Emotional Intelligence in Work

The gap I am focused on most these days when it comes to AI at work, is the gap between employees and employers. We know that 75% of knowledge workers are using GAI on the job, saying it’s not just helping them save time to focus on more important work but also to bring more human skills to their work, like creativity. But we also know that only 39% of those workers have been trained on AI at work, as companies struggle still to come up with a point of view on AI as well as a strategy for workforce development in the age of AI. If your company is struggling on that part, one thing you can do is look to those who are leading the way. IBM and Siemens are great examples of companies who are two steps ahead of most, moving beyond the incremental early days of AI towards the real, transformative benefits. I was inspired by my conversation a few weeks ago with Nickle LaMoreaux and Brenda Discher who are not only innovating with AI at scale, but keeping people at the center of it all. Across those conversations and many others I’m having, a few key foundational steps are emerging: 1️⃣ Have a pro-human AI point of view and strategy in place. AI has the potential to build a world of work where people can bring their full skills and abilities to bear — but we need to believe in the power of our people more than the power of our tech to realize it. 2️⃣ See jobs as tasks, not titles. Once you boil down a job down into a set of tasks, it’s much easier to see where AI is coming in to change or disrupt some of those tasks and where there are uniquely human skills people will spend much more time on then before. In a world where 68% of skills are set to change by 2030, understanding where this change will hit is crucial to helping your teams stay resilient. 3️⃣ Build learning into the day to day of your company’s culture. As skills for jobs change rapidly – learning is no longer a one-off moment at the start of a career. The ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn is what sets teams apart to stay agile and resilient. 

Conflict is inevitable. Emotional intelligence is the antidote. This “conversation guide” is a blueprint for emotional intelligence in action. ✅ Every step here reflects self-awareness, empathy, impulse control, and respect for others’ perspectives — the core pillars of EQ. ✅ Difficult conversations often go wrong not because of what we say, but how and when we say it. ✅ Mastering these skills turns conflict into collaboration. ✅ You create safety, preserve dignity, and move toward solutions — not stand-offs. Bottom line: 🧠 The emotionally intelligent leader doesn’t avoid hard conversations because they know how to have them well. That’s where trust is built, relationships deepen, and real progress happens. Give it another read, and tell me what you think... HOW TO MASTER DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS 1️⃣ Timing Matters ❌ Don’t ambush someone when they’re stressed or busy. ✅ “Can we find a time that works for both of us?” 2️⃣ Starting With Empathy, Not Ego ❌ Don’t jump in with blame or judgment. ✅ Begin by acknowledging their perspective and emotions. 3️⃣ Staying Steady, Not Reactive ❌ Don’t snap back or shut down. ✅ “Okay, I hear you. Can you help me understand what happened?” 4️⃣ Tackling It Early ❌ Don’t let negative feelings fester. ✅ Bring up issues when they’re still small. 5️⃣ Creating The Right Setting ❌ Don’t have tough talks in public or around peers. ✅ “Mind if we step aside and talk in private for a minute?” 6️⃣ Focusing On The Issue ❌ Don’t bring up past grudges or performance issues. ✅ Stay on topic and address one concern at a time. 7️⃣ Finding Common Ground ❌ Don’t frame the conversation as “winning” vs. “losing.” ✅ “We both want [X] by [date and time], right?” 8️⃣ Accepting Responsibility ❌ Don’t deflect or minimize your role in the situation. ✅ “I could’ve handled that better — my bad.” 9️⃣ Avoiding Absolutes ❌ Don’t use words like “always,” “never,” or “impossible.” ✅ Recognize nuance and exceptions to patterns. 🔟 Offering Solutions ❌ Don’t just present problems without plans for moving forward. ✅ “Here’s what I think could help... what do you think?” --- ♻️ Repost if this resonates. ➕ Follow Travis Bradberry for more and sign up for my weekly LinkedIn newsletter. Do you want more like this? 👇 📖 My new book, "The New Emotional Intelligence" is now 10% off on Amazon and it's already a bestseller.

We’re moving so fast with AI that acceleration is starting to get confused with intelligence. And that’s the real red flag: the tools are getting sharper, but the thinking underneath is getting thinner. You can feel it across the industry: people fluent in prompts, but shaky on the fundamentals that actually drive great work. Here’s why that matters: if we don’t rebuild core skills like insight craft, critical reasoning, narrative thinking, and creative rigor, we’ll end up with teams who can generate an answer but can’t judge its value. The smartest brands are already adjusting: letting humans lead the meaning while AI scales the output. That shift isn’t anti-tech; it’s pro-strategy. So how do we fix this? Treat your org like a university. Teach people to think first, automate second, and build real muscle around strategy, not just syntax. Teams that use AI with intent will lead. So, if you could strengthen one foundational skill across your team before layering on AI, what would it be?

