How Emotional Intelligence Predicts Performance Better Than Technical Skills
Photo by @tengyarton Unsplash
Organisations are pouring unprecedented resources into leadership development. Globally, companies invest an estimated $60 billion annually in these programmes. Yet something fundamental is not working.
Here is what stands out for me in the research:manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27% between 2023 and 2024, according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025. That is not a skills gap. That is a relationship problem.
What Traditional Leadership Programmes Miss
Most leadership development focuses on the technical: strategic thinking, financial acumen, decision-making frameworks, project management. These matter. But they are not what separates leaders people trust from leaders people tolerate.
Microsoft offers a compelling example. Under Satya Nadella's leadership, the company underwent a cultural transformation centred on empathy, collaboration, and a growth mindset. Nadella introduced the "Model, Coach, Care" framework to embed these values at all levels.
The result? Microsoft's market cap grew to $2 trillion. Employee engagement scores elevated significantly.
The transformation was not about better technical skills. It was about fundamentally different leadership capabilities, ones that traditional programmes rarely teach.
The Research That Changed My Perspective
Two pieces of research connected for me recently.
First: the Oxford study showing workplace Well-Being predicts stock market performance. Companies with the highest Well-Being scores outperformed the market by 20%.
Second: Gallup's research revealing that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. When managers are disengaged, their teams follow. The impact of engagement ripples through every part of an organisation.
These are not separate issues. They are the same issue.
Leaders who cannot manage their own Well-Being struggle to create Well-Being in their teams. Leaders who lack self-awareness cannot develop emotional intelligence. Leaders who are burnt out cannot model sustainable performance.
Yet most leadership programmes treat Well-Being as separate from performance. Something to bolt on after you have taught the "real" leadership skills.
What Leadership Professionals Actually Say They Need
Harvard Business Publishing's 2024 Global Leadership Development Study surveyed more than 1,100 L&D professionals and functional leaders across 15 countries. The finding: 70% say it is important or very important for leaders to master a wider range of effective leadership behaviours to meet current and future business needs.
The specific skills named? Emotional intelligence, empathy, psychological safety, managing their own Well-Being.
Not "better strategic frameworks." Not "advanced financial modelling." The skills that enable leaders to build trust and create environments where people can perform sustainably.
The Gap Between Investment and Impact
Despite the $60 billion invested annually in leadership development globally, most programmes underperform or fail, resulting in wasted time and money. The workplace application of learning is typically low.
This gap is not about budget. It is about approach.
Traditional programmes develop leaders who can manage tasks but struggle to develop people. Who understand strategy but miss the early signs of team burnout. Who achieve short-term results but cannot sustain performance over time.
Gallup's research on manager Well-Being found particularly sharp declines among managers under 35 (5-percentage-point drop) and female managers (7-percentage-point drop). When those responsible for supporting others are struggling themselves, the risk of cascading disengagement rises fast.
What Well-Being for Performance Actually Means
This is not about adding meditation sessions to leadership programmes. This is about integrating Well-Being skills as core leadership capabilities.
When leaders develop these capabilities:
Engagement increases (reversing the decline Gallup documented)
Retention improves (turnover costs drop significantly)
Performance sustains (avoiding the engaged-but-burnt-out trap)
Innovation accelerates (psychological safety enables risk-taking)
The organisations getting this right are not treating Well-Being and Performance as separate. They are developing leaders who understand they are inseparable.
McKinsey's research on leadership effectiveness found that organisations with successful leadership development programmes were eight times more likely to have focused on leadership behaviours that executives believed were critical drivers of business performance.
The behaviours that matter? The same ones Harvard's study identified: emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, the ability to create psychological safety.
Where to Start
If you recognise your organisation in these statistics, declining manager engagement, rising stress among leaders, investment not translating to impact, the question is not whether to invest more in leadership development.
The question is whether to keep investing in the same approach that created the gap.
Developing leaders who can sustain High-Performance whilst maintaining Well-Being requires a different framework. One that starts with self-awareness, builds psychological safety, and treats Well-Being skills as essential leadership capabilities, not optional extras.
This is what we focus on at The Self-Science Lab: leadership development that integrates Well-Being and High-Performance from the foundation. Not as separate tracks, but as inseparable capabilities. If this approach resonate and you are curious for more, follow me onLinkedIn, and visitThe Self-Science Lab for more info.
Lauren Cartigny, Leadership Trainer, Executive Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner
Following a successful international corporate career in Sales for leading Tech firms, Lauren faced an unexpected burnout, life and health crisis. After re-building her life, transforming her career, and healing her body, heart and mind, Lauren has created transformative coaching and training programs to teach High-Performance from a place of Well-Being to prevent burnout, and employee churn in organisations.