligence to our coaching offerings. That has helped us provide a huge asset to our clients as they navigate how and how often to get people back into the workplace and positioned us with tools to help cultivate new emerging leaders.

Unlike raw intellect, emotional intelligence is not fixed at birth. It is a skill set that can be deliberately developed through practice, feedback, and reflection. The following are three best practices we have added to our Inpowered Leaders programs to offer a practical roadmap for building more emotionally intelligent leaders and workplaces.

Self-Awareness

Before a person can manage their reactions or read a room accurately, they need an honest understanding of their own emotional patterns, triggers, and default responses under stress. Building this awareness starts with simple daily habits: pausing before reacting to a frustrating email, naming the emotion being felt in the moment rather than acting on it immediately, and reviewing the day's interactions to notice recurring patterns. Assessments like EQi can accelerate this process and informal check-ins with a trusted colleague provide an external mirror that counteracts the natural human tendency toward self-serving bias.

While Gen Z employees on average display moderate levels of self-awareness they show pronounced weakness in relationship management — which has a strong effect on their ability to resolve conflict. This matters because difficulty building trust, conflict avoidance, emotional reactivity, and difficulty receiving critical feedback are among the most frequently cited management complaints about Gen Z.

Empathy Through Active Listening

Empathy, the ability to accurately perceive and understand another person's emotional state, can be a learnable behavior rooted in listening skills. Active listening means giving full attention to a speaker, resisting the urge to formulate a response while they are still talking, and reflecting back what was heard before adding one's own perspective. These behaviors demonstrate that the listener is tracking not just the content of what was said but the emotion underneath it. Empathy also grows through deliberate exposure to perspectives different from one's own. Leaders who regularly engage with team members across different roles, seniority levels, and backgrounds develop a more accurate model of how their decisions land across the organization.

Strengthen Relationship Management

The most outward-facing component of emotional intelligence is relationship management: the ability to use awareness of one's own and others' emotions to communicate clearly, resolve conflict constructively, and inspire collaboration. This shows up most visibly in how feedback is delivered. Emotionally intelligent feedback is specific, timely, and framed around behavior and impact rather than character judgments.

Emotional intelligence is not a soft addendum to technical competence; it is a core driver of how effectively people collaborate, lead, and adapt under pressure. Emotional intelligence develops fastest when it is reinforced by organizational systems. Training programs like our Inpowering Leaders and Teams that combine self-assessment, role-play, and real-time coaching tend to produce more durable behavior change than one-off workshops, since emotional skills are built through repeated practice rather than information transfer alone.

*2024 Six Seconds "State of the Heart" study