Have you ever received feedback that left you questioning your capability for the rest of the day?
Have you ever sat in a meeting, noticed a potential issue, and decided not to say anything?
Have you ever watched two people work incredibly hard on the same project, only to realise they were operating from completely different assumptions?
Have you ever delayed a conversation because it felt awkward, uncomfortable, or easier to deal with next week?
None of these things appear on a profit and loss statement.
There isn't a line item called:
"One team member stopped contributing ideas."
Or:
"Three difficult conversations avoided."
Or:
"Confidence slowly eroded over six months."
And yet, if you've spent enough time working in organisations, you'll know these moments matter. A lot.
Because people rarely wake up one morning completely disengaged, stakeholders don't usually lose trust overnight and projects don't suddenly become dysfunctional in a single afternoon. Instead, there is often a gradual shift.
Small moments that seem insignificant in isolation, but together begin shaping how people think, how they feel, and how they show up.
The challenge is that by the time the cost becomes visible, we're usually looking at something completely different.
We're looking at the resignation, a project delay, a stakeholder complaint, rework, conflict. Those are the things we can measure, but they often started much earlier.
A piece of feedback that didn't land well, an expectation that wasn't clarified, a concern that never made it into the conversation, a team member who stopped speaking up because they weren't sure how their contribution would be received.
When we think about emotional intelligence, it's easy to focus on the interpersonal side of things
- Better communication.
- Better relationships.
- Better teamwork.
All important.
But what I've come to appreciate over the years is that emotional intelligence also has a commercial impact.
It influences whether people feel safe enough to raise risks early, whether feedback develops capability or destroys confidence, whether trust grows or slowly erodes, whether problems are addressed while they're still small or left long enough to become expensive.
The irony is that the most costly workplace issues are often not technical problems at all. They are human problems that eventually create technical, operational, or financial consequences.
That's why I think emotional intelligence is so often underestimated, because it influences what happens before the visible problem appears. And those early moments are easy to miss if we're not paying attention.
This week's podcast episode explores this idea in more depth: 🎧 The Hidden Cost of Poor Emotional Intelligence
You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Perhaps the question isn't simply whether emotional intelligence is important.
Perhaps the better question is:
What might it already be costing us when it's missing?
And
What could change if we started paying attention to those small moments before they become something much bigger?
– Nat
PS As you move through your week, notice the conversations happening around you. Are people sharing ideas freely? Challenging assumptions respectfully? Asking questions when they're unsure? Sometimes those seemingly small signals tell us far more about the health of a team than any performance report ever could.
PPS If you're leading people, one of the most valuable questions you can ask yourself is: "What might my team not be telling me?" The answer often reveals where the greatest opportunities for growth exist.
