In short: emotional intelligence at work is the ability to read, understand and manage emotions, your own and other people's, while getting the job done. Meta-analyses link it to job performance with correlations of about 0.24 to 0.30, to higher job satisfaction and to more helpful behaviour towards colleagues. It matters most in jobs full of emotional labour, such as nursing, teaching, sales and customer service. Its link with good leadership is real but far smaller than self-rated questionnaires suggest, and figures such as "EQ explains 58% of performance" come from marketing, not research.
90% of top performers have a high EQ.
Myth. The figure comes from a 2005 sales brochure by TalentSmart, based on its own questionnaire, not from a peer-reviewed study.
Emotional intelligence helps more in some jobs than in others.
Fact. Tested as a skill, it went with better performance in jobs full of emotional labour, such as customer service, and not in jobs with little of it.
Leaders who rate their own EQ highly are seen as better leaders by their teams.
Myth. When the leader and the team give separate ratings, the link drops to about .12, and the two sides barely agree on either quality.
What is emotional intelligence at work?
Emotional intelligence at work is the set of abilities that let you notice, make sense of and handle emotions in a professional setting: in yourself, in colleagues, in managers and in customers. It shows in small moments, such as how you take criticism, how you deliver bad news and whether you notice that a quiet colleague is struggling.
Researchers measure it in two broad ways, and the difference matters for everything on this page. Skill tests give people situations with best answers, much like an exam. Self-report questionnaires ask people how they see themselves, and the "mixed" or competency versions popular in business add traits such as optimism, drive and adaptability. Our free EQ test uses both kinds and shows where they disagree; the guide to emotional intelligence tests compares the professional ones.
Why emotional intelligence matters at work
Emotional intelligence matters at work because it is consistently, though moderately, linked to better job performance, higher job satisfaction and more cooperative behaviour, and the link is strongest in jobs that involve managing emotions. It is one useful predictor among several, not the master key that many articles describe. For how it compares with IQ as a predictor, see IQ vs EQ: the two land in a similar range.
These are the large reviews that most workplace claims should rest on. Each pools dozens of studies, which makes them far more reliable than any single survey.
| Review | What it covered | Main finding |
|---|---|---|
| O'Boyle and others (2011) | Meta-analysis of EI and job performance | All three kinds of EI measure correlated 0.24 to 0.30 with job performance. Self-report and competency measures added the most beyond IQ and the Big Five. |
| Joseph and Newman (2010) | Meta-analysis and "cascading" model | Skill-test EI predicted better performance in high emotional-labour jobs, and no better (or slightly worse) performance in low emotional-labour jobs. |
| Joseph, Jin, Newman and O'Boyle (2015) | Meta-analysis of self-reported "mixed" EI | Mixed EI correlated .29 with supervisor ratings, but about zero (−.02) once personality, IQ, self-efficacy and self-rated performance were controlled. |
| Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2017) | Meta-analysis of EI and work attitudes | Higher EI went with higher job satisfaction and commitment and fewer plans to quit, but only weakly for skill tests (.08 with satisfaction). |
| Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2017) | 68 studies (16,386 people) on helping behaviour; 17 (3,914) on harmful behaviour | EI went with more helping of colleagues. Self-report and competency EI went with less counterproductive behaviour; skill-test EI showed no link. |
Correlations are corrected meta-analytic estimates: 0 means no link and 1 a perfect one. In workplace research, about 0.3 counts as a moderate effect.
The type of test changes the result
Corrected correlations from two meta-analyses by Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2017). Green bars are skill tests; orange bars are questionnaires.
The pattern in the chart repeats across workplace research: questionnaire scores show much stronger links than skill tests. Part of the reason is likely that the same person often rates both their own emotional intelligence and their own satisfaction or helpfulness, and people who see themselves positively tend to do so across the board.
Emotional labour: why it matters more in some jobs
Emotional labour is the work of showing, or holding back, the emotions a job requires, and emotional intelligence predicts performance mainly in jobs with a lot of it. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the term in The Managed Heart (1983), studying flight attendants who had to stay warm and calm whatever passengers did.
Joseph and Newman's meta-analysis found that emotional intelligence measured as a skill went with better performance in high emotional-labour jobs, such as customer service and caring roles, but not in low emotional-labour jobs, where the link was flat or even slightly negative (Joseph and Newman, 2010). Their "cascading" model explains why: perceiving emotions comes first, understanding them builds on that, and regulating them is the step that finally shows up in performance.
