Emotional Intelligence Training: 18,000 Leaders' Reflections
Technical experts get promoted, then struggle with people. After 450 programs and 18,000 reflections, we've seen exactly where it breaks down and it's not the content. It's the sequence.
Technical experts get promoted. They're great at the job. Then they struggle with people.
HR sees it clearly: feedback isn't happening. Small issues escalate. Difficult conversations get avoided until they can't be. "By the time it gets to me, it could have been handled so easily earlier."
So organisations send them to a feedback workshop. A conflict course. A communication skills day.
It doesn't stick. The same problems return.
We've run 450 programs across 150 companies over the past decade. We've collected 18,000 reflections from leaders developing the skills that sit beneath all of this — self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy.
We've seen exactly where it breaks down.
It's not the content. It's the sequence.
You can't teach feedback to someone who can't regulate their emotions under pressure. You can't teach conflict to someone who doesn't understand their own triggers. You can't build teams with leaders who skip past empathy to get to the "real work."
The skills fail because the foundation isn't there. That foundation is emotional intelligence.
What Is Emotional Intelligence Training?
Emotional intelligence training develops the ability to recognise and manage emotions — your own and others'. Sometimes called EQ training or an emotional intelligence course, emotional intelligence training for leaders and managers builds the skills that predict leadership success.
As Daniel Goleman found in his research across nearly 200 global companies: truly effective leaders are distinguished by high emotional intelligence. IQ and technical skills matter, but emotional intelligence is what sets outstanding performers apart. (What Makes a Leader, Harvard Business Review)
Goleman's research identified four domains:
Self-awareness — Knowing what you feel and why. Understanding your triggers, patterns, and blind spots.
Self-management — Regulating your responses. Staying effective under pressure. Thinking before you react.
Social awareness — Reading other people. Understanding their perspective. Empathy.
Relationship management — Using all of that to communicate, give feedback, manage conflict, and lead.
Most training treats these as separate modules. A self-awareness exercise here. A feedback framework there.
But the domains aren't separate. They're sequential. Each one builds on the one before.
You can't manage emotions you don't notice. You can't empathise with others if you're hijacked by your own reactions. You can't give effective feedback if you don't understand how it lands.
This is why emotional intelligence training for managers often fails. The sequence gets skipped.
What Should Emotional Intelligence Training Include?
After 450 programs, we've learned what actually matters.
1. Self-awareness comes first
Not as a warm-up exercise. As the foundation.
Leaders need to understand their own emotional patterns before they can manage them — and long before they try to manage others. This means real assessment, not a quick quiz. Feedback from colleagues. Reflection on triggers.
2. Self-regulation before skills
You can't teach someone to give feedback if they can't stay calm when the conversation gets uncomfortable.
Self-regulation isn't about suppressing emotions. It's about noticing them early enough to choose your response. We call this moving from Red Brain to Green Brain — and it's the skill that makes every other skill usable.
3. Empathy as a skill, not a trait
Most leaders think they're empathetic. Our data says otherwise.
Real empathy training means testing your actual level (not your self-perception), practising perspective-taking, and learning to listen without hijacking the conversation.
4. Sustained practice over time
This is where most training falls apart.
Our methodology was developed in partnership with Monash Business School and recognised by AACSB — the global accreditation body for business education (the same body that accredits Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD, and London Business School) — in their Innovations That Inspire program.
The AACSB's write-up captured what we'd learned:
That's not our marketing. That's third-party validation of why behaviour change requires months, not days.
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Trained?
Yes. But not in a two-day workshop.
The research is clear: Hermann Ebbinghaus's foundational work on memory — replicated and validated in modern studies — shows that learners forget up to 50% of new information within an hour, and up to 70% within 24 hours. Without reinforcement, retention drops to 10-20% after a week.
We see this play out in completion data. Research on MOOCs and self-paced digital learning shows completion rates between 5% and 15%. In contrast, cohort-based courses with accountability and peer support typically see 85% to 90% completion.
Our programs see 88-93% completion rates.
The content isn't the difference. Accountability is.
