How to Develop Emotional Intelligence as a Leader Without Being Everyone's Mate

Oct 1

9 min read

Key takeaways

If you want to know how to develop emotional intelligence as a leader, start with the gap between how you see yourself and how others see you. Tasha Eurich's research found around 95% of people think they're self-aware, but only 10 to 15% are.
Daniel Goleman's model splits emotional intelligence into four parts: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Self-awareness is the foundation, not the whole thing.
“That's just how I am” is a fixed-mindset excuse. Leaders who won't look at their impact on others are hard to work for, and in Australia psychological safety is now part of the legal picture.
Being your team's mate isn't the same as making them feel safe. Look for loving critics: people who care about you and will still tell you the truth.
Three qualities do most of the work: curiosity, vulnerability and comfort with uncertainty.

About 20 years ago, Kate was a leader in engineering when she did a 360-degree assessment. She got two pictures back. One showed how she saw her own behaviour. The other showed how the people around her saw it. They didn't match, and it was a shock.

That's where this episode started, and it's where this post starts too. If you're trying to work out how to develop emotional intelligence as a leader, the first job is finding out what you can't see.

“And we all have blind spots, and they're called blind because we don't see them.” — Dr Kate De Jong

This was episode 16 of our Road Map to Business Success series, in the Leadership quadrant of the Thriving Business Wheel. It follows straight on from our self-awareness episode.

We're Dr Kate De Jong, a PhD engineer turned business strategist, and Sam Morris, a Navy veteran who's spent 20 years in business working out what makes businesses tick and what makes them stall.

What Is Emotional Intelligence, and How Is It Different From Self-Awareness?

If you already know your strengths and weaknesses, isn't that enough?

Self-awareness is only the first layer of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence also covers managing your reactions, reading other people and using all of that to lead well.

Daniel Goleman brought the idea to a mass audience in his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence. In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, Goleman and Richard Boyatzis set out the four domains most people now use:

Self-awareness: knowing your emotions, strengths, weaknesses and patterns.
Self-management: handling your emotions under pressure. Kate describes it as the space between the trigger and your response. You take a breath instead of saying something you'll regret.
Social awareness: reading other people's emotions, showing empathy and sensing the undercurrents in a room.
Relationship management: using that awareness to influence, coach, manage conflict and collaborate.

Sam's observation was that these can be badly out of step. Plenty of people will happily say, “Oh yes, I know I'm like this.” That's self-awareness of a sort. But they're not willing to do anything about it, and they don't see the impact it has on the people around them.

Kate's point was that emotional intelligence isn't fixed. You can build it, but it takes effort and it's uncomfortable.

Why Does Emotional Intelligence Matter So Much in Leadership?

Can't a good leader just be clear about what they want?

Because the way you make people feel shapes how well they work, how long they stay and whether they'll tell you when something's wrong. The old command-and-control boss doesn't hold up anymore.

Sam was blunt about this one. Gone are the days of the boss who says, “This is what I want done, go and do it, figure it out.” And there's one line she's heard too many times.

“I think that excuse from people, honestly, it really rubs me the wrong way.” — Sam Morris

The excuse is “that's just how I am.” Sam puts that squarely in fixed-mindset territory, which we covered in episode 14 on growth mindset. If you think that's an acceptable answer, you're not going to get far as a leader.

Kate's read of the research is that leaders with high emotional intelligence build stronger cultures and more trust, because they create psychological safety. Amy Edmondson's 1999 study of work teams, published in Administrative Science Quarterly, defined team psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. She found it was linked to learning behaviour, which in turn was linked to team performance.

There's a second layer to it, too. We call these skills “soft”, but Kate doesn't buy that.

“There's nothing soft about these skills. They're actually very hard to develop.” — Dr Kate De Jong

Is Psychological Safety a Legal Requirement for Australian Employers?

What does this actually mean if you employ people?

In Victoria, yes. The Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 started on 1 December 2025. WorkSafe Victoria says employers now have a specific duty to identify psychosocial hazards, like bullying, and take reasonable steps to control the risks.

Kate called it the “very low basic level” reason to care about emotional intelligence. The better reason, in her view, is that psychologically safe workplaces tend to keep people longer and get more from them.

Sam played devil's advocate here, with her employer's hat on. After months of going through a hiring process, she finds the balance hard. As she understands it, there's a lot you can't ask a candidate about their mental health, yet you're expected to look after it once they're on board. And most business owners aren't trained psychologists.

“I'm now responsible for how every single person in my employ individually responds to things. That's a lot.” — Sam Morris

Kate agreed there's too much onus on employers. In her view it should be a two-way street, with staff also putting in effort to look after their wellbeing and grow their own EQ. She also drew a clear line between two roles.

“We're not counsellors, psychologists, we can't be, but we can be the coach that is forward-looking and help people in the workplace develop some very basic EQ skills.” — Dr Kate De Jong

Kate sees it as a sliding scale. Anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions sit in therapy territory, and that's work for qualified professionals. Emotional intelligence is the work from the middle of the scale up, where you're building healthy habits. We're not lawyers either. If you're unsure what applies to your business, check with WorkSafe or the regulator in your state.

