Many businesses discuss emotional intelligence, but in practice, this concept has remained in the background for quite some time. Sure, you see many references to it in management and leadership literature. However, employers didn’t consider it as a factor when it came to actual performance reviews and hiring decisions.
This is what happens to anything they consider “soft skills.” In the culture of most countries in the Global North, the word “soft” alone suggests something less important than what’s “hard. ” And while many companies want competencies like self-awareness, emotional regulation, and social skills, they don’t necessarily reward those who possess them. However, that will likely change.
EI predicts performance better than IQ does, and here’s why
You’ve read this right. While the exact statistics vary across industries and cultures, several recent research publications indicate that emotional intelligence (EI) accounts for more than 50% of job performance across all types of roles. One would say it makes EI more predictive than IQ ever was. The demand for EI skills is growing too, and not just for leadership positions.
The interest in emotional intelligence skills has accelerated due to two shifts occurring somewhat simultaneously—the rise of AI and the proliferation of distributed, multicultural teams. Ever since we started deploying AI to automate technical, repetitive, and procedural tasks, it has become increasingly clear that while you might be able to outsource “hard” skills to machines, you can’t do that with “softer” skills.
These are the skills that an employee needs to navigate teamwork and the corporate environment. In the age of automation, human professionals are there for value-driven decision-making, systems thinking, and understanding emotions. These are all the things that AI agents are not the best at.
The shift towards distributed work compounded this. Post-COVID 19 pandemic, over a quarter of the workforce operates in some sort of hybrid setup. In the U.S. specifically, McKinsey found that 87% of employees seize flexible work opportunities when the company offers them. Working with people across time zones and without the ambient social cues inherent to a watercooler chat requires being attuned to what people haven’t verbalized. And this, in a nutshell, is how we got to the point where emotional intelligence becomes a performance metric.
How to measure emotional intelligence
We started tracking this shift operationally a few years ago at our company. First, we wanted to anchor specific markers of emotional intellect in our hiring framework. We’ve figured out several ways to assess how candidates navigate ambiguity, respond to challenges, and analyze moments of failure. Essentially, what we originally saw as a test for being “a right culture fit” has become a measurement of EI skills.
Previously, we’d just assumed people had these skills until proven otherwise. However, now we assess for them just as we do with any other skill. Because high emotional quotient (EQ) is linked to career achievement, we needed to stop viewing it as secondary or decorative. We now know emotional intelligence drives collaboration velocity. It also helps people make better decisions in critical situations, and even determines the level of an employee’s overall satisfaction.
What applies to junior and midlevel employees also applies to leadership positions. For instance, there’s extensive proof that empathetic leaders are better at engaging their teams. They are also more creative when it comes to solutions, and are more keen on driving innovation. And so when I say EQ is a performance metric, I mean that literally.
Our next step was to factor emotional intelligence into progression conversations, too. A team member who consistently shows emotional awareness by reading a room, being analytical in terms of behavior patterns, and regulating their own reactions under pressure, is contributing to our performance just as much as someone hitting a quarterly target. In fact, I’d argue that it might be a much more significant contribution, because the effects compound.
We use a number of tools to measure emotional intelligence: behavioral interviewing frameworks, 360-degree assessments, and situational judgment tests. Depending on your context, you might need to tweak the framework or resort to AI-powered evaluation tools made to assess emotional capabilities during candidate interactions. Just as it always is with emotional intelligence, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution (yet).
Not the stick to beat with
Even though it’s progressively measurable, you can’t use emotional intelligence as the sole metric to judge someone’s readiness for a promotion or a raise. What you want to do is provide them with a fruitful environment to improve their emotional skills in a way that serves the team. These are all competencies that you can develop, so it’s worth investing in training and longer learning trajectories that benefit the specific requirements of your company.