How people do emotional labour matters too. Across 95 studies, "surface acting" (faking a feeling) was linked to exhaustion and lower job satisfaction, while "deep acting" (trying to actually feel the expected emotion, for example by seeing the customer's side) was linked to better emotional performance and customer satisfaction (Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011). Emotional skills are part of what makes deep acting possible.
Why self-rated EQ looks so impressive
Self-rated "mixed" emotional intelligence predicts job performance mostly because it overlaps with things we already measure. A meta-analysis found that mixed EI questionnaires correlated .29 with supervisors' ratings of performance. But their content overlapped heavily with personality (conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion), general mental ability, self-efficacy, self-rated performance and skill-test EI, with a multiple correlation of .79. Once those were controlled, the link with performance fell to about zero (Joseph, Jin, Newman and O'Boyle, 2015).
That doesn't make the questionnaires useless: they summarise several useful qualities in one score. It does mean a high score is not evidence of a separate hidden talent. Our guide to the Big Five personality traits explains the traits most of that overlap comes from.
Popular claims that don't hold up
- "EQ explains 58% of job performance." This comes from TalentSmart, a company that sells EQ tests and training. Its 2005 brochure, The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence, says its own questionnaire "alone explains 58% of a leader's job performance", citing a technical report in the company's own book. No peer-reviewed study has reproduced it. Independent meta-analyses find correlations of about 0.24 to 0.30, which means emotional intelligence accounts for under a tenth of the differences in job performance.
- "90% of top performers have high EQ." The same brochure says "90% of top performers are high in EQ" and "just 20% of low performers are high in EQ", again from the company's own unpublished data. Articles have repeated it for two decades without a source anyone can check.
- "EQ matters more than IQ for success." Neither the job performance nor the school evidence supports a general ranking; each predicts different things, as our IQ vs EQ guide shows.
Emotional intelligence skills at work
The core emotional intelligence skills at work are perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions, the four branches of the ability model, applied to colleagues, customers and yourself. Each one turns into concrete, observable behaviour:
Picking up feelings from faces, voices and the wording of messages, including your own early signals of stress.
At work: Hearing that a client's "sounds good" is hesitant and asking what is still bothering them.
Matching your state to the job in hand and timing tasks and conversations well.
At work: Brainstorming with the team after a win, and saving the budget review for a calmer morning.
Predicting how people will react to news, and why, and how a feeling is likely to change.
At work: Expecting a restructure to bring worry first, and planning answers to "what happens to my job?"
Regulating your own reactions and helping others settle theirs, without suppressing everything.
At work: Calming a heated handover between shifts by slowing the pace and agreeing the facts first.
Many workplace programmes sort the same ground into four different labels: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management (TalentSmartEQ). Lists of "five key skills" usually add motivation. These frameworks overlap with the four branches, but they also fold in personality traits and habits, which is why they behave more like questionnaires than skill tests in research.
In practice, the workplace skills people mean by emotional intelligence include taking feedback without defensiveness, giving feedback that people can hear, staying steady under pressure, resolving conflict, listening well, and adjusting how you communicate to the person in front of you.
Examples of emotional intelligence at work
The difference between low and high emotional intelligence is rarely dramatic. It sits in the first reaction to an ordinary moment:
| Situation | Low-EI response | High-EI response |
|---|---|---|
| Your manager criticises your work in front of the team | Argue on the spot, or go silent and stew for days | Notice the sting, ask one clarifying question, and follow up privately once you are calm |
| A colleague misses a deadline that affects you | Send a sharp message and copy in the boss | Ask what happened first, then agree a new date and what you need from them |
| A customer raises their voice on the phone | Match their tone, or read out the policy | Name the frustration, slow down, then say what you can actually do |
| You have to announce job cuts | Read a script and move straight to logistics | Expect shock and fear, leave silence for reactions, and say when people will know more |
| A meeting goes quiet after your proposal | Take the silence as agreement | Read the hesitation and invite objections, in the room or one to one |
| A short, blunt message arrives on team chat | Assume hostility and reply in kind | Allow for lost tone in text, and check with a quick call before reacting |
| A new starter keeps asking the same questions | Sigh and answer more and more curtly | Spot that they may be overwhelmed, and write the key steps down together |
Notice that the high-EI responses are not softer. They still deal with the missed deadline or the job cuts; they simply take the feelings involved into account so the message lands.
