My Thoughts

Why Most "Emotional Intelligence" Training is Complete Rubbish (And What Actually Works)

The Problem with Feel-Good EQ Training

The standard emotional intelligence training formula goes something like this: spend three hours talking about self-awareness, throw in some role-playing exercises about empathy, add a dash of "managing your emotions," and Bob's your uncle – you're emotionally intelligent!

What a load of absolute nonsense.

Real emotional intelligence in the workplace isn't about holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It's about being able to read the room when your star performer is about to quit, knowing when to push back on unrealistic deadlines without burning bridges, and having difficult conversations without everyone walking away feeling like they've been run over by a truck.

I've seen too many managers come out of these feel-good workshops thinking they're the next Daniel Goleman, only to completely cock up the next performance review because they confused "being emotionally intelligent" with "being nice all the time."

What Actually Works: The Uncomfortable Truth

After watching countless training programs fail spectacularly, I've developed what I call the "Reality-Based EQ Approach." It's not pretty, it's not always comfortable, but it bloody well works.

First: Stop pretending emotions don't exist in business. They do. Deal with it.

I used to be one of those "leave your personal life at the door" managers. Didn't work. Never does. People bring their whole selves to work, including their anxiety about mortgage rates, their frustration with their teenager's attitude, and their excitement about their weekend plans. Pretending otherwise is just setting yourself up for failure.

Second: Learn to recognise emotional patterns, not just emotional states.

Here's something they won't teach you in those expensive workshops: it's not about knowing someone is angry. It's about recognising that Sarah always gets defensive on Friday afternoons when she's behind on her reports, or that David's sarcasm levels spike when he feels his expertise isn't being valued. That's actionable intelligence.

Third: Practice the art of strategic emotional honesty.

This one's going to ruffle some feathers, but here it is: sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing you can do is tell someone they're being a pain in the arse. Obviously, you don't say it like that (usually), but addressing problematic behaviour directly, with empathy for the person but zero tolerance for the impact, is genuine emotional intelligence.

The Australian Workplace Reality Check

Let's talk about something else the training manuals won't tell you: emotional intelligence looks different in Australian workplaces than it does in American corporate environments.

We value straight talking here. We appreciate someone who can give honest feedback without wrapping it in seventeen layers of corporate speak. But we also have this cultural tendency to avoid confrontation by making jokes or changing the subject. Both of these traits can be emotionally intelligent responses when used appropriately, or completely counterproductive when misapplied.

I've worked with teams from Perth to Brisbane, and I can tell you that what passes for "good emotional intelligence" in a Sydney financial services firm might come across as fake or manipulative in a Queensland mining operation. Context matters. Culture matters.

The Three Skills That Actually Move the Needle

After years of trial and error (and believe me, there were some spectacular errors), I've identified three specific skills that separate the genuinely emotionally intelligent leaders from the ones who just talk a good game:

Skill One: Emotional Forecasting

This is about reading the emotional weather patterns in your team. Not just "Mike seems stressed today," but "Mike's stress levels have been climbing for three weeks, his usual coping strategies aren't working, and if we don't intervene, he's either going to explode at someone or start looking for another job."

Most managers are terrible at this because they only pay attention to emotions when they're already causing problems. It's like only checking the weather after you're already soaked.

Skill Two: Calibrated Honesty

This is where most people stuff up emotional intelligence completely. They think being emotionally intelligent means never saying anything that might upset someone. Wrong.

Real emotional intelligence is about calibrating your honesty to achieve the best outcome for everyone involved. Sometimes that means being brutally direct. Sometimes it means gentle guidance. Sometimes it means knowing when to say nothing at all.

I learned this the hard way when I avoided giving hard feedback to a team member for months because I didn't want to "hurt their feelings." When I finally had the conversation, they told me they'd been waiting for guidance and felt abandoned by my silence. My attempt at being "emotionally sensitive" had actually been emotionally destructive.

Skill Three: Recovery Mastery

Here's what they definitely won't tell you in training: you're going to get it wrong. A lot. The mark of genuine emotional intelligence isn't perfection – it's how quickly and effectively you can recover from emotional missteps.

I once completely misread a situation with a team member who I thought was being difficult, when actually they were dealing with a serious family health issue they hadn't felt comfortable sharing. Instead of pretending it never happened, I acknowledged my mistake, apologised specifically for the impact of my assumptions, and asked how I could better support them going forward. That recovery conversation strengthened our working relationship more than months of "perfect" interactions ever could have.

The Uncomfortable Questions You Need to Ask

If you're serious about developing real emotional intelligence in your workplace, here are the questions that'll make you squirm – and that's exactly why you need to ask them:

Are you avoiding difficult conversations because they're genuinely not necessary, or because you're uncomfortable with conflict? There's a difference, and being honest about which one it is will change how you approach leadership entirely.

When you say you're being "emotionally supportive," are you actually helping people grow and improve, or are you enabling behaviour that's not serving them or the team?

How much of your "emotional intelligence" is actually just people-pleasing dressed up in business language?

What This Means for Your Business

Look, I'm not saying all emotional intelligence training is useless. I'm saying most of it misses the point entirely.

If you're going to invest in developing EQ in your organisation, focus on practical application over theoretical understanding. Get your managers working with real scenarios they'll actually face, not made-up case studies from textbooks.

And for the love of all that's holy, stop measuring the success of emotional intelligence training by how good people feel when they leave the room. Measure it by whether difficult conversations are happening more effectively, whether team conflicts are being resolved faster, and whether people are staying engaged even when the work gets challenging.

Real emotional intelligence isn't about creating a workplace where everyone feels happy all the time. It's about creating a workplace where people can navigate the full range of human emotions without everything falling apart.

The best compliment I ever received from a client wasn't "your training made everyone feel great." It was "your training helped us have the hard conversations we'd been avoiding, and now we're actually making progress."

That's what emotional intelligence looks like when it's working properly. Not pretty, not always comfortable, but absolutely essential for any business that wants to deal with the reality of human beings working together under pressure.

Bottom line: Stop buying into emotional intelligence training that treats emotions like problems to be managed, and start developing the skills to work with emotions as the complex, powerful, and utterly human forces they actually are.