Emotional intelligence develops through:
- Daily practice — 10 minutes of application, not content consumption
- Real situations — Applied to actual work, not hypothetical case studies
- Feedback loops — Self-assessment, peer input, mentor support
- Time — Weeks for awareness, months for behaviour change
This is why our programs run 6-9 months. Not because more is better. Because that's how long it takes for practice to become habit.
The Self-Awareness Gap
Most leaders think they're self-aware.
The data says otherwise.
Self-Awareness in Leadership: The Starting Point
When leaders on our platform complete an emotional regulation self-assessment, their reflections tell a consistent story: surprise.
I always believe that I am an empathetic person... I was a bit surprised by my result.
— Leader reflection
"I thought my score would be a little higher."
"6 out of 10 — my frustration gets in the way."
"No, the results didn't surprise me. But I feel they would surprise people who know me well."
That last one is telling. Leaders often have different views of themselves than the people around them do.
We ask them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, then check with colleagues. The gaps become visible:
"Two contacts identified the same issue with one of my weaknesses. They didn't refute it, but it was perhaps not worded accurately."
This isn't failure. It's the starting point.
But most training skips this step entirely. Leaders learn feedback models and conflict frameworks without ever understanding their own patterns — the triggers that derail them, the blind spots that undermine their intentions.
What Drives Leaders to Distraction
We ask leaders directly: "What, and who, drives you wild?"
The answers are remarkably consistent:
"Not being heard or feeling left out. Things not being completed as asked. People not taking personal responsibility."
"When people don't follow process. I find it frustrating when decisions are made that impact my staff, but I'm not included in the conversation."
"Irrational behaviour and incompetent personnel. This is perhaps due to my lack of understanding of this behaviour."
"People who are emotionally driven rather than logically."
Notice the irony in that last one. A leader frustrated by others being "emotionally driven" — while being emotionally driven by that frustration.
This is why self-awareness in leadership matters. Without it, we don't see how our own reactions contribute to the problems we're trying to solve.
Why Feedback Training Fails
Self-awareness shows you what's happening. Self-management is what you do about it.
When we ask leaders about their stress responses, the patterns are striking:
"I need to be able to slow my mind down when under pressure so that I can make better decisions. I feel that this one weakness alone has hindered my progress for some time now."
"A lot of the time I react before I process what's happening — fight or flight mode — and I tend to go straight to fight mode."
"My heart rate may raise, I become grumpy and frustrated. I also start to significantly doubt myself and my decisions."
"I have a long fuse but then one little thing will send me over. I'm usually so pent up by this point that I snap."
This is what we call moving from Green Brain to Red Brain.
When stress triggers the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex — responsible for reasoning, planning, and impulse control — goes partially offline. Leaders become reactive. Defensive. Unable to think clearly.
In Red Brain, feedback comes out wrong. Conversations escalate. The leader knows they're not at their best. But in the moment, they can't access their best.
The Gap Between Intention and Execution
We collect thousands of reflections from leaders attempting to give feedback. The pattern is clear:
"I was too forceful with the start of the conversation and it went downhill from there. I was only interested in a solution and not what had happened."
"My colleague snapped and took it as a personal attack on her abilities."
"It started well, the approach was good, and all of a sudden, my colleague felt like it was attacking him."
All of a sudden. That's how fast it happens.
These leaders know the feedback frameworks. They've learned the models. But under pressure — when it actually matters — they can't execute. Their emotional state hijacks their intentions.
You can't solve this with better frameworks. You solve it by building the emotional regulation capacity that lets leaders stay in Green Brain when conversations get difficult.
The Empathy Trap
Empathy is the bridge between managing yourself and leading others.
But most leaders misunderstand what empathy actually means.
We test leaders' empathy through an interactive exercise, then ask them to reflect. The most common insight surprises them:
"I realized that my approach was more direct than I thought and I used examples to show empathy when this might not be empathetic at all."
I learnt not to relate it back to me and focus on how they are feeling.
— Leader reflection
"I noted that I offer up my anecdotes before acknowledging someone else's emotions."
"I probably jump too quick offering solutions without listening to get the full picture."
This is the empathy trap.
Leaders think they're being empathetic by sharing their own similar experiences. Actually, they're hijacking the conversation.