Stop drawing boxes around people. Start mapping the work that creates value. The traditional org chart is dying. In the AI Age, hierarchical lines and boxes don't just slow you down, they actually obscure where the work is happening. If you try to retrofit AI onto your existing structure, you’re just paving the cow path. As I discuss in my new article with Jonathan Brill for the leading HR site TalentCulture (link in Comments), the future belongs to Octopus Organizations. Like an octopus that has a brain in every arm, AI-ready businesses use distributed intelligence. They don’t organize by jobs; they organize by tasks. This requires a shift from the Org Chart to the Work Chart. A Work Chart isn't about who reports to whom. It’s a dynamic map of what needs to happen to deliver value. It’s about workflows, outcomes, and the blended human-AI teams that make them a reality. Ready to build one? Here's how to start: 1) Deconstruct the Function: Pick a priority area and be brutally honest. What work actually happens? Focus on tasks, not titles. 2) Apply the AI Filter: For every task, ask: - Can this be automated? - Can AI enhance the human doing it? - If you started this business today from scratch, who (or what) would do it? 3) Define the Jobs to Be Done: Move past "Manager reviews X." Define the underlying motivation, like "Optimize pricing given customer capex/opex preferences." This reveals where AI can crunch data and where humans provide the strategic "last mile." (Yes, this is a new application of our 20-year track record with JTBD, and it really works) The goal isn't to replace people; it’s to liberate them from the drudge work that fills the boxes of an old-school org chart. AI should enable people to focus on the most human elements of their jobs. Is your organization a rigid hierarchy, or can it be an agile octopus? Work charts will loosen you up!

The CEO admitted he was terrified. Not in a private conversation. Not in therapy. On stage. In front of his 100 top leaders. During the biggest crisis in company history. A multi-billion dollar energy company being acquired. Decades-old family business dissolving. A board member who'd worked with this CEO for 15 years said after: "I've never felt that level of engagement before." What happened? Your IQ is the racecar. Your EQ is the fuel. This CEO had the car. Brilliant mind. Decades of expertise. The intelligence that builds billion-dollar companies. But for months, his people weren't going anywhere. Because he refused to add the fuel. When you ignore emotions, you don't erase them. You lose control of them. Those leaders were feeling everything: fear, grief, uncertainty. The CEO's refusal to acknowledge it didn't make those emotions disappear. It made them radioactive. Unspoken fear → passive resistance Unacknowledged grief → disengagement Suppressed anxiety → paralysis Before that moment, he told me, "I've processed this. I'm excited. My people know I'm not emotional." His company was being ripped apart, and he wanted to pretend he had it figured out. I pushed back: "Your leaders need you to meet them there." He looked at me like I'd asked him to set his career on fire. But something shifted. When he got on stage, he told them the truth: "Some nights I was terrified." The room went from frozen to electric. That's when the fuel hit the engine. His IQ was still there. But his EQ—his willingness to meet people in their emotional reality—moved 100 paralyzed leaders into action. The World Economic Forum ranks emotional intelligence as a top in-demand skill. TalentSmart found 90% of high performers are highly emotionally intelligent. Most agree, then go back to polishing the car while their team sits stuck. Right now, while you're nodding about EQ, your best people are updating their resumes. Not because you're a bad leader. Because you're performing certainty they don't believe. They know you're anxious about AI, or uncertain about the restructure. Your refusal to admit it teaches them they're alone in their fear. So they're seeking leaders who will meet them there. EQ isn't a soft skill. It's a stability skill. Your ability to read the room matters more than your strategic plan. Your ability to sense when someone's breaking matters more than your documentation. Your ability to build trust through humanity says whether your strategy moves people forward. The leaders who will own the next decade aren't the ones with credentials. They're the ones who sense what's happening while everyone else fakes certainty. Who read the resignation letter that hasn't been written. Who admit their own fear and give others permission to stop pretending. Your emotional intelligence IS your effectiveness. Not your credentials. Your ability to stay human when everything's falling apart. Are you fueling or just polishing the car?

