Emotional Intelligence, the secret sauce of all great leaders

I’m starting my research with a better understanding of Emotional intelligence, a new topic I’ve been learning and wish I had known at the beginning of my career. Emotional intelligence is an important skill that we often never learn until it’s too late.

You might have seen the word before or heard of a best-selling book by that title published in 1995. (Since then, the book’s author, Daniel Goleman, has published two other books and several articles on EI) but EI (Emotional Intelligence) has been trendy these past few years, and people have only started to understand its importance.

In this article, I want to share everything that I have learned about EI and my own interpretation of it, describing it concisely so that you can digest it and take action on your end. We will learn why EI is important for leadership and how to master the technique so that you can be “emotionally intelligent.” Let’s dive in!

Why do we need EI (Emotional Intelligence)?

Life today is complicated. We have so much going on and limited resources. With our fast-paced life, 24/7 connected life, COVID-19 crisis and inflation, it’s like it’s never-ending. And now, what about Emotional Intelligence? Come on, Philippe, what are you talking about? Well, let me explain.

EI, or Emotional Intelligence, is the skills and characteristics behind leadership performance.

Think about EI as our ability to be aware of our own and others' emotions, to regulate our emotions, to be resilient under pressure, or even to defuse a tough situation, whereas, in regular times, we would experience anxiety and stress.

An important skill to have if you want to become a great leader.

Our EI is calculated or measured by our EQ (Emotional Quotient), like how we measure our “intelligence” with IQ.

What does research say?

Years of research show that emotional intelligence is the key trait that sets top performers apart from the rest. It’s an effective way to channel your energy for maximum impact. A research team compared emotional intelligence with 33 other workplace skills and found it to be the strongest indicator of success, accounting for 58% of job performance across all roles.

Their studies revealed that 90% of top performers possess strong emotional intelligence, whereas only 20% of low performers do. While it's possible to succeed without it, the odds aren't in your favour.

If we look at the Top 10 Skills trend, we can see that Emotional Intelligence is coming in at 6th in 2020 and is part of the list of the top skills in 2025 by the World Economic Forum.

Wait, so people have EI naturally?

Interestingly no. EI is not something you are just born with, but one way you can get better at it is by simply being around people with high EQ. The more we engage with empathetic individuals, the more our own empathy grows. Similarly, spending time with people who openly express and discuss emotions helps us better recognise and understand feelings. This shows that emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed through experience rather than an innate ability that only a few are born with.

The other way is to train your brain to be more aware, and there are some exercises you can do to get better at this. I will go through it in detail… obviously!

Mindful or Mind full?

While being the most complex part of our body, our brain still struggles to process a lot of information simultaneously. In modern times, we are experiencing a lot of information overload, and our brains are already filtering a lot of information throughout the day.

Imagine being constantly fed ads, Instagram stories/reels, your boss’ emails, and, on top of that, you just received your phone bill—all at the same time!

In a society where we feel guilty about being bored, we constantly seek more information. But our brains already have enough information to handle.

In the past, my partner would tell me something, and 10 sec later, I would have already forgotten what she told me. It happens often when we don’t process the information we already have. Something that happened a lot when I was running my agency…

Treat your mind like a mobile phone. When it runs out of battery, it needs to be recharged, similar to what you do to your car when it needs refuelling. The exact process applies to your mind.

Would you want to keep using your phone when it’s at 10% constantly? This is what we are doing with our brain.

Your energy cup

A good and very simple visualisation is to think your mind like a cup. This cup is filled with information that it needs to process. On top of that, this cup have a thermostat of positive energy and negative energy.

Your goal is to simple balance your energy so it’s more positive that negative and reduce the information so it doesn’t overload it.

I found this representation very helpful for me. Created by me 🤓

At the start of the day, we would start with a rather empty cup with a positive energy level for most of the case. As we go through the day, we fill it with information and tasks to action. We fill it with positive or negative emotion that comes our way (mostly negative).

If we don’t deal with the information and balance the energy level, this is where things start to go off and we lose focus and start being more and more negative.

This is why it’s important to constantly check your state. How is my current energy level? Do I feel negative or positive? Am I constantly thinking about something?

In part 2, we will discuss on how to deal with the negative energy and information overload.

Emotions are contagious, not consciously.

Another principle I want you to understand is that emotions are contagious, whether we want it or not.

Have you been next to someone stressed or very negative and felt suddenly anxious and negative too? Or if you’ve been around a group of strangers that started to dance, and more people are coming to join them on the dance floor? Positive and negative emotions are super contagious, and we are not even beginning to understand how connected we are as a species.

Now, I want to think about a time when you felt someone passed on their emotion to you, and then you passed on that emotion to a close person.

We often don’t consciously feel it, but we do it a lot!

This leads to my next part of EI, the Emotional Framework or Blueprint, a four-step problem-solving process that anyone can apply to almost any important interaction, decision or situation.

In the next part, we will examine each part of the Emotional Blueprint and understand its concept.