How Can You Develop Emotional Intelligence as a Leader?

Where do you actually start if you want to get better at this?

Start by getting outside feedback, then practise three habits: curiosity, vulnerability and comfort with uncertainty. You can start light and go deeper when you're ready.

Start with something fun. Kate often uses BANK personality profiling with teams, and sometimes Myers-Briggs. It's light-hearted and non-judgemental, and it gets the team talking about how differently they each work. Even handing people a set of four coloured cards and asking them to rank them is a low-threat way in.

Go deeper when you need to. For more serious issues, like bullying complaints, Kate uses the Harrison Assessment, a much more in-depth psychometric tool. This is where it gets uncomfortable, because people have to look at their shadow behaviours. Not everyone's ready. A colleague of Kate's recently had a client dismiss his results as “astrology” and walk out of the session.

Ask for feedback from the right people. Goleman and Boyatzis suggest a 360-degree assessment, using ratings from yourself and people who know you well. It's the same tool that showed Kate her own gap all those years ago.

Get curious instead of defensive. Kate is co-writing a book on this, The WisDumb Way. The idea is that EQ means holding seemingly opposite qualities at once, like being both frank and diplomatic. The three qualities at the heart of it are curiosity, vulnerability and comfort with uncertainty. Kate's practice when conflict starts to rise is simple.

“Don't get defensive, get curious.” — Dr Kate De Jong

One of Kate's co-authors, now a relationship counsellor, learned this the hard way. Earlier in his career he was a radio host, and he tore into a guest live on air, sure he was just telling it straight. The guest took off his mic and walked out, and the host lost his job. His lesson, as Kate tells it, was that honesty isn't the same as truth. You can be honest about how you feel without that being true for everyone.

If you love plain speaking, this one's worth sitting with. Straight talk only works when it's delivered with the other person in mind.

Can You Be a Good Leader and Still Be Your Team's Mate?

Isn't being friendly with your staff a good thing?

Friendly, yes. Mates, not really. If you're everyone's mate, it gets very hard to pull someone up when they need it, and you can end up blindsided and hurt when they leave.

When Sam looked into what EQ looks like in Australia, one trap stood out: confusing being a mate with providing psychological safety. Kate uses a simple way to sort the people in your life:

Loving uncritical people: they love you no matter what and won't tell you when you've got it wrong.
Unloving critical people: nothing you do is right, so their feedback isn't useful.
Loving critics: they care about you and will still tell you what they saw.

“But your loving critics, that's where the gold is.” — Dr Kate De Jong

Leadership isn't about being friends with everyone. It's about showing the vision, living the values you expect from others and giving people the feedback they need to grow.

Where Does Emotional Intelligence Show Up in a Small Business?

Does any of this matter if it's just you, or a small team?

It shows up everywhere, even for solo operators. Sam named three places it has the most impact: how you hire, how you run the business day to day, and how you market and sell.

Simon Sinek came up as Sam's pick for the master of EQ. In Leaders Eat Last (2014) he argues that good leaders shift the focus from themselves to their people. Sam also likes his habit of encouraging leaders to ask a simple question: are you okay? The answer tells you a lot. If someone's clearly struggling and won't open up, that's a sign they don't feel safe with you. As Kate put it, you can't get vulnerable if you don't feel safe.

On marketing, Sam's view is that the trends that work are the ones that reach people where they are. It's less about the trend and more about the understanding behind it. That's why Kate has been working back through the prompts in our AI Setup Workbook. They help you get clear on your why, your brand voice and your ideal customer at a deeper level, which is the groundwork for marketing that actually lands.

And if you work alone, you're still leading. You lead your clients and you lead in your market.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you learn emotional intelligence, or are you born with it?

You can learn it. Kate's view, which matches Goleman's work, is that EQ is a skill you build through effort and practice. It's often uncomfortable, because it means looking at behaviour you'd rather not see.

What's the difference between self-awareness and emotional intelligence?

Self-awareness is knowing your own emotions, strengths and patterns. Emotional intelligence builds on that with self-management, social awareness and relationship management. You can be self-aware and still not manage the impact you have on others.

How do I find out how emotionally intelligent I am?

Ask other people. A 360-degree assessment compares your view of yourself with how people who know you well see you. Choose loving critics, people who care about you and will be honest.

Do I need emotional intelligence if I run a business on my own?

Yes. You still lead your clients, suppliers and your place in the market. EQ shapes how you sell, how you handle conflict and how people feel about working with you.

Your EQ Check for This Week

Three things to try before Friday.

Name two loving critics in your life or business. Ask each of them one question: what's something I do that affects people in a way I might not notice?
Next time you feel your temperature rising in a conversation, pause and ask one curious question before you respond. Notice what changes.
Ask someone on your team, or a client, “Are you okay?” and mean it. If they won't open up, ask yourself what might be stopping them from feeling safe.

“EQ is not a one and done, it's a lifelong work.” — Sam Morris

Listen to the full episode

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