AI isn’t just changing work. It’s changing how people feel about their value. And most leaders are missing it. We’re entering a new kind of imposter syndrome. Not psychological. Structural. A recent Forbes analysis shows experienced professionals questioning their value—not because they lack ability… But because the definition of competence is changing in real time. • Experience is no longer enough • Speed is being rewarded over depth • AI fluency is becoming expected So people are asking: “Does what I know still matter?” This is bigger than imposter syndrome -- It’s identity disruption. Because for years, leaders built value on: • Experience • Judgment • Pattern recognition And now? AI compresses all of that into seconds. Here’s what I’m seeing inside organizations: • High performers quietly doubting themselves • Experienced leaders feeling “behind” • Teams overworking to prove relevance Not because they’re less capable. Because the rules changed. This isn’t irrational. It’s rational. The ground is shifting. Which leads to the real question: "If AI can do what I do…what part of my value is still human?" Here’s what this means for leaders: ➤ Your job isn’t to compete with AI. It’s to redefine human value. Because if you don’t, your people will fill that gap with fear. My advice: • Redefine what “good” looks like • Reward judgment, not just output • Make thinking visible again (very important) AI isn’t just exposing skill gaps. It’s exposing identity gaps. And the leaders who win won’t be the fastest adopters of AI. They’ll be the ones who can clearly answer ➤ “What part of being human still matters here?” Coaching can help; let's chat. #ai #leadership #impostorsyndrome

Today’s Hiring Mistake Costing Us the Future A few months ago, I was in a leadership discussion when someone said, “We just need to find someone who’s done this before.” That is the problem. “Done this before” assumes tomorrow will look like yesterday. It won’t. The world of work has changed, yet hiring practices still feel built for when predictability was power and experience meant certainty. Leadership today isn’t about managing the known. It’s about navigating the unknown. The Status Quo Trap: Comfort Over Courage On both sides of the hiring table, I’ve noticed a pattern: we favor the familiar. Candidates who “feel like a fit” or remind us of past success: “He’s from our competitor — he’ll hit the ground running.” “She’s done this role before — low risk.” “We need someone who fits our culture.” Translation: we want someone comfortable. Comfort rarely breeds innovation. We talk transformation but hire safety. Why Traditional Hiring Fails Leadership today faces overlapping disruptions: AI, geopolitics, hybrid work, climate risk, and shifting expectations. Traditional hiring is linear: Past role →Similar role → Promotion → Next title. Successtoday isn’t what you’ve done. It’s how you think, adapt, and connect. Emotional intelligence, curiosity, and agility matter more than pedigree. How to Hire Differently Rethinking hiring isn’t about new tools. It’s about shifting from “Who fits us best?” to “Who will stretch us most?” 1. Hire for Potential, Not Pedigree Track records are context-dependent. Curiosity and learning agility predict success far better than years in the chair. 2. Build, Don’t Just Buy Leadership Many chase the “perfect” external hire when the next great leader might already be within reach. Succession planning and internal mobility are strategic advantages. 3. Use AI as an Enabler AI scans thousands of profiles fast, but reflects past patterns. Let it handle sourcing, screening, and analytics, while humans focus on intuition, empathy, and nuance. 4. Make Hiring a Team Sport When peers, boards, and future team members participate, decisions improve dramatically. 5. Redefine Fit “Culture fit” has often excluded diverse thinkers. Ask: “Will this person evolve our culture?” Find those who help us think better. 6. Shift Mindsets, Not Processes Modernizing hiring is about confronting biases, not adopting new systems. Realities to Acknowledge. Top leaders aren’t “available”; purpose attracts them. Diversity is a thinking advantage. Experience matters less than adaptability. Perfect hires don’t exist; great hires grow into and stretch the role. Are We Brave Enough? Talking transformation is easier than hiring for it. The world has changed. Talent expectations have evolved. Work itself is redefined. Only we must evolve. The future won’t be led by those who fit in. It will be led by those who stand out and help others rise with them.