They think they're helping by offering solutions. But the other person just needs to be heard.
One leader put it simply:
"I thought sharing my experience would help connect, but actually the thing I learnt was to focus on the other person and not accidentally hijack the conversation to talk about me."
Another:
"One of the key takeaways is not to jump to solution. Next time I'm trying to help a colleague, I'll try to understand their problem first — get it right — then offer support."
Empathy isn't putting yourself in someone else's shoes. It's understanding what it would be like to have their feet in their shoes.
That's a different skill. And it requires quieting your own reactions long enough to genuinely focus on theirs.
The Three Foundations
Real empathy rests on three capabilities:
Perspective taking — Seeing someone else's point of view. Not assuming. Actually investigating.
Connection — Building trust and rapport. Feeling a little of what another person feels.
Compassion — Genuinely caring. Wanting to help them develop and succeed.
When we ask leaders to take a colleague's perspective — listing ways that person thinks and feels differently about a shared task — the exercise often reveals how rarely this happens naturally:
"Their lived experience, their workload and immediate pressures, longer career with frustrations."
"They felt betrayed. They felt misheard. They felt overworked and undervalued."
"Feels threatened, competitive and frustrated."
Leaders who do this exercise often realise they've never genuinely considered the other person's perspective. They've assumed. They've projected.
That's not a character flaw. It's the default human mode. Empathy means deliberately overriding that default — and that takes practice.
Why the Sequence Matters
Here's what we've learned from 450 programs: you can't skip steps.
A leader who lacks self-awareness will keep triggering the same conflicts without understanding their own contribution.
A leader who can't self-regulate will keep derailing conversations — no matter how many frameworks they've learned.
A leader who doesn't understand empathy will keep giving feedback that lands wrong and wondering why people get defensive.
The domains build on each other:
Domain
What it sounds like
Self-awareness
"I notice what I'm feeling and why"
Self-management
"I can regulate my response"
Social awareness
"I understand what others are feeling"
Relationship management
"I can communicate and lead effectively"
Skip a step, and everything built on top becomes unstable.
This is why we structure our Emerging Leaders Program as a progression. Leaders develop self-awareness before self-management. They build resilience before tackling conflict. They understand empathy before learning feedback frameworks.
Each skill has somewhere to land because the foundation is already there.
Emotional Intelligence in Action
The articles we've published aren't separate topics. They're emotional intelligence applied to specific challenges.
Resilience is self-management under sustained pressure. It's maintaining Green Brain when stress accumulates over weeks and months. When we collected 2,430 responses on how pressure impacts leaders, we saw the same patterns: energy crashes, disrupted habits, shortened fuses.
Difficult conversations require every domain at once. Self-awareness to notice your triggers. Self-regulation to stay calm when things escalate. Empathy to understand their perspective. Relationship skills to navigate toward resolution.
Read: Difficult Conversations Training →
Psychological safety is what teams feel when their leader has high emotional intelligence. It's the result of consistent self-regulation, genuine empathy, and skilled relationship management.
Read: Psychological Safety Training →
These aren't separate skills to develop in isolation. They're expressions of the same underlying capability.
Build emotional intelligence, and the specific skills become learnable. Skip the foundation, and no amount of technique will stick.
How Emotional Intelligence Develops
Our Emerging Leaders Program dedicates multiple Journeys to the emotional intelligence foundation:
Know Yourself Better — Self-awareness
- Test your emotional regulation
- Observe and label your emotions
- Identify your triggers
- Get feedback from others on your blind spots
Achieve Emotional Self-Control — Self-management
- Understand how stress affects your brain
- Identify what triggers you
- Learn the Mindshifting technique: Catch, Calm, Choose, Connect
- Practice staying in Green Brain under pressure
Build Strong Relationships — Empathy
- Test your actual empathy level (not your self-perception)
- Practice perspective-taking
- Build genuine connection
- Show compassion daily
Raise Resilience (two Journeys) — Sustained self-management
- Understand stress at a neurological level
- Build habits that sustain your capacity
- Develop the mindset that enables growth
These come before feedback, conflict, and team building — because the foundation has to be there first.
