Why the Rise of AI Makes Emotional Intelligence More Crucial Than Ever

What is emotional intelligence in an AI enabled workplace?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise and manage emotions, understand other perspectives and respond constructively in a social situation.

It is not a claim that machines can never recognise language or emotion. Technology can detect patterns and support communication, while people remain responsible for context, values and consequences. Emotional intelligence matters when a decision affects trust, motivation, safety or a relationship that cannot be reduced to a data point.

For an insurer, this may involve explaining a difficult claims decision to someone who is already under strain. For a data team, it may involve challenging a model without undermining the colleague who built it. For a recruiter, it may involve discussing a sensitive constraint with a candidate who has already given notice. The common thread is judgement in a human setting, under time pressure, where the wrong wording costs more than the wrong number.

What can AI do and what still needs human judgement?

AI can assist with information and pattern work, while people still need to interpret context, weigh competing values and take accountability for the outcome.

Exposure to automation sits at the level of tasks rather than whole jobs, and our guide to how AI is impacting Gen Z’s careers sets out that task level evidence in full. A tool may draft, classify or recommend, but the person using it must decide whether the output is accurate, appropriate and fair for the situation.

The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 places leadership and social influence, resilience, and analytical thinking among the core skills employers expect to matter through 2030, and our guide to how the hiring landscape has evolved sets out what that shift looks like over a decade. The implication is not that emotional intelligence replaces technical ability. It helps technical ability travel through a real organisation.

Empathy is relevant when the same message lands differently with different people. Self awareness is relevant when pressure makes a manager defensive. Relationship management is relevant when a project requires agreement across functions. These capabilities can be practised and assessed, even when technology supports part of the workflow.

The foundations of emotional intelligence

The practical foundations are self awareness, self management, empathy, listening and relationship management.

Self awareness means noticing how your assumptions, stress and incentives affect a decision. Ask what evidence could disprove your first reaction. Self management means pausing before replying to a difficult message, separating the urgent issue from the emotion around it, and choosing a response that protects both the work and the relationship.

Empathy means understanding what another person may need to hear, know or clarify. It does not require agreement. It requires enough understanding to respond fairly. Listening means reflecting the question before answering, and confirming what has been decided and what remains uncertain, which prevents a fast tool assisted exchange from creating a slow misunderstanding.

Relationship management means making expectations explicit, repairing a mistake and giving feedback that is specific about behaviour and effect. Trust grows through repeated actions, not slogans.

How does AI change the way people communicate at work?

It removes friction from producing a message, which makes the human decisions about tone, timing and audience more consequential rather than less.

A drafted message arrives sounding finished. That is the problem. Fluency now carries no information about whether the writer thought about the reader, understood the situation or checked the facts, so the reader has lost a signal they used to rely on. In a difficult conversation, a polished paragraph can read as distance rather than care.

Three habits help. Decide who the message is for before you decide what it says. Say plainly when something is uncertain, because an assisted draft will rarely volunteer doubt. And choose a conversation over a document when the subject is a person’s work, pay, performance or a decision that affects them. None of that is a rule about tools. It is a judgement about when writing is the wrong instrument.

The same applies to summaries. An assisted summary of a meeting can save time, but a manager should still ask the person what the summary missed. The gap between what was recorded and what was meant is usually where the real issue sits.

How does emotional intelligence improve team decisions?

It improves decisions by making disagreement safer, assumptions more visible and feedback more useful.

Teams ask better questions when a junior analyst can challenge a result without being dismissed. A leader can change course earlier when people can report a concern without fearing blame. A client can make a more informed decision when uncertainty is explained rather than hidden behind confident language.

Use a short decision routine. State the objective, invite a contrary view, record the evidence and agree who will act. After the outcome, review both the technical result and the interaction that produced it. That turns emotional intelligence into an observable team practice rather than a personality trait.

How should employers assess emotional intelligence?

Assess behaviour in realistic situations rather than relying on personality labels or a friendly first impression.

Use consistent questions and rating standards, as our guide to why great candidates slip through the cracks sets out. Ask every candidate to describe a disagreement, a difficult message, a mistake or a time they changed their approach after feedback.

Score against a written rubric rather than an impression. Four criteria carry most of the weight. Did the candidate describe what the other person needed, or only what they themselves wanted? Did they name their own contribution to the problem? Did they change something as a result, and can they say what? And did they explain the effect on the other person, not only the outcome for the project? A candidate who scores well on all four is describing a habit. A candidate who scores well on the last one alone is describing a story.

Use a work sample or role play where appropriate, with clear instructions and reasonable adjustments. Do not reward extroversion as a substitute for empathy. Quiet candidates can demonstrate strong listening and careful judgement, while confident candidates still need evidence. Our guide to finding fit beyond the resume shows how to test evidence without reducing a person to a personality type.

Where the appointment carries governance or control responsibility, the same evidence matters more, because the person will have to raise an unwelcome finding. Our risk and financial advisory practice works on those searches, and for senior mandates our leadership hiring practice tests it alongside authority and reporting line.

What should leaders do to develop emotional intelligence?

Leaders should model reflection, ask for specific feedback and make the quality of interaction part of how work is reviewed.

After a difficult meeting, ask what each person understood, what was left unsaid and which decision needs clarification. Give feedback on an observable behaviour such as interrupting, avoiding a question or explaining a trade off well. Make space for coaching and practice rather than treating emotional intelligence as an innate trait.

When technology changes a workflow, involve the people who use it. Their concerns may reveal a privacy, fairness or usability problem before a metric does, and asking early is also the cheapest way to build trust during an AI rollout. A team that has been consulted will tell you when a tool is producing nonsense. A team that has not will quietly work around it.