EQ Isn't Enough
Emotional intelligence brought emotions to leadership.
It helped leaders acknowledge emotions and their impact on team culture and performance. It did not equip leaders to regulate them.
Emotions drive behavior. They’re evolutionarily adaptive, serving three functions: motivate action, communicate to ourselves, and communicate to others. They are information. We need them to survive and thrive.
The problem: people don’t want to experience certain emotions. And, trying to avoid emotions – pushing them away, suppressing them, resisting them – doesn’t work.
Avoidance extends emotional intensity and duration. It’s counterintuitive — fundamentally misaligned with how humans function.
The answer: acceptance. Of the fact that being human, by definition, means emotions are ephemeral. They are not going away.
Acceptance decreases judgment when unwanted emotions appear. Without acceptance, we risk feeling shame for having the emotion in the first place. Which adds another layer of distress.
Acceptance isn’t resignation. It gives permission to feel and recognizes they will occur – consistently, predictably, and often at inconvenient times. Without that recognition, people try to eliminate what cannot be eliminated.
Emotion regulation starts with awareness. Naming an emotion reduces intensity.
Yet awareness is not where leadership breaks down. Emotionally conscious leaders still act ineffectively.
Misalignment between a leader’s perceived emotional intelligence and their actual behavior is common.
When leaders believe they’re emotionally skilled and employees disagree, it creates psychological uncertainty – which is linked to lower team engagement and higher burnout.
Leadership breaks down during execution. Especially under pressure, when behavior reorganizes around reducing discomfort.
Emotion regulation extends beyond awareness to in-the-moment regulation.
Which is more challenging than it sounds. Most people weren’t taught what each emotion looks like, how it shows up, or what it communicates. Marc Brackett’s research confirms that less than 10% of the population is taught how emotions work.
You have to dedicate time to learning about emotions – specifically your own.
This process – exploring your emotions and understanding how and why they emerge – is uncomfortable. That’s exactly why people avoid it. Tolerating this discomfort is necessary for growth and change. It’s the first step toward regulation.
Brackett talks about how emotion regulation doesn’t market well. People see it as a waste of their time. People don’t understand its importance. Treatment efforts are preferred to prevention.
Which makes sense: why spend time attending to your emotions when you have a neverending to-do list? Spending time learning about emotions doesn’t feel beneficial. In the moment, at least.
This brings me to one of my favorite DBT skills: the fancy version of pros and cons.
It highlights how in the short-term, working on emotion regulation requires valuable time. It’s uncomfortable. It’s challenging. You have to work hard.
Avoidance is easier. It requires no effort, no change, no distress.
In the long-term, however, emotion regulation will help you stay connected to the present. Feel grounded, more stable, and better aligned.
Not working on emotion regulation will keep you separate from the brutal facts of reality. Remain avoidant, stay reactive, and deepen discontent.
The process of learning emotion regulation skills is difficult. And, it’s worth it.
As you start treating your emotions as data, you’ll learn more about yourself. You’ll identify your protection patterns that interfere with your goals. You’ll find new ways of responding to complexity. You’ll tolerate momentary distress in the service of your values. You’ll increase your sense of self-respect.
You won’t become perfect (I’m a great example), but that’s not the point. Emotion regulation skills are continuously learned, practiced, and refined.
Instead, you’ll become curious about what contributed to ineffective behavior. You’ll validate it. And you’ll effectively identify how you want to act differently moving forward.
Emotion regulation predicts leadership performance more strongly than traditional behavioral competencies. Improvements in these skills are associated with stronger leadership effectiveness and organizational outcomes.
Brackett says these skills are the most important skills to develop. Others call them leadership superpowers. I’d call them the foundation.
And not just for leaders – for the companies they lead. Because when they model emotion regulation skills, people notice. There’s a contagion effect. The team's emotional climate shifts. And the organization’s performance strengthens.
Emotional intelligence identifies what’s happening. It does not determine what leaders do under pressure.
Regulation does – across emotion, cognition, and behavior in real time.
Regulatory capacity allows leaders to tolerate discomfort, maintain perspective, and act in alignment with their values.
That is the mechanism. Not awareness – execution.