TLDR: Emotional intelligence helps leaders connect, empathise, and influence, but without integrity, it risks becoming manipulation. True leadership requires integrating EI with responsibility, wholeness, and ethical action. By combining embodied skills, integrity, and models like Internal Family Systems, leaders can foster trust, resilience, and meaningful change
Introduction: The Role and Question of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) has become central to contemporary leadership discourse. In his influential model, Daniel Goleman (1995) identifies five core competencies:
- Self-awareness – recognising one’s emotions and their impact
- Self-regulation – managing impulses and emotional reactivity
- Motivation – directing energy in service of an intrinsic purpose
- Empathy – understanding and responding to others’ emotions
- Social skills – building rapport, collaboration, and influence
These elements have shaped how leaders are evaluated and developed across industries. Goleman’s framework, along with Mayer and Salovey’s earlier academic work (1990), helped legitimise emotional intelligence as a domain of leadership and organisational development. Yet the concept is not without critique.
Scholars have raised important questions:
- What kind of “intelligence” is EI? Critics such as Locke (2005) argue that EI is too loosely defined and overlaps with personality traits or interpersonal skills, rather than constituting a distinct intelligence.
- Can EI be measured reliably? Matthews, Zeidner, and Roberts (2002) question the psychometric validity of EI assessments, arguing that popular tests often confound emotional knowledge with emotional ability.
- Does EI risk reinforcing neoliberal ideals of self-discipline? Fineman (2004) cautions that EI can be used to promote compliance or suppress dissent in the workplace.
Despite these critiques, the importance of emotional insight and relational skill in leadership is hard to dispute. The deeper challenge is not whether EI matters – it does – but how we define it, how we train it, and what view of human development underpins it.
Emotional Intelligence as Embodied Skill
In this essay, I argue that emotional intelligence is best understood not as a fixed trait or measurable quotient, but as a set of embodied, trainable skills – what Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, and Eleanor Rosch (1991) called “wisdom” in The Embodied Mind. They proposed that cognition is not purely mental or representational, but a process of embodied, enactive engagement with the world:
“Knowing how,” they write, “is fundamentally embodied”
(Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991, p. 175).
This perspective aligns with my own framework: the Four Powers of Integrity. These meta-skills – Appreciative Awareness, Authentic Resonance, Creative Responsibility, and Impeccable Completion – support the development of emotional intelligence at three nested levels:
- Intrapersonal (self-to-self)
- Interpersonal (peer-to-peer)
- Collective (team and system)
Unlike traditional EI models, which often emphasise internal capacities or personality traits, the Four Powers focus on practice — repeatable, observable, embodied actions that cultivate emotional awareness, discernment, and wise response. These powers are not abstract ideals. They are lived disciplines that help us metabolise emotional charge, integrate internal conflict, speak from congruence, and navigate complex human relationships with clarity and care.
Integrity as the Compass
Two of the Four Powers explicitly involve what Goleman would call EI. Appreciative awareness includes being present to one’s own emotional life and sensitive to the emotional realities of others. Authentic resonance entails communicating congruently about what one feels and listening deeply enough to perceive truth from another’s point of view.
The other two — creative responsibility and impeccable completion — also require emotional skill: the ability to own one’s impact, stay accountable in relationships, and follow through with clarity and care.
What distinguishes integrity from EI is its grounding. Integrity insists that we use these skills in service of wholeness, not merely personal performance. Statements about emotional intelligence do not necessarily imply such grounding. A leader might be adept at reading the room and managing impressions, yet still manipulate others for personal gain. In contrast, integrity requires that we integrate emotional skill with responsibility to ourselves, our colleagues, and the wider systems of which we are part.
Thus, while the skills that Goleman and others describe under “emotional intelligence” are undeniably valuable, I contend that EI without integrity is incomplete — and potentially dangerous. The world does not need leaders who can manipulate feelings more effectively; it needs leaders who can build wholeness in the face of complexity and change.
Internal Family Systems and Emotional Intelligence
An emerging body of practice shows how Internal Family Systems (IFS), originally a therapeutic model, deepens leadership and complements emotional intelligence. IFS emphasises self-leadership by helping individuals recognise and harmonise their internal “parts.” Applied in organisations, it enables leaders to reduce self-sabotage, resolve inner conflict, and show up with greater authenticity.
IFS enhances emotional intelligence by cultivating self-awareness and emotional regulation — two of Goleman’s original competencies. Leaders trained in IFS practices are better equipped to empathise, build trust, and respond constructively under pressure. Studies and case reports indicate that emotionally intelligent leadership, especially when combined with IFS-informed self-leadership, improves organisational performance, resilience, and workplace culture (see e.g. Farrell, 2024; Adapt Consulting, 2024).
Here we see the practical extension of integrity: intrapersonal wholeness supports interpersonal resonance and collective coherence. In other words, IFS offers a method for cultivating the embodied skills that EI points toward and the Four Powers of Integrity require.
Conclusion
Leadership today is not just about strategy or authority. It is about emotional navigation in a volatile world: the ability to grieve what’s gone, show up for what’s alive, and lead others with coherence, responsiveness, and integrity. Developing the embodied skills of integrity — which include but transcend those grouped under EI — enables us to lead in a way that is not only effective but also profoundly ethical. And it is this kind of leadership — grounded in integrity — that our organisations, communities, and ecosystems most urgently require.
Bibliography
Clarke, N. (2018). Emotional intelligence and transformational leadership: A meta-analysis and explanatory model. SAGE Open, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018800910
Fineman, S. (2004). Getting the measure of emotion – and the cautionary tale of emotional intelligence. Human Relations, 57(6), 719–740. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726704044953
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
Locke, E. A. (2005). Why emotional intelligence is an invalid concept. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 425–431.
Matthews, G., Zeidner, M., & Roberts, R. D. (2002). Emotional intelligence: Science and myth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Maturana, H. R., Varela, F. J., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211.
Farrell, D. (2024). Internal Family Systems and workplace culture. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/internal-family-systems-role-workplace-culture-danielle-farrell-ma-lwrwc
Adapt Consulting Company. (2024). Exploring Internal Systems Therapy in leadership and management. https://www.adaptconsultingcompany.com/2024/08/14/exploring-internal-systems-therapy-in-leadership-and-management/
Frequently Asked Questions
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to a leader’s ability to understand, regulate, and respond to emotions, both their own and others’, to build stronger relationships and influence outcomes.
Integrity grounds emotional intelligence in wholeness and accountability, ensuring leaders use emotional skills to build trust and ethical influence rather than manipulate.
Yes. EI is best developed as embodied skills, through practices like appreciative awareness, authentic resonance, and Internal Family Systems work, rather than being treated as a fixed trait
Leaders may use EI to “read the room” but still act selfishly. Integrity ensures EI is directed toward the collective good, ethical leadership, and long-term trust
Nathaniel Whitestone
Nathaniel Whitestone is a governance expert, OD/OT consultant, executive coach, and angel investor, committed to fostering Healthy Power in organizations. He thrives on unraveling complex systems, guiding leaders to innovate with integrity and playful revolution. His passion lies in seeding societal transformation towards empowerment and fairness.