I am Longitude fellow Jesse Annan van der Meulen from Rice University, and today I’ll be presenting a sound byte by Dr. Jeff Frey, vice president of innovation at Talent Path, an enterprise working to further educate emerging tech talents. He’ll be speaking to us about emotional intelligence, and how this is crucial to leadership success.

I’m Dr. Jeff Frey from Houston, Texas, vice president of innovation at Talent Path, a venture that is upskilling emerging tech talent, and I’m on faculty at the business school of Rice University and the Citadel, where I teach innovation courses with a lean toward my research subject: emotional intelligence.

We’ve had quite a lot of change recently in our world, and in our lives personally. While these changes are on an impact scale like no other. leaders in business groups and nonprofits have always had to deal with uncertain environments.

I’ve become a devourer of whatever wisdom I can find or even create for myself around how leaders handle their leadership, the change that impacts them, their professional effectiveness, and personal wellbeing. These things flow and lead one to the other, but maybe not in the way you might think.

Take the CEO of a large nationwide nonprofit who was on a wedding anniversary trip with his wife when an event prompted his team to reach out and call him home to personally take charge of the situation. He did, it was a huge success, and he received an award for the diligence with which he handled it. From all outward appearances, he did the right thing.

Maybe as a one-time event in isolation, this noble act makes sense, but our CEO has made a habit of missing family outings, staying at work too long, and letting his physical and emotional health go by the wayside… all for the mission of the organization.

What he doesn’t realize is that he is headed for some unfortunate life events which will be termed “burn out.” His personal health will fade, and professional effectiveness will be lost. The very organization that he was working so hard for will be deemed ineffective and the mission unfulfilled for a time.

Sad story I know, and I usually tell ones from a positive angle, but, what’s the lesson here?

If our leader was equipped with the knowledge and skills to recognize that his actions, which looked to him and everyone else around him as being positive, sold out to the organization, setting the example… if he recognized that his actions were driving himself and eventually his organization down a dark path, he most certainly would have turned them around.

It’s the difference between an unsustainable leader and a sustainable one, and a factor in that is emotional intelligence.

A leader with high emotional intelligence first has self-awareness. They understand themselves and are aware of their emotions, actions, and how those impact themselves and others. This can come through personality assessments, and situational analyses. Coworkers, and friends can also give us this perspective.

Once that’s known, self-regulation kicks in. Do what is right, not what is wrong. Do what is beneficial, not what is destructive. Easier said than done, but peers, accountability partners, and mentors can assist with this step. 

My hope for leaders, and anyone who is facing an uncertain environment with constant change, is to become professionally and personally impervious to the shifts around them by having a solid foundation self-awareness and self-regulation. These pillars of emotional intelligence can save individuals and organizations from destruction. If you are a leader in your home, school, group, or business, and you feel that you don’t trust yourself in uncertain situations to make a call that will benefit both your followers and yourself, try boosting your emotional intelligence. I personally think it has become in recent months the biggest factor differentiating leader success or failure in these changing times.

Jesse Annan van der Meulen, Longitude fellow, Rice University:

Thank you Dr. Frey, for sharing your insights with us.

In times of a worldwide pandemic that is draining our mental health batteries, emotional intelligence is more important than ever before. Yet, it seems like not a lot of people are aware of its meaning or application in the real world, myself included. The best definition I encountered online goes as follows: emotional intelligence is the quality that enables us to confront with patience, insight, and imagination the many problems that we face in our affective relationship with ourselves and other people.

The overcommitted CEO that Dr. Frey mentions is a textbook example of how Western society likes to view the work-life balance. That is, when push comes to shove, a work-life balance can be forgotten and one is often expected to commit to work fully. Pulling all nighters, working during the weekends, and expectations of immediate responses to an email, are just a few examples of things that have become commonplace. Adding on to that list, we can take the CEO who comes back from a vacation to solve an emergency situation at work.

But what about emotional intelligence? Why do we not give the same amount of credit to people that prioritize their own wellbeing over work? Why do I feel looked down upon when I want to tell my college professor that I prefer not to have tests on Saturdays? I don’t know if anyone can give a definitive answer to these questions. But luckily, new initiatives that stress the importance of emotional intelligence are emerging more and more. Dr. Frey is not alone in recognizing that cultivating emotional intelligence should become a priority. And I can only hope that more people will start to realize the same.