Emotional intelligence in leadership
Emotional intelligence in leadership means using emotional skills to motivate people, handle conflict and lead through change, and the research links it to better leadership, but much more weakly than the popular literature claims.
What the leadership research finds
The clearest test comes from a meta-analysis of 62 samples on emotional intelligence and "transformational" leadership: the style that inspires people, sets a vision and pays attention to each team member. When one person rated both the leader's emotional intelligence and their leadership, the correlation was .59. When the ratings came from different people, it was only .12 (Harms and Credé, 2010).
Who does the rating changes the answer
Corrected correlations from 62 samples. Source: Harms and Credé (2010).
The same study found something even more striking: different raters barely agreed with each other. Agreement between sources was .14 for transformational leadership and .16 for emotional intelligence. A manager, their boss and their team can see the same person's emotional skills quite differently. Self-rated measures again showed stronger links than skill tests.
Other reviews point the same way. Leaders' emotional intelligence correlated about .31 with their staff's job satisfaction across studies, with weaker links for skill tests than for questionnaires and differences between cultures (Miao, Humphrey and Qian, 2016). Researchers still disagree about how much emotional intelligence adds to leadership beyond personality and intelligence, a debate aired in The Leadership Quarterly and reviewed by Walter, Cole and Humphrey (2011).
What it means for managers
For managers, the practical lesson is to judge emotional skill by how your team experiences you, not by how you rate yourself.
- Ask other people. Because self-ratings and team ratings agree so little, anonymous feedback from your team or a 360-degree review tells you more than any self-test.
- Watch the hard moments. Emotional skill matters most in feedback conversations, conflicts, restructures and bad news. Prepare for how people will feel, not only what you will say.
- Regulate before you react. Your mood is visible to everyone who reports to you. A short pause before replying to a provocative email gives you time to choose a response instead of broadcasting one.
- Don't confuse being liked with leading well. Emotional intelligence helps you deliver difficult decisions humanely; it is not a reason to avoid them.
Jobs where emotional intelligence matters most
Emotional intelligence matters most in jobs with heavy emotional labour, where handling feelings is part of the work: health care, teaching, customer service, sales and management. In a meta-analysis of helping and counterproductive behaviour at work, the links with self-reported emotional intelligence were stronger in health care and service industries than in jobs with lower emotional demands (Miao, Humphrey and Qian, 2017). Social work, policing and hospitality share many of the same demands.
In 16 randomised trials with nurses and nursing students, emotional intelligence training raised EI scores, and smaller sets of trials found less stress and better communication. Results varied widely between trials, so the size of the benefit is uncertain.
Source: Kawashima and others, 2025
A systematic review of 13 studies found that teachers with higher emotional intelligence tended to report less burnout. The authors noted that the studies used many different theories and measures, which makes the link hard to size.
Source: Mérida-López and Extremera, 2017
In real flight attendant selection, applicants who were better at regulating emotions did better in group exercises. Understanding emotions helped in interviews and role plays but not in group tasks, so the authors advise using EI tests with care.
Source: Herpertz and others, 2016
In three field studies of real estate and insurance agents, a sales-specific EI skill test predicted higher sales and better customer retention, even after controlling for general EI, self-rated EI and cognitive ability.
Source: Kidwell and others, 2011
Leaders' EI correlated about .31 with how satisfied their staff were with their jobs. The link was weaker when EI was measured with skill tests and varied between cultures.
Source: Miao and others, 2016
If you are choosing a career and wondering how your personality fits people-heavy work, our career test and the guide on how to choose a career can help.
Signs of low emotional intelligence at work
Low emotional intelligence at work usually shows as poor reactions under pressure and blindness to how others feel, rather than as a lack of intelligence or effort. Typical signs in a colleague or a boss:
- Criticising people in public, or giving feedback that feels like an attack.
- Reacting to setbacks with outbursts, sulking or blame.
- Missing obvious signals that a team is stressed, bored or upset.
- Treating every disagreement as a contest to win.
