By AMA Staff
Management is easy. You’re the boss. You have the power to make your team perform. You just need to tell them what to do. Right?
As any manager can tell you, that’s not how leadership works in the real world. Being a successful leader means dealing with conflict, addressing your team’s strengths and weaknesses, and having a positive outlook even if you lie awake at night worrying about your team. Being a successful leader takes strength and fortitude, and above all, it takes emotional intelligence (EI).
Often, people get promoted to management because of their technical skills or institutional knowledge, not because of their EI. Instead, they have to learn the soft skills on the spot, often with inadequate mentoring or training. So how does a leader become emotionally intelligent?
To answer this question, American Management Association (AMA) spoke with Angela Kegler, PhD. An expert in emotionally intelligent leadership, Dr. Kegler has extensive experience in creating thriving and engaged workforces. She has taught AMA Courses for more than a decade.
Why Emotional Intelligence is Critical for Leadership
“Leaders are the people we turn to when things go sideways,” Dr. Kegler says. “Strong leaders are the ones who step up to meet challenges and resolve conflicts.”
Being your team’s go-to fixer, however, can often force you to the center of everyone else’s problems. Tensions get high, fingers get pointed, and the mediator may catch some flack in the process.
Controlling your emotions in these situations is essential. To do so, leaders must master four key components of EI:
- Empathy
- Social awareness
- Active listening
- Resilience
“Leadership is about handling other people,” says Dr. Kegler, “but, without a doubt, emotionally intelligent leadership begins with self-awareness.”
If you understand how you feel—and how you react to your feelings—you can better manage yourself and the people around you. You become more poised, more resilient, more socially aware. This enables better decision-making and enhances the effectiveness of your leadership.
“An emotionally intelligent leader uses social and emotional awareness to drive constructive interactions,” Dr. Kegler says. They cultivate a positive, honest, and transparent culture, where feeling seen, heard, and valued motivates people.
The result? A positive workplace culture built on trust and strong relationships.
When your employees feel safe to speak up—and are heard when they do—they’re more likely to commit to the job. Individuals go the extra mile, teams work more harmoniously, and talent retention is an easier win. The organization becomes more resilient and the entire business benefits.
Developing Empathy as a Core Leadership Skill
The connections you build at work can make or break your team’s dynamic. So, where should you start? According to Dr. Kegler, empathy is key.
“Empathy is the ability to walk in somebody else's shoes and understand how they feel. It's a core skill and the critical output of being emotionally intelligent,” she says.
Some people may seem naturally empathetic, but this quality doesn’t come easily to everyone. You can, however, develop it through experience—by meeting new people and getting out of your comfort zone.
“Personally, I’ve grown the most in situations where I was uncomfortable until I became comfortable,” Dr. Kegler notes. In the workplace, that might look like taking on a challenging project or asking your supervisor for a stretch goal. But above all, it means engaging with colleagues, finding out more about them, and exposing yourself to different points of view. If you surround yourself with the same people, with similar ideas, your social skills won't develop. Stepping out of your silo and opening yourself to unique perspectives is therefore a vital step in growing your EI quotient.
One effective way to develop empathy and build connections is to ask what Dr. Kegler calls “Everest and Everglades” questions.
“Everest questions are the big broad ones,” she says, “like the view you get from Mount Everest’s peak. Those questions start a dialogue, and an emotionally intelligent leader then listens for [informative] details in the response.”
“These details lead to the Everglades questions. The Everglades are murky and mysterious. There’s something in there that might pop out and bite you. Your goal is to find out what it is. You have to dive in deep to understand the person and what looms in their murky depths—so, of course, you employ active listening and empathy.”
Through these conversations, you as the leader make your team feel supported. This motivates them to do more—and helps you uncover information you can use to coach them. The knowledge gained from building rapport can then be leveraged to identify and address employee concerns more effectively.
Practical Ways Leaders Can Inspire Teams Using EI
Emotionally intelligent communication is the glue that holds a team together, but it can also be a powerful motivator when used effectively. That’s where active listening really comes in.
“Communication is a two-way street, but leaders often under-appreciate the listening part,” says Dr. Kegler. “To communicate effectively, you need to be a great listener.”
“I’m good friends with a retired army general,” she continues. “In the military, he could simply give orders and expect them to be executed—but that’s not how he operates.
Instead, he will ask a question or engage in dialogue and then stop and listen. It’s not just his ears that are open—his whole body is open. He takes everything in, and he does it quickly so that it doesn’t make people feel awkward or uncomfortable … It’s motivating and inspiring because people find themselves wanting to engage.”
This technique of whole-body, active listening is a bulwark of emotionally intelligent leadership—not only for its efficacy, but also its ease of implementation. The simple act of sitting back and hearing someone out is a small investment for the payoff in positive employee sentiment. It creates a sense of connection that inspires loyalty by making individuals feel valued and validated—regardless of whether they get their way in the end.
Dr. Kegler recalls working with the chief financial officer (CFO) of a large organization that recently rolled out an unpopular project. As the boss, he could have just forged ahead with it. Instead, he engaged in an extensive discourse with his team and peers about how the project would affect them. “His deputy thought that a lot of time was wasted on the dialogue, but the CFO was attuned to the organization’s negative feelings. He wanted to address them and discuss how the project was going to help.”
“In the end, the CFO’s efforts allowed the project to be rolled out more smoothly,” says Dr. Kegler. “The situation could have been much different without his resilience, ability to communicate, and social awareness of his team’s concerns.”
