EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT NATURAL. IT IS TAUGHT.

If you have ever worked with a brilliant jerk, you already know that IQ gets you in the door, but your Emotional intelligence and your Emotional Quotient keeps you in the room.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability, your capacity to recognise emotions (yours and others’), manage them effectively, and respond in a way that builds connection rather than chaos. EI is not something you are born with or without, it is a learned skill sharpened through lived experience, relationships, discomfort, mistakes, and the occasional awkward apology text. Some people learn it through nurturing homes, others learn it the hard way from breakdowns, betrayals, and having to rebuild how they relate to people.

Emotional Quotient (EQ) is the scorecard for your EI, reflecting how well you apply your emotional intelligence in real-time. Your EQ speaks to your emotional competence, how you regulate yourself, how you handle conflict, how you respond to stress, and how you build trust.

EI is the muscle. EQ is the mirror.

Our first lessons in emotional intelligence often come from childhood. For some, it is the parent who calmly explains why hitting your sibling is a no-go. For others, it is the sibling who hits back harder and teaches consequences. Either way these are important lessons.

I learned EQ not from a textbook but from family. My mother taught me the sharp end of words. My father taught me the power of silence. Between the two, I picked up a skill set that would later become my secret weapon in business and leadership.

Last year, I was coaching a high-performing exec who had just had a very public meltdown in front of her team. She was under pressure with deadlines, board expectations, sleep deprivation, the works. She was not a bad leader, just an emotionally untrained one. In our debrief, she told me she thought if she just delivered the numbers, it would be enough. But leadership is not just about results, how you make people feel in the process of getting them matters a lot.

We rebuilt from there, we worked on pausing before reacting, listening before responding, and managing triggers like performance metrics depended on it, well, because they did. Six months later, her team’s engagement scores improved, turnover dropped, and she was offered a promotion. That is the thing about EQ, it pays dividends you cannot always see on a spreadsheet.

You do not have to be a leader to need emotional intelligence. If you have ever held back a snarky reply in a team meeting, talked someone down from an anxiety spiral or swallowed your pride to apologise first, then you have practiced EQ. If you have ever failed at all of the above and made it worse, well now you know where the growth lies.

In workplaces, I often embed emotional intelligence without ever using the term. It shows up as:

• Feedback training (how to give and receive it without bruises).

• Difficult conversations (learning to hold space, not just deliver facts).

• Team dynamics coaching (navigating egos and alliances like a pro).

These are not soft skills, they are business-critical and in families, it is displayed when we are:

• Teaching kids to name emotions instead of explode.

• Modelling conflict resolution instead of shouting matches.

• Owning your own mess-ups and showing how to repair.

EQ ripples through every environment it touches.

Think about it, who was the first person who showed you how to hold your emotions with grace? Who helped you see someone else’s point of view, even when you did not want to? Maybe it was a tough boss, a compassionate teacher, a relentless partner. Maybe it was the moment you completely messed up and had to rebuild. However it came, you learned it. If you haven’t, there’s good news…EQ can be learned at any age, in any role, from any stage. You just have to be willing to notice, reflect, and respond instead of react.

Emotional intelligence is about being effective and understanding people. It is a requirement for anyone who wants to lead well, whether at work, at home, or in life. If you are working on your EQ, keep going. If you are not, now is the perfect time to start.