Jake Burhans argues that emotional intelligence matters more for managers than raw smarts. It's the ability to read your team, understand their limits, and adjust how you communicate, motivate, and discipline. The catch: it's nearly impossible to spot in a job interview.
One of the most important skills in management, uh, and I never really realized this before, I didn't know much about management until I started doing it 2 years ago, is emotional intelligence. It is so critical. It's more important than actual intelligence, I think, because the ability to read all of your team members, know where their line is, know when you can push them more and when you can't, know how they learn, how to speak to them, how to motivate them, how to pick them up when they're feeling down, how to be stern with them when they're acting out of line. Like, the emotional intelligence to be able to handle all those different personality types is such an incredible skill. Interesting, like, I'm not sure how you even really look for that in, you know, interviews and whatnot, but it's one of the most important things that I've come to learn as a foundational skill of a manager.