- Taking feedback as a personal insult, or dismissing it outright.
- Announcing change with no thought for how it will land.
One bad day doesn't make a pattern; look for repeated behaviour. With a boss like this, it often helps to raise issues privately, stick to specific behaviours and their effects, put agreements in writing and find support elsewhere in the organisation. The full list of signs, at home and in relationships as well as at work, is in our guide to the signs of high and low emotional intelligence.
Should employers use EQ tests in hiring?
Employers can use emotional intelligence tests in hiring only with great care: as one input among several, for jobs where emotional skills clearly matter, and never as a pass-or-fail screen on their own. The main cautions:
- Questionnaires are easy to fake. When students were asked to look as good as possible on the Bar-On EQ-i short form, they raised their scores by 0.83 standard deviations. Honest scores were also predicted by the Big Five with a multiple correlation of .79, which led the authors to question the test's value as an applicant screen (Grubb and McDaniel, 2007).
- Skill tests are harder to fake, but results vary by task. In real flight attendant selection, the ability to understand emotions helped in interviews and role plays but hurt performance in group exercises (Herpertz and others, 2016).
- The job has to call for it. In low emotional-labour jobs, skill-test emotional intelligence did not predict better performance (Joseph and Newman, 2010).
- Watch for unfair impact. In the US, a neutral test that screens out more people of one sex, race or other protected group must be shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and it must not screen out people with disabilities without that justification (US EEOC). Other countries have their own equality laws, so take local legal advice before testing applicants.
- Use structured alternatives. Structured interview questions about real past situations, role plays and work samples show emotional skills in action and are harder to game than a self-rating.
Which test, if any, depends on the purpose. Our comparison of emotional intelligence tests covers the MSCEIT, the EQ-i 2.0 and others. Personality measures such as the Big Five already cover much of what self-report EQ questionnaires capture. Assessivo's own tests are for self-understanding and are not designed for hiring.
Building emotional intelligence at work
Emotional intelligence can be built at work through deliberate practice in everyday situations, and training studies show moderate gains on average. A meta-analysis of 58 studies found that training raised emotional intelligence scores by a moderate amount (Mattingly and Kraiger, 2019). Practical starting points:
- Get a coach, mentor or trusted colleague to watch. Regular, specific feedback on how you came across in real meetings catches what self-reflection misses. Many leadership development programmes build this in as 360 feedback or coaching sessions.
- Name it before you answer it. When a meeting or message stirs you up, put the feeling into words to yourself first, then decide how to respond.
- Ask one more question. Before solving a colleague's problem, ask how it is affecting them. It shows care and often reveals the real issue.
- Review hard moments. After a tense conversation, note what you noticed, what you did and what you would change.
- Collect outside views. Ask a trusted colleague how you come across under pressure. Self-ratings miss a lot.
- Practise on low-stakes moments. Reading the mood of a routine meeting is good practice for reading a crisis.
The full programme, with exercises and what the training research says works, is in our guide on how to improve emotional intelligence. A dark side is worth knowing too: in one workplace study, people who knew a lot about regulating emotions and were also manipulative showed more harmful behaviour towards colleagues (Côté and others, 2011). Emotional skill amplifies intentions; it doesn't replace good ones.
Frequently asked questions
What role does empathy play in emotional intelligence at work?
Empathy is the part of emotional intelligence that lets you see a situation from a colleague's or customer's side. In the ability model it draws on perceiving and understanding emotions; acting on it well, by saying or doing something that helps, is the managing part. At work it shows in noticing who is struggling, explaining a decision in terms of what it means for the other person, and handling complaints without getting defensive.
Is emotional intelligence a soft skill?
Yes, emotional intelligence is usually counted as a soft skill, alongside communication and teamwork. Unlike most soft skills, it can also be measured with tests that have best answers, which is why researchers treat the skill version as a kind of intelligence.
Is emotional intelligence more important than technical skills at work?
No, emotional intelligence does not replace technical skills or general mental ability. Meta-analyses find it adds a modest amount of prediction on top of IQ and personality, and most in jobs where handling people is part of the work.
Which jobs need emotional intelligence the least?
Jobs with little emotional labour, where people rarely have to manage their own or others' feelings to do the work, gain the least. In one large meta-analysis, skill-test emotional intelligence did not predict better performance in such jobs at all.