The Development Model
Daily activities — Around 10 minutes. Not content to consume once, but practice that builds habits.
Cohort-based learning — Groups of 8-12 leaders going through together. Shared language. Peer accountability.
Monthly mentoring — Facilitated sessions with experienced mentors. Space to reflect, troubleshoot, get feedback.
6-9 months — Long enough for practice to become habit. Long enough for lasting change.
Our completion rates of 88-93% (compared to 5-15% for typical self-paced digital learning) reflect genuine engagement. The structure holds people through the difficult parts of behaviour change.
Signs Your Team Needs This
How do you know if emotional intelligence training should be a priority?
None of these are character judgments. They're skill gaps — and they're the skill gaps that sit beneath everything else.
What Changes
We see the shift consistently.
Leaders move from:
"I need to slow my mind down when under pressure"
To:
"I have started to slow down talking so I am not rushing, and take a deep breath between sentences."
From:
"I probably jump too quick offering solutions"
To:
"Open ended questions give someone a chance to speak. It helps to build a bigger picture so you really can walk in someone else's shoes."
From:
"I react before I process what's happening"
To:
"Focusing on one thing at a time helps. Taking a moment between different tasks and walking away from my desk — I find I get distracted easily so I've started using do not disturb more."
The results show in the organisations:
Camp Quality: 30% of participants promoted. +5% organisation engagement score. Read the case study →
The skills become visible because the foundation is there to support them.
The Program at a Glance
Format: Online, with live monthly mentor sessions in small cohorts
Duration: 6 or 9-month Emerging Leaders Program
Time commitment: Around 10 minutes daily, plus monthly 90-minute group sessions
What's included:
- Self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy Journeys as foundation
- Daily activities applied to real work
- Self-assessments with reflective practice
- Monthly facilitated sessions with experienced mentors
- Peer cohort for accountability and shared learning
Completion rate: 88-93% (industry average for self-paced: 5-15%)
Recognition: Methodology developed with Monash Business School. Recognised by AACSB's Innovations That Inspire.
Want to build this in your team?
Frequently Asked Questions
Emotional intelligence training — sometimes called an EQ course or emotional intelligence course — develops the skills that predict leadership success: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship skills. Effective training builds these in sequence, because each domain depends on the ones before it.
Yes. Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence improves with practice. But it requires consistent effort over time — not a one-off workshop. Behaviour change research shows learners forget 50-70% of new material within 24 hours (Ebbinghaus, replicated 2015). Our 6-9 month programs build emotional intelligence through daily practice and monthly mentoring, producing change that lasts.
Effective EI training for managers should include: self-assessment to establish a baseline, content on how emotions affect decision-making under pressure, practical techniques for self-regulation, empathy and perspective-taking exercises, and sustained practice over months. It should NOT be a standalone workshop — behaviour change requires repetition and reinforcement.
Skills like giving feedback and managing conflict require emotional regulation to execute under pressure. A leader who can't manage their stress response will derail conversations regardless of which framework they've learned. Emotional intelligence is the foundation that makes other leadership skills usable when they're actually needed.
Leaders start noticing shifts in self-awareness within weeks. Meaningful behaviour change in self-regulation and empathy typically emerges over 2-3 months. Sustained improvement that others notice requires 4-6 months of consistent practice. This is why our programs run 6-9 months rather than concentrated workshops.
EQ (Emotional Quotient) measures emotional intelligence, like IQ measures cognitive intelligence. The terms are often used interchangeably. What matters is whether training develops the underlying capabilities — and whether that's measured through behaviour change, not just satisfaction scores.
We track behaviour change: leader reflections showing new patterns, manager feedback on observable behaviour, outcomes like promotions and engagement scores. Our 88-93% completion rate (versus 5-15% industry average) indicates genuine engagement with the content.
Three things: First, we build the foundation before the skills — self-awareness and self-regulation come before feedback and conflict training. Second, we use sustained practice over 6-9 months, not intensive workshops. Third, we have 18,000 reflections showing exactly where leaders struggle and how they develop. Our methodology was developed with Monash Business School and recognised by AACSB.