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All learning has an emotional base.
– Plato
Emotional intelligence (EI) is the power to integrate thoughts and make optimal decisions. It is the ability to be agile with one's feelings. Emotional intelligence is key to any successful relationship at work or in personal life. Also enhances well-being and improves quality of life.
Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer introduced the theory of emotional intelligence in the 1990s. Daniel Goleman further developed it. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage emotions. It includes developing skills like emotional agility, or the ability to identify and cope with negative emotions and harness them.
Emotional intelligence helps you to carve, manage, evaluate and understand your own emotions and of the people around us. Developing your EI is crucial to uplift your behavioral and cognitive development. And, become better at work.
Key Takeaways
- 90 to 95 percent of decisions are emotional. Brenda argues most workplace reactions — whether to ask for a promotion, resolve conflict, or take a business risk — flow from emotional state, not logic. Without regulation, most of those choices are reactive rather than strategic.
- EI reduces to two steps, not five. Self-awareness first (catch the "monkey mind" voice running in your head), then regulation (feel the emotion, deal with it, release it). Brenda deliberately strips the academic five-step models down to this pair for corporate training.
- COVID ended the personal/professional split. You cannot fight with your spouse and then "knock a boardroom presentation out of the park" — lockdown forced employers to admit that personal life directly shapes performance, which cracked open EI as a legitimate corporate topic.
- EQ can't be IQ-tested. There's no one-plus-one-equals-two score for emotional intelligence; any measurement is filtered through the rater's own regulation. Leaders should stop chasing a clean number and instead assess through behavior, communication, and conflict patterns.
- Stick to facts, drop the story. Two people watching the same event build radically different narratives shaped by conditioning. Her corporate-training rule: when conflict surfaces, explicitly agree to "stick to the facts" and strip out the story layer before responding.
- EI must cascade top-down. Brenda's whole business model is built on the premise that executive teams have to adopt EI first; only then does it spread to employees. Book clubs, retreats, and leadership coaching are her preferred delivery vehicles.
- Curiosity is the missing workplace skill. Rather than assuming a colleague's comment was an attack, ask: "Is that really what you meant?" That single question, she says, opens dialogue, prevents disengagement, and keeps employees from quietly shopping for new jobs.
In Brenda's Words
On what emotional intelligence actually is
Emotional intelligence is having a clear understanding of your emotions and where your emotions are coming from — why you're communicating the way you are, why you're behaving the way you are. Ninety to ninety-five percent of our decisions are based out of emotions, and people don't realize that.
Emotional intelligence does not mean being super emotional or completely lacking emotion. Lacking emotion is just as dysfunctional as being too emotional. You're driving the car instead of the car driving you.
On the workplace gap COVID exposed
Prior to COVID, everybody tried to separate corporate versus home life. The reality is we're holistic beings. You can't get in a fight with your spouse and then go into the boardroom and give a presentation and knock it out of the park. It just doesn't work that way.
Corporate finally lifted the veil and said, okay, your personal life really does matter — it is directly impacting our work life. COVID caused us to bridge that gap.
On training leaders first
When we go after the leaders of the world and high-level executives, it always starts from the top down. When they latch onto this kind of training and are willing to give it to their employees, you can radically change teams.
Every company we work with, it's a whole different level of dynamic — their profitability, their employee engagement, their loyalty of their employees, all of that increases.
On communication and the story trap
When our emotions get involved, we start to create a story. You and I could see the same event happen — your story about it is going to be radically different than mine, because our stories come out of our life experience and conditioning. The only thing we can determine as truth is the facts.
Instead of people secretly being mad at each other and thinking they suck at their job and now shopping for jobs somewhere else — ask, "Is that what you really meant?" And now there's open dialogue, and you get to a solution.
About The Speaker
Brenda Lee is the CEO of Modig Leadership. The team works in development training, motivational speaking, and workshops to help individuals communicate better, collaborate more effectively, and become more engaged in their work. Modig Leadership focuses on the individuals that make up your team before moving into team development.
Modig Leadership utilizes a cutting-edge approach focusing on emotional intelligence and how it relates to everything from personal relationships to professional relationships - to success in sales, ROI in business, and the boardroom. Their specialty areas are communication gaps, the need for more collaboration, and employee engagement.
Connect with her on LinkedIn
Show Notes
(00:47) What is emotional intelligence?
(01:43) Why does emotional intelligence need to be emphasized in the workplace? How does it impact how employees engage and interact with each other?
(04:18) What are the components of emotional intelligence?
(07:23) How can one measure EI?
(08:28) What are the ways to improve emotional intelligence in the workplace?
(12:14) Can corporate wellness programs help improve EI in the workplace?
(19:34) What would you like to suggest our listeners?