Can emotional intelligence be used to manipulate people at work?
It can. In a workplace study, employees who knew a lot about regulating emotions and were also high in Machiavellianism, a manipulative trait, showed more harmful behaviour towards colleagues. The skill strengthens whatever goals a person already has.
What is the difference between surface acting and deep acting?
Surface acting means faking the expected emotion, such as a smile you do not feel, while deep acting means trying to actually feel it, for example by seeing the situation from the customer's side. Across 95 studies, surface acting was linked to strain and exhaustion, while deep acting went with better customer satisfaction.
How do you show emotional intelligence in a job interview?
Give a short, specific story: the situation, what you noticed about how people felt, what you did, and what changed. Claims such as "I have high EQ" persuade far less than one honest example of handling a tense moment well.
Should you put emotional intelligence on a CV or résumé?
You can, but show it rather than state it. Phrases such as "resolved customer complaints" or "led a team through a restructure" give an employer evidence, while "emotionally intelligent" on its own is easy to claim and hard to check.
Which famous leaders have high emotional intelligence?
Nobody can say from the outside. No well-known leader has published scores from a validated emotional intelligence test, so lists of "emotionally intelligent CEOs" are opinions based on public image.
Do remote and hybrid teams need emotional intelligence?
Probably more care, not different skills. Text and video strip out tone and body language, so reading people takes more checking, such as a quick call when a message seems off. We found little research on emotional intelligence in remote teams specifically.
Is emotional intelligence a leadership style?
No. Emotional intelligence is an ability, or a set of abilities and traits, that a leader brings to any style, and it is not a separate leadership theory in the academic sense. It has been linked most often to transformational leadership, the inspiring and supportive style, but that link is much weaker when the leader does not rate both.
Sources
- O'Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver and Story (2011), Journal of Organizational Behavior: meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and job performance, three streams of measures.
- Joseph and Newman (2010), Journal of Applied Psychology: the cascading model of emotional intelligence and the emotional labour moderator.
- Joseph, Jin, Newman and O'Boyle (2015), Journal of Applied Psychology: why self-reported (mixed) emotional intelligence predicts job performance.
- Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2017), Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology: emotional intelligence, job satisfaction, commitment and turnover intentions.
- Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2017), Personality and Individual Differences: emotional intelligence, organisational citizenship and counterproductive work behaviour.
- Miao, Humphrey and Qian (2016), Personality and Individual Differences: leader emotional intelligence and subordinate job satisfaction.
- Harms and Credé (2010), Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies: emotional intelligence and transformational and transactional leadership.
- Walter, Cole and Humphrey (2011), Academy of Management Perspectives: a critical review of emotional intelligence and leadership.
- Antonakis, Ashkanasy and Dasborough (2009), The Leadership Quarterly: "Does leadership need emotional intelligence?", a published debate.
- Hochschild (1983; 3rd edition 2012), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press.
- Hülsheger and Schewe (2011), Journal of Occupational Health Psychology: meta-analysis of three decades of emotional labour research.
- Kawashima and others (2025), Nurse Education Today: meta-analysis of emotional intelligence training for nurses and nursing students.
- Mérida-López and Extremera (2017), International Journal of Educational Research: emotional intelligence and teacher burnout, a systematic review.
- Herpertz, Nizielski, Hock and Schütz (2016), PLOS ONE: emotional intelligence in personnel selection for flight attendants.
- Kidwell, Hardesty, Murtha and Sheng (2011), Journal of Marketing: emotional intelligence in marketing exchanges (sales performance).
- Côté, DeCelles, McCarthy, Van Kleef and Hideg (2011), Psychological Science: the Jekyll and Hyde of emotional intelligence.
- Grubb and McDaniel (2007), Human Performance: the fakability of Bar-On's EQ-i short form.
- Mattingly and Kraiger (2019), Human Resource Management Review: can emotional intelligence be trained?
- US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Employment tests and selection procedures: disparate impact, job-relatedness and disability rules.
- TalentSmart (2005), The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence, 2005 updated edition: the origin of the 58% and 90% claims.
- TalentSmartEQ, Emotional intelligence examples in the workplace: the four-skill framework used by many workplace programmes.
Assessivo's tests give estimates for self-understanding. They are not clinical assessments or hiring tools.
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