Scaling Up Emotional Intelligence

In an interview for Fast Company a few years ago, I was asked to comment on the concept of emotional intelligence (E.I.); at the time, I was teaching a seminar on globalization and leadership.

I said, “Emotional intelligence is good for simple emotions, but it doesn’t get at the complex dynamics that play out in a workplace where you’re in a multilateral relationship.” Highly emotionally intelligent people—who rank high on responsiveness, empathy, listening, and self-awareness—excel at interpersonal interaction, but they may still struggle with groups that are too big to manage through personal face-to-face interactions.

“A skilled manager who’s good at both one-on-one interactions and skilled at group interactions is hard to find. Invariably, you have people who are very good at one or the other,” I said. “If you’re working across global teams, as a lot of managers do today, it takes more than E.I. to be successful.”

High emotional intelligence describes empathy, which may be a poor leadership tool in some contexts. To be successful, a manager must grasp some level of power dynamics that gets projects done. It’s been argued that high-EQ leaders with bad intentions can be deft manipulators, but the pure-hearted may pose risks in some contexts, like being too sensitive to others’ feelings to get anything done.

Emotional intelligence debuted over 20 years ago when DEI issues were not as salient. There’s evidence to suggest that the ability to navigate culturally diverse working environments may trump general and emotional intelligence for certain “cross-border” managers.

Culture and complex emotions now interact when we talk about globalization, which is transforming the workplace in ways we’re only beginning to realize. If you’re working across global teams, as a lot of managers do today, it takes more than E.I. to be successful, like knowledge of places and people and local cultures.

The ways people experience and communicate their emotions already vary tremendously from person to person. When you throw race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, social mores, sexual orientation, and other factors into the mix, the complexity grows exponentially.

To illustrate, look at the working of the United Nations' officials dealing with climate change; it may give you insights into this process. In these cases, it’s less about emotional intelligence. It’s just a different order of analysis altogether trying to convince stakeholders to make coordinated decisions—with interpersonal, commercial, local, regional, national, and global consequences.

It isn’t that emotional intelligence doesn’t matter; it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Today, cultural intelligence, global intelligence, and environmental or ecological intelligence are equally, if not more, important.

Cultural intelligence can be seen as a person's ability to understand, be mindful of, and function persuasively in different contexts with high cultural diversity. We are cultural beings shaped by the early and later conditioning of our immediate environment.

Global intelligence invariably refers to the impact of global secular trends on our daily lives through technology, trade, travel, and the global pandemics that can upend our lives with increasing regularity. Despite national boundaries, our selves are deeply shaped by the tools, technologies, travels, goods, and services we consume daily.

Environmental intelligence increasingly refers to the awareness of and adaptation to the impending climate change and crisis.

Of course, like any enterprise of human development, these are interconnected domains of inquiry and research. The forces of culture, globalization, and the climate crisis impact our emotional and cognitive ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world, no matter where we live on the planet.