Why Emotional Intelligence Matters for Leaders Today
The average middle manager carries more emotional weight than most organizations realize. They must absorb strategy from above, push back when needed, refine it, and translate it to their teams for execution. To keep performance on track, manage resistance, maintain trust, and stay calm through change, they need emotional intelligence (EI). This is where slow down to speed up becomes a powerful leadership principle.
Sarah Kay, Director of Global Leadership Development at Sedgwick, has dedicated her career to building emotionally intelligent leaders. Sedgwick is a global risk and claims partner with 33,000 colleagues and over 10,000 clients across 80 countries. Kay helps train roughly 4,500 leaders worldwide.
“My job is to create meaningful leadership development opportunities for our leaders globally,” Kay says. “One main goal is to help them engage teams, drive performance, and empower colleagues.”
Through over 60 interviews with talent development leaders, Kay’s approach stands out. She matches human skills to real moments of pressure and impact. As she puts it, “The world moves fast. My biggest challenge is helping everyone slow down so we can speed up.”
Building High-EI Leaders at Every Level
Sedgwick’s approach is not one-size-fits-all. Kay breaks leadership into four levels: aspiring, frontline, mid-level, and senior leaders. EI skills are woven into each level.
EI for Aspiring Leaders
For individual contributors and aspiring leaders, Sedgwick uses an online learning suite paired with its Capability Framework. This helps people see what is expected and access courses to grow toward those expectations.
EI for Frontline Leaders
Frontline leaders face a big challenge: they must both “do and lead.” Kay says the ratio often exceeds 100%. “Do a lot and lead a lot.” Emotional intelligence starts with presence. A common mistake is confusing being busy with being present. Her advice: “Move slow to move fast. Carve out time to build relationships, give feedback, and listen. It feels like a lot today, but it saves time in the long run.”
EI for Mid-Level Leaders
Mid-level leaders manage both the team and the strategy. They must understand the strategy, buy into it, and execute it—while bringing their teams along. “Success involves having hard conversations,” Kay says. “Leaders need to push back respectfully and say, ‘I don’t understand the strategy.’ Then they must turn to their team and say, ‘Here’s how we execute it.’”
EI for Senior Leaders
Senior leaders often become removed from day-to-day work. Their EI challenge is staying connected. The best leaders create environments where people share what’s really happening, not just what leadership wants to hear. “Their role is to listen deeply and understand how strategy is experienced throughout the company,” Kay explains.
The core pedagogy is the same at every level: learning must connect to real leadership work and real on-the-job challenges.
Practice Drives Real Behavior Change
Kay doesn’t believe in leadership development that ends when the workshop ends. “We don’t teach anything without including practice,” she says. She knows the familiar pattern: a leader attends a session, feels inspired, then returns to the office and falls back into old habits.
Her team interrupts that pattern by pairing content with practice, application, and feedback. “We combine learning, practicing, and applying on the job with feedback—often from the participant’s supervisor.” Kay also adds development plans, coaching, mentoring, and stretch opportunities. “There’s always a ‘What’s next?’—a plan to maximize time together and stretch you in the next three to six months.”
AI Helps Leaders Practice Difficult Conversations
Kay sees AI as part of the future of leadership development. One successful tool is a communication simulator that lets leaders practice tough conversations with an AI colleague. “One of the hardest skills to sharpen is having a tough conversation,” Kay says. The simulator gives a low-risk space to rehearse high-risk moments, like delivering feedback or handling resistance.
But Kay is careful: AI is not a replacement for human skills. “As AI grows, the value of human-centered leaders will only rise.”
The Stigma Around Emotion at Work Is Fading
Kay has seen a major shift. “Twenty years ago, I was afraid to tell leaders to be curious, kinder, or calmer. That wasn’t attractive then.” Today, leaders understand that performance and humanity go together. “Success is about listening to understand people, not to reply. It’s about rewarding what you want repeated and bringing curiosity to conversations.”
Her final lesson: “Great leadership is about human connection and relationships. That lesson has only become more important in the AI era.”
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