Emotional Intelligence (Part 1)
What we can learn from athletes who’ve mastered EI to boost our careers and beat AI
I saw a job post the other day for a senior position with a requirement for high “Emotional Intelligence”. This is a term I’d heard of used in sports but did not, until now, understand its significance for hiring managers. But what is emotional intelligence? And if we’re running low can we acquire it, or if we are blessed with some of this super-ability, can we improve on what we have? We will answer these questions through the purifying lens of sports and iconic athletes such as Roger Federer, Mike Tyson and teams like the World Cup winning Argentina, before composing a strategy we can employ to improve our career prospects in the uncertain age of AI.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. It is often associated with maintaining composure in high-pressure situations. A fireman trains to steady his breathing, just as an experienced diver won't panic when something surprises her in the deeps. Panic merchants don’t survive in sports either and employers tend to avoid them at all costs.
Anger is another telltale sign that someone has low emotional intelligence. When directing an ITV boxing documentary, renowned cornerman Paddy Fitzpatrick told me, “Composure wins fights”. He said if a fighter gets angry, his muscles tense up, constrict his range of motion and his heart pumps excess blood that wastes precious oxygen. The fighter will inevitably lose. An ability to remain calm while others lose their head is a hallmark of EI.
In fact one of the most famous athletes of our time and poster-boy of cool started angry. Roger Federer who retired in 2022 with 20 grand slams admitted having a bad temper as a teenager and would frequently smash rackets––possibly a good barometer of EI in tennis. How many rackets did Sampras, Serena, Novak and Rafa smash? Compare that to someone like Nick Kyrgios, a mercurial talent who lacks the champion’s temperament, something he openly admitted after losing his cool during the 2022 Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic.
But it must be noted that some more volatile characters who regularly lost their cool went on to become champions, such as John McEnroe and more recently Andy Murray. And across other sports there are more examples of legendary athletes who appear to flout the rules of EI to great success.
Take Iron Mike Tyson (undefeated version one, 1987-1990) who was a vicious fighter full of heart. He savagely battered his opponents and to an untrained-eye could appear as technically-minded as a drunk flinging haymakers outside the Crown & Greyhound on Friday night. But pro boxers don’t fight like that. Tyson beat most of his opponents in the locker room and as Sun Tzu says, “To win without fighting is best”. He dominated the pre-fight mind games, while his unpredictability arrested the world’s media in the build-up, before he continued to unleash a brand of unprecedented, but accurately-trained violence, inside the ring on some brave but poor soul.
The fear travelled ahead of his name like a gladiator’s legend echoing through the porticos of Rome. Don King, his wily promoter, used this legend to sell mega-fights but knew Tyson was no one-hit wonder, and instead a tactically-sound technician with God-given concussive power.
None of his rise to success was by chance. In some ways it was down to his EI.
Tyson’s emotional intelligence was cultivated by legendary cornerman Cus D’Amato and was founded on a complex but balanced offensive and defensive strategy. His art of defence, save Mayweather, is possibly unrivalled in the modern age of boxing. His infamous off-beat weave was impossible to time, the peekaboo stance impenetrable, and his head movement was flawless. Due to his small stature (compared to other heavyweights) he acquired a command of distance which let him evade, and crucially gain, balanced footing in order to launch his iconic seizures of sheer ferocity.
Watch Tyson in the clinch. Like bulls locked horn-to-horn, he’s receiving feedback radiating from his opponent’s head and body. He can recover breath, formulate a plan and set his feet before slinging the next shot.
Tyson is a cautionary tale to not be fooled into passing someone off as angry or aggressive because EI doesn’t have to be pretty. It has a variety of shapes to it but someone with high EI has an underlying strategy or it becomes just a display of raw emotion. That said, Tyson once replied, “Everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.” And that’s EI: How you react when everything goes out of the window. EI is the brain’s control room calibrating your reaction. For an athlete it forms a major part of their game intelligence, or in the case of boxing, ringcraft.
This rare art was most exquisitely displayed by the Greatest. Muhammad Ali rarely punched himself out, in fact, he famously rope-a-doped George Foreman, a much bigger and stronger fighter––who lost his emotional control in their Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire 1974. What is this move?
“Offer the enemy bait to lure him. All war is deception,” advises Sun Tzu.
Ali slouched against the ropes and took a sustained battering while simulating losing the fight, all in order to tire out his opponent before turning the tables and defeating him. It essentially became a test of two fighter’s emotional intelligence and Ali passed with flying colours.
These boxers incorporated EI into winning strategies in high-pressure situations. The point is to remember that EI is a tool to help reach an objective and not the entirety of someone’s character––that is who we are when no one else is watching. EI is only a single facet of us. It is an instrument we can use at work to control our emotions while sensing and influencing others. We should accept that it is a somewhat manufactured, but still character-driven, version of who we need to be to operate at a high performance.
So at work, Tom’s nature is opinionated but his EI moulds him to actively listen to the other side. Asha’s quiet in big Zoom meetings but speaks up passionately and articulately when talking about sustainability. The best are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and adjust their levels accordingly or find counter-balances in order to reach their goal.
There was an infamous example of this in the 1990 FIFA World Cup semi-final between England and Germany when well-known Mr. Nice Guy, Gary Lineker––a man who never received a yellow card in his career––gave a concerned (out of character) grimace to the manager Sir Bobby Robson, alerting him to control a distraught Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne. Linekar said in a recent podcast that he did it for selfish reasons because he needed the most talented player healthy to give them a chance of winning. On the surface it looked like a noble gesture but in truth Linekar employed his EI, and his good-boy status, to alert and influence a messenger to satisfy his ambition.
This complex EI network feels closer to our work environment than, I sincerely hope, Tyson flattening an opponent. How do we navigate this complex web of people and emotions? This is the primary job of modern day sports managers: adjusting the individual hot and cold taps of player’s emotions until the temperature of the team is just right. With so many moving parts and personalities it becomes incredibly difficult to control and is no different in a corporation.
But there is an instructive example from the current two best premier league managers, and a case where the master beat his apprentice: Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and his protégé Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta.
In April this year, Arsenal were 8 points ahead of City with less than ten games to go.
Not for a decade has a team lost at this stage but Arsenal managed because they lacked, what American’s call, clutch: that rare ability to deliver in the most intense moments. The jewel in the crown of EI.
In the business end of the season, Arteta was twice yellow carded on the touchline for his histrionics, and his team regularly lost their composure by missing penalties, pointlessly fighting opponents, or at times were so flat they looked dispassionate. In a potential league decider against City, they were roundly battered, appearing despondent from the kick-off and clearly missed another fundamental ingredient of good EI: self-belief.
EI is founded on self-awareness. For EI to bloom you must know your own performance levels and have a go-to methodology to swiftly change them. If the levels are low something needs to trigger them and vice versa. In football, a manager’s pep talk, or if you’re alone, maybe a go to mental image that evokes a sense of urgency and purpose. Man City won the title because they have the best team, manager and mentality, but in the end, it also came down to having the most reliable EI and a manager who had its dial in his pocket.
There is no EI football stat but maybe we can draw a conclusion from a simple piece of data: disciplinary record. And it comes as no surprise that City have the best record this season (alongside West Ham) receiving the lowest yellow and red cards, although they field some of the toughest players around: Dias, Walker, Akanji, Rodri, Haaland and the most fouled player in the league Grealish––who incredibly never reacts by getting sent off but frequently causes (and trolls) others to lose their EI. Remember the rope-a-dope? City were led by Pep’s example who was at times fiercely passionate but was mostly studious. As a manager he is close to and in sync with his players which aligns his emