In this instructional video, Ramon Estrada explains why emotional intelligence (EI) is essential for leaders operating in today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) business environment. He outlines five core EI traits—self‑awareness, self‑regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills—describing each trait, why it matters, and how it can be practiced. Estrada shares personal anecdotes (e.g., his own difficulty with self‑regulation as an entrepreneur) and connects EI to resilience, purpose (the "true north" concept), and effective team dynamics. He emphasizes that 21st‑century leadership is grounded in character rather than personality, urging leaders to develop these traits to build stronger, collaborative teams and achieve organizational goals. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to subscribe and reflect on what motivates them to become better leaders.
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Today's business world is VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And right now, more than ever, leaders must develop their emotional intelligence to be top performers and to connect with their teams. Together, we will talk about why emotional intelligence is essential for leaders. Hi, my name is Ramon Estrada, and I help leaders to grow their organizations through creative and innovative approaches. Today, I want to help you clarify what emotional intelligence is, for you to develop the 5 traits that will help you be a better leader. The first trait is self-awareness. What does it mean? It means understanding yourself, your values, your strengths, your weaknesses, what's deeply important for you. Self-awareness allows you to think and to know yourself objectively, not by the stories that you tell yourself every day. It will allow you to have a sense of humor about yourself, to laugh about the crazy things that probably you do every day, and even to be open for criticism. Self-awareness, it's the starting point for your personal growth as a leader and, yes, why not, as a person. The second trait is self-regulation. It is deeply important for an emotionally intelligent leader to monitor and to know the emotions that you are feeling. For instance, if a person from your team brings you bad news, It's important to know what we are feeling in that moment and not to burst. This was one of my weaknesses when I was an entrepreneur, honestly. Why? Because sometimes, being full of activities and doing so many things, I wanted everything to run smoothly, according to plan. But now I know that plans do not ever happen as we thought they would. So self-regulation is deeply important, and linking this to resilience, the less depleting emotions that you have, and if you can change them to renewing emotions, your resilience will increase. Third, motivation. This is important to identify what motivates you, what's really important and makes you wake up, And go to work. Maybe you can have a goal that you want to achieve, maybe in one week or one month. When you reach it, what's next? That's why Bill George talks about the true north. This is a source of motivation that allows us to redirect all our efforts to a higher purpose. It's not only a milestone. It's more of a horizon where we go and we walk day by day. And if something is in the way of this horizon, we can dodge it, or we can jump it, or we can find ways. But it's deeply important to understand what motivates us and always moving forward. Fourth, empathy. What do I mean by empathy? It's putting yourself in the shoes of another person. As a leader, it's deeply important for you to understand what the other persons are feeling, your teammates, and also taking care of them. We all want to be respected, valued, and acknowledged. Fifth, social skills. If you want to win in this VUCA environment, You need to make sure that you have a strong team, a team that communicates with each other in a proper way, and that you are an effective leader. What does it mean? That you need to take care of the relationships with your team. You are not alone, you are not an island, and if you want to achieve something deeply important for your company, it doesn't matter if it's launching a new marketing campaign, launching a product, or even transforming the business model because the company is failing, you need to make sure that the sum of each one of your team members, the result is higher, and that you are going directly towards the result. Leadership in the 21st century is based on character, not personality. If you want to have a character and to show your values, you need to make sure that you are in touch with your emotional intelligence. Developing it, and you need to start by being self-aware, to looking at others with empathy, to self-regulate your emotions and not jumping to conclusions, evidently, when something is not happening your way, to develop social skills so you are a team all together. Thank you so much for watching this video. I am highly motivated to be creating this kind of videos every week, so please subscribe to my channel and leave me a comment of what What motivates you to be a better leader? Take care.