Your people strategy will fail. "If we’re investing in AI and we don’t change our workforce strategy, we’re just automating the past," a CEO, "Danny", said to me last week. Most leaders are bolting AI onto yesterday’s org chart and pitching it as transformation. It isn’t. What you should be doing. 1. Design for outcomes, not headcount. Stop asking “how many FTE do we need?” Start asking “what outcomes must we deliver, and what mix of humans + AI gets us there?” AI changes the "unit of productivity." Your org structure has to reflect that. 2. Invest in "translators," not technologists. You don’t need data scientists. You need people who can bridge the gap between business strategy and AI capabilities. Translate risk into operational controls. Explain AI decisions to boards, regulators and customers. 3. Build governance capability now. AI without workforce governance is dumb. You need to oversee AI models. This includes ethical review. Data stewardship. Cyber and privacy assurance. This isn’t compliance for compliance's sake. It’s risk containment. 4. Reskill before you recruit. There is enormous capability inside your organisation. Yet most of us overlook the obvious. Train your high performers in AI workflow orchestration. Designing prompts. Automation mapping. Data fluency. The people who understand your business best are already inside your company. They will be the fastest to adapt. 5. Reward adaptability. Make learning a performance metric. Curiosity. Cross-functional thinking. Comfort with ambiguity. If your incentive structures reward only stability and tenure, you will fail. What to avoid? 1. Don’t hire an “AI project team” and isolate them. AI capability must be embedded in functions and core processes. Finance. Customer. Operations. Risk. Otherwise, it becomes a "side quest" with no ownership or commercial weight. 2. Don’t measure productivity the "old way." If you still equate productivity with hours worked, you misunderstand what AI is doing. AI collapses task time. Your new KPIs must reflect that. 3. Don’t pretend workforce reduction is a strategy. It's not. Yes, AI may reduce roles. But if your only lens is cost out, you’ll hollow out the very capability you need to compete. 4. Don’t leave middle managers behind. Danny says, "We all know that this is where most resistance lives." Managers need support, tools, and clarity; otherwise, they become blockers. 5. Don’t separate AI from trust. Security. Governance. Ethics. If your people strategy doesn’t integrate these from day one, you’ll move fast and then spend years repairing credibility. Workforce strategy in the AI era is not about replacing humans with machines. It’s about redesigning value creation. As Danny said, the question isn’t “How many jobs will AI replace?” It’s: "What will our best people do once the repetitive work is gone?" The winners won’t be the companies with the most AI tools. They’ll be the ones who promote trust and rewire their talent mix.

Most people assume the best way to use AI at work is to outsource tasks. But the biggest impact comes when we use AI to challenge us. We default to using AI for efficiency, like by delegating routine tasks. While this has its place, the real power of AI emerges when we use it as a thought partner, forcing us to think more critically, ask better questions, and elevate our decision-making. For example, I might need to have a difficult conversation with a vendor. I could tell ChatGPT what I really want to say, have it clean up my low-EQ draft, and simply send it. Alternatively, I could tell AI what I’m thinking and have it refine and guide me—offering suggestions for things to consider, such as starting the conversation by acknowledging aspects of the vendor’s work I appreciate, posing questions instead of making demands, and asking for the vendor’s help rather than assuming bad intent. When I use AI in this second mode, I might not save a few seconds right now, but I level up my game in the long run. Before AI, we had to do all the work ourselves, so we focused primarily on execution and meeting deadlines. Now, as we share the work with AI, we must take on new roles—question-asker, director/producer, critical thinker, and emotional actor—making us more curious, creative, and insightful about how things really work, both in the external world and in our own minds. AI doesn’t just make things easier; it makes us smarter. AI can introduce complexity and then explain it, expose us to new concepts and data, highlight where we may be wrong, push us to practice critical thinking and curiosity, and help us explore our own beliefs, behaviors, and theories of mind. As AI reshapes knowledge work, the real competitive edge will belong to those who embrace it as a partner in thinking—not just a shortcut for execution.

Emotional intelligence isn’t just about understanding yourself, it’s about how you help others rise and become leaders. In the workplace, leaders who use emotional intelligence with intention create a vibrant culture where people feel seen, supported, and motivated. Here are 7 easy ways to practice EQ daily and lift others up: ✅Listen fully: put away distractions and give someone your undivided attention. Presence is power. ✅Acknowledge emotions: name what you notice. Here's an example: “I can tell this is frustrating; let’s talk through it.” ✅Offer encouragement: a small word of belief at the right moment can change the trajectory of someone’s day. ✅Show curiosity: ask thoughtful questions that invite input, ideas, and perspectives. ✅Give credit generously: spotlight the contributions of others in front of peers and leaders. ✅Practice empathy in action: adjust workloads, extend flexibility, or simply check in when stress is high. ✅Lead with optimism: model resilience by framing challenges as opportunities to grow together. When leaders commit to these simple behaviors, it has a ripple effect on the culture of the entire organization. Trust deepens, morale lifts, and culture thrives. What’s one emotionally intelligent action you can take today to build a culture where people love to work?