The Growing Need For Emotional Intelligence At Work

7 min readMay 3, 2023

“I’ve been taught everything but emotional intelligence”

These are the words of Jay-Z in an interview with Kevin Hart, during which Jay-Z pinpoints the fractures that happen when people in close relationships aren’t able to communicate with honesty and emotional authenticity.

He describes the ways that different people will hear, and therefore experience very different messaging from the same situation. In the context of Jay-Z’s own family, this created a lasting trauma that he is now working through in therapy.

Jay-Z describes the power of seeing things from another person’s perspective and also shares this important piece of wisdom:

“Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you”

Watch The 5-Minute Interview With Jay-Z

He’s not the only one…

Jay-Z isn’t the only one who’s education and early life experiences lacked a focus on emotional intelligence.

I’m always thrilled to see children in primary schools learning meditation, mindfulness and emotional awareness but most of us, including the vast majority of the existing workforce did not grow up with the tools that we need to process, heal and communicate our emotional needs.

Why Does It Matter?

The world of leadership is changing.

If you want to scale your business and maximise the potential of your people, emotional intelligence is key.

~ We need our people to have the capacity to care for themselves effectively.

~ We need our people to be able to communicate their needs and their ideas.

~ We need our people to be able to collaborate effectively and be flexible with their roles and project teams.

~ We need information to flow freely.

~ And we need the dynamics of power to shift depending on where the most relevant knowledge and expertise can be found.

All of these require emotional intelligence as well as an accessible narrative for your people to be able to communicate effectively.

Control vs Trust

“The art required on this journey is to let go of being responsible for developing people and instead, make fully transparent what is required and then allow for the emergence of learning spaces from the collective.”
Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller

Developing emotional intelligence at work is not something that we can control. It’s something we need to create space for.

Where Do We Start?

The best place to start is by identifying the ways that your work culture might be stifling the development of emotional intelligence within your people.

Do any of these statements ring true within your business?

~ We are accustomed to making decisions around training needs without the input of our teams.

~ We are accustomed to a style of training delivery that creates one-way communication from the ‘experts’ to our people.

~ Our leaders have full control in the meetings that we hold.

~ All of the work gatherings for our people run to a predetermined agenda.

~ There are no spaces for peer to peer learning within our business.

~ We don’t have any dedicated space for relational development during work time

This is not an exhaustive list but if any of these points sound familiar, it’s an indication that you might not be creating conditions for emotional intelligence to thrive within your business.

Creating Space For Yourself

It goes without saying that as a leader, you must create space for the development of your own emotional intelligence before expecting anything to shift in your work culture.

Here are my top 5 ways of creating that space for yourself…

1. Meditation
Learning the art of sitting with yourself and noticing all and everything that emerges. My go-to source of guided meditation is Sadhguru but there are many different tools online to help.

2. Therapy
If therapy isn’t an approach that you’re comfortable with, you could also seek out a counsellor or a coach. Creating space for yourself where there is someone to listen, support, bring empathy and reflect your experiences to you is invaluable.

3. Yoga
Any mindful practise of movement is a great way to listen to yourself in ways we don’t often get to do. I enjoy Melissa West’s online yoga classes but it doesn’t have to be yoga… Tai Chi, Qi Gong, breath work and other martial arts will have a similar effect.

4. Group Facilitation
There are an increasing number of groups designed for like-minded people to get together and share their experiences. No agenda, no predefined outcome, simply an opportunity to learn, listen and share.

5. Surfing
Okay, this one isn’t my personal choice but it came up in a session I was facilitating for a company last year. Surfing (or whatever physical activity works for you) is an important way of giving your body time to process your emotions and explore whatever comes up for you…
And the closer to nature you can get with this one, the better!

Relational Spaces At Work

Relational spaces are less about meeting, more about gathering. Less about business, more about us as people. Less about doing, more about being.

They are an open space to talk, listen and share.

Here’s a really accessible process that will create some beautiful space for the development of emotional intelligence at work.

Define The Focus:

Anyone in the team can create the focus for your relational space. Get creative with the theme and alternate who sets the theme and who facilitates the space. Your people could collaborate and co-facilitate if they want to.

Check In:

Everyone has a minute or two to call out any distractions or share something to help get focussed and present. Check ins happen one at a time and there’s no cross-talk or responses needed.

The Main Event:

Introduce the focus of theme for the session and then everyone has 3–4 minutes space to share. No cross-talk and no responses are needed as each person takes their turn to contribute. This open space to share creates a vibe of deep listening, empathy and connection.

Conversation:

If there’s time after the main event, you can have a conversation about anything that might have been sparked from listening to each other. The conversation is led by whoever has something to say and is a free-flowing space.

Close:

Your space to say whatever you need to say to feel complete on leaving the session. Go one at a time and just like the check in, there’s no crosstalk or responses needed. It’s like a punctuation mark to close off the session.

Here are some examples of different themes for your relational spaces:

~ What dish would you bring to a pot luck dinner and why? What memories does the dish evoke for you?

~ What is your favourite memory of somewhere you have travelled to?

~ What are the most important things you do for your own self-care? What practices, activities or techniques do you enjoy?

~ What are you not saying? This might be something you are scared of, something you are thinking about a lot at the moment, something you’re looking forward to or something that you feel emotional about.

~ Is there anything you’d like to express or share about caring for the environment?

These kind of relational spaces are a bit like being part of your own live podcast episode.

They are rich, emotive, expansive and nourishing.

Where Do The Boundaries Of Responsibility Lie?

Engaging in conversations about emotional intelligence at work requires a certain amount of awareness around where the boundaries of responsibility lie.

I’ve supported companies with very different attitudes and cultures around emotional intelligence. There is no one size fits all when it comes to defining the boundaries of this conversation.

The most important factor is for those who are leading the exploration to set the tone and lead by example so that you stay within the boundaries of what is comfortable for your company culture.

Don’t embark on this work with any kind of force.
It must be handled with compassion, respect and spaciousness.

And Finally…

In an Apple Music interview with the band Måneskin, there was a great discussion about the ways in which the band have been defining boundaries for themselves, an important byproduct of emotional intelligence.

In an industry that is so high pressured, it is expected that an artist or band keeps going and going …and going. Even to the detriment of their own wellbeing or artistry.

Having the awareness to recognise the importance of taking time for themselves and speaking up about their needs is exactly the kind of emotional intelligence that our younger generations are making the norm.

You can listen to the whole interview here.