Emotional intelligence, or “EQ” as it’s often called, involves being able to recognize and work better with emotions. It’s central to understanding ourselves and other people and staying cool under pressure, and it’s long been cited as a critical factor in successful management and leadership. This makes it one of the most widely taught leadership skills in organizations worldwide.
One reason for its popularity is that as people rise through the ranks in an organization, their need for technical skills decreases, while their need for human skills goes up, and managing emotions is one of the harder human skills to master. Leaders today are also supporting employees wrestling with strong emotions about all the changes happening around them, especially relating to AI. So maybe now is the time to double down on EQ training?
Personally, I don’t think so, for two reasons.
First, hard-driving, goal-focused leaders don’t like the thought of slowing down to discuss their feelings, which is how the idea of EQ is often perceived. It turns out that in the brain, networks for focusing on goals dampen networks for focusing on people, and vice versa.
Some years back we measured the percentage of leaders who were strong in one or the other, or both, and found that — fewer than 5% of leaders were strong in both goal and people focus. Most leaders excelled at focusing on goals. And telling these goal-focused leaders to be more in touch with their emotions feels to them like switching off the capacity that got them to where they are. (Just the word “emotions” is likely to trigger a threat response in a goal-focused leader.)
So, while these are important skills, we aren’t packaging them in a way that compels the leader to take notice — we’re doing the opposite. It’s not that we shouldn’t teach this skill — it’s that there is a meaningfully more effective way to sell it.
There is a second issue with focusing more on teaching EQ today. It’s not enough. Understanding and managing your emotions is just one piece of something critically important in the AI era. To thrive in this new era, leaders need large amounts of something called metacognition, or put simply, thinking about thinking.
It turns out that one of the most effective and direct ways of getting better at thinking about thinking is to learn about how the brain works. The more language you have for what the brain does, the easier it is to think about thinking.
So, rather than a narrow focus on EQ, we need a broader focus on what we can call “neurointelligence,” or NQ. I define this as the ability to understand and work with how the brain functions. This includes EQ, but much more besides.
For example, rather than just learning about emotions, leaders would benefit from a better understanding of humans’ cognitive capacity limits and how to work within and around them. Leaders would do well to better understand the creative process, to help develop ideas that truly stand out, and avoid the groupthink that is inherent when AI is used for creative thinking.
On a related note, leaders need to be better at differentiating between truly high-quality thinking, and something copied directly from AI that will make people roll their eyes.
Leaders would also do well to better understand human motivation — people’s intrinsic drivers, not just their feelings — to design strategies that minimize negative reactions and maximize engagement with ideas, not to mention to drive more successful change initiatives. They would benefit from better understanding people’s unconscious biases that get in the way of making good decisions. And it would be useful to understand how to build resilience and holistic wellbeing, both of which can help leaders think more deeply — essential for working at pace with AI.
These are just a few examples of insights from building neurointelligence that leaders would benefit greatly from, and there are many more.
In short, leaders today will need to be much better at thinking about all kinds of thinking, not just their emotions. Consulting firm McKinsey agrees. They recently presented research arguing that “investing in brain health” is going to be a critical differentiator for organizations in 2026 and beyond. Other recent research has shown that the very act of learning about your brain can improve brain function and connectivity, as well as help people build resilience in the face of stress and challenge, — something we’re all going to need more of going forward.
While understanding our emotions is a timelessly important issue, for leaders to thrive in today’s AI-saturated environment, they need something both packaged better and that addresses the wider landscape of the challenge. Maybe it’s time to stop telling leaders to work so hard on their EQ, and instead focus on their NQ.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