Inspiring Teams by Modeling Optimism and Resilience
If a fish rots from the head, the same can be said for a business. So, when it comes to workplace culture, the importance of leadership by example cannot be overstated.
Leaders set standards for employees through their behavior. If you talk down to co-workers, pass the buck when things go wrong, or microwave seafood in the lunchroom, don’t be surprised when your team does the same. On the other hand, if you conduct yourself with integrity, those around you will follow suit.
As a leader, your emotional state directly affects your team’s morale. Modeling emotional regulation not only strengthens your own ability to navigate difficult situations—it also encourages your employees to approach setbacks with a similar sense of resilience and optimism. By proxy, you inspire them to persevere and maintain a positive outlook when tackling obstacles.
Dr. Kegler shares a personal experience from early in her career when an older colleague delivered some constructive criticism: “He said, ‘Angela, you have a lot of gumption, drive, and intelligence, but you always focus on what's wrong.’ I remember sitting [there] thinking, how is that not an asset? But he convinced me that I was coming across as negative, and it was hurting morale.”
His advice? First, find things that are working and recognize them. Second, point out what can be fixed. People are attracted to genuine optimism. If you are perceived as someone driven to solve challenges (versus a “Negative Nancy”), other people are more likely to enjoy working with you.
Similarly, Dr. Kegler recommends reframing difficult conversations as an opportunity to think together—rather than seeing them as polarizing situations where only one side wins. “Everyone can’t get their way, but they can feel validated and trusted,” she says. “That builds a resilient culture and a committed team.”
Creating a Positive Work Environment with EI
Pursuing positivity in the workplace is one thing. Maintaining it requires an ongoing commitment to psychological safety.
Dr. Kegler warns that psychological safety can be difficult to achieve. “In general, the leader needs to be intentional about creating a safe environment where people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts,” she says. They must be able to embrace honest feedback while remaining steadfast in pursuit of organizational goals. A manager who accepts criticism and admits mistakes creates a space where others can feel safe being honest and taking chances.
“In my work, I frequently have to deliver unpleasant feedback to executives,” says Dr. Kegler. “The recipient of the unpleasant feedback may respond with heightened emotions, but I know I don't have to absorb them … I can say ‘It's okay to be [upset] about this. Now let's move beyond the emotion to solve the challenge.’”
While psychological safety is not a cure-all for office conflict, it does minimize the destructiveness of disagreements. If approached constructively, squabbles can become opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, and disputes transform into what Dr. Kegler calls “educational debates.”
Years ago, Dr. Kegler was put in charge of a team that was still in its “ugly baby” phase. She sought ways to connect with them but met with repeated resistance. “They were tough and did not gel with one another,” she says. “They didn’t believe they had anything in common,” and they laughed when she suggested they should be friends.
Dr. Kegler persisted, allowing herself to be open and vulnerable. “We began to have ‘educational debates’ where we would discuss difficult issues—our points of conflict—in a civil way. Sometimes things got rough … [but] I sincerely wanted harmony in the office. I wanted them to look forward to coming to work. After about a year, we became much more successful and functional as a team, and morale got a big boost. Decades later,” she says, “we are still friends.”
Workplace friendship won’t always be attainable—for some, it may even be a “pie in the sky.” But prioritizing psychological safety will reduce workplace animosity. And that’s just the beginning—cultivating positivity also promotes teamwork, reduces burnout, and improves overall employee well-being.
Building Inspiration and Morale
Dr. Kegler is quick to express her appreciation for AMA’s resources. “There are a lot of fantastic assessment tools. AMA has a wonderful, one-page culture assessment tool that’s super easy to use.” It’s a powerful exercise for gauging organizational sentiment and revealing potential pain points.
But it’s not just assessment tools that help with morale. Meetings and time directly with the team plays a huge role.
“Meetings should not just be functional time to talk about work. I look at them as cul-de-sacs on my daily walk with my teams. If I meet with my team every week, I take 10 minutes to do a temperature check, to ask folks, ‘How are things going?’ and ‘Where are you?’ Especially in a virtual world, it’s important to have one-on-one meetings. Sometimes leaders think they're too busy, or that they need to be task-focused. They forget to take a temperature check, to assess team morale. That’s a serious oversight.”
The Long-Term Benefits of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership
For leaders, Dr. Kegler recommends the following steps to continuously develop EI for sustained impact:
- Develop Self-Awareness: I can’t emphasize enough the importance of starting with your own self-awareness and modeling what you learn for others. You need the courage to invest in yourself, to build your skills, whether it’s through an emotional intelligence training program, a stretch assignment, meeting with your team, engaging with strangers, or whatever else works for you.
- Get to Know Your Team: Take time to understand your team and get to know them. Recognize that meetings are far more than a time to get work done. Ask the Everest and Everglades questions. Assess morale, get to know people, be honest, transparent, and vulnerable with them, and let them know you care not just about them fulfilling their responsibilities, but also about who they are as people and how they function as a team.
- Go Outside Your Comfort Zone: Finally, get out of your comfort zone. Try new things, and you will learn from the people you meet and the challenges you face. You will build empathy and resilience. You can become a change agent. You just need to discover your own voice and yourself as a leader.
About AMA
American Management Association (AMA) is globally recognized as a leader in professional development. For nearly 100 years, it has helped millions of people bring about positive change in their performance in order to improve results. AMA’s learn-by-doing instructor-led methods, extensive content, and flexible learning formats are proven effective—and constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of individuals and organizations. To learn more, visit www.amanet.org