Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Lessons from the Field
I’m walking alongside Steve Boyes in the heart of the Okavango Delta, trying to decode the labyrinth of clear channels flowing south. We’ve parked the mokoros, the long dugout canoes laden with all of our expedition gear, in the shade several hundred meters back. It’s midday, and the sun overhead is oppressive. The slow plod of our expedition has paused just long enough for him to stop, listen, and adjust his stride based not on pace but on the rhythm of those around him. He notices fatigue in our team, in me, and shifts our collective pace by voice and gesture alone. It’s been over two months of these too-hot days followed by too-cold nights that always seem too long but never offer enough rest. 1,000 miles of unexplored river stretches still southward, and I wonder how Steve will navigate all that he cannot see.
Emotional intelligence (EI), as Mayer and Salovey first explained, is our capacity to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotion to guide thought and behavior. Goleman later expanded on this, showing that self-awareness in leadership, empathy in leadership, emotional regulation, and social skills aren’t just traits; they’re performance tools. It turns out that leaders who can feel their team as much as they feel the task see farther, hold steadier, and create deeper cohesion.
In the middle of the Okavango Delta, surrounded by hundreds of miles of wilderness, the demand for highly attuned EI is amplified by the proximity to serious harm or death. Steve must sense what no sensor can measure: fear in a footstep, optimism in a glance, weariness in a breath. That’s emotional intelligence and leadership development in action, awareness, and attunement blended with real-time adaptation to navigate real-world consequences.
When a leader develops these muscles, employee/team mental wellness improves, and performance follows. In fact, studies confirm that higher EI correlates with better job performance and leadership success, whether it’s in a boardroom or here, isolated in a vast grassland, dodging angry elephants and hippos while we try to guess the distance between us and the lions calling from either side of camp. It’s the calm voice Steve uses when something goes cataclysmically wrong, and it’s the permission he gives others to pause or speak up, even when the map says simply, "south."
Developing emotional intelligence for leaders, especially those committed to leadership emotional regulation, is about building this kind of attunement. It begins with self-awareness: being able to notice, “I’m tense. I’m pushing. I’m hurried.” When we practice self-awareness, we create space. That space gives us a choice: to react with frustration or to pause and ask, “What’s needed here?”
It’s the same in an office as it is in the bush. A meeting that feels off might be the subtle expression of anxiety. A flared tone might be exhaustion masked by pride. Leaders who see that don’t dismiss. They ask. They listen. They adjust. And what happens next isn’t just better morale. It’s real trust.
Empathy in leadership is noticing what the unspoken stakes are. It’s reading between the lines: fatigue, uncertainty, fear of failure. It’s saying, “I know this is heavy. Let’s untangle it.” Empathy doesn’t solve the problem, but it makes the solution possible. It turns isolated effort into shared agency.
Yet EI isn’t just empathy. Emotional regulation, your capacity to stay present and clear amid internal turbulence, is equally critical. It’s one thing to notice tension. It’s another not to get hijacked by it. Steve demonstrates this every day. His body remains steady. His tone remains clear. And in that calm, the group finds footing. Leaders who can regulate their emotional heartbeat give others permission to settle into their own.
EI is developed like muscle memory built over moments of resistance and reflection. Start small. Check in with yourself throughout the day: What am I feeling? What are others around me feeling? How do I know that? What is being communicated between words? Where am I getting it right? How do I know? What’s the energetic feedback I get when I soften? When I harden? Begin to learn the language of your nervous system. And then learn to listen to it. Reflect. And use that information as a compass.
In organizations and teams alike, this kind of leadership results in building cultures that value emotional intelligence skills. The most effective teams I’ve been on don’t track KPIs the way they track breathing. They pause. They sync. They ask, “Who’s struggling?” And they reframe support as a strategy, not a kindness. It’s not performance. It’s practice. That’s developing leadership skills rooted in humanity. A leader who feels and faces complexity doesn’t dismiss struggle. They name it. And naming it drains its power. The result is culture, not chaos; alignment, not armor.
Mental health in the workplace…be it an office or the wildlands of Botswana…lives where people lead with honesty. It lives where team mental wellness isn’t just coded into strategy but shows up in daily behavior. Where leaders name their emotions, regulate their tone, and invite the team to do the same. Emotional intelligence in leadership isn’t soft. It’s foundational. It’s not just a skill, but the difference between fleeting output and sustainable legacy.
Steve surveys the glaring maze of the braided delta and pauses before asking, “Which way feels right to you?” That question is emotional intelligence in motion: trust in another’s inner compass. That’s what being a leader with heart looks like. And that’s how you begin building the emotional intelligence in leadership that lasts.
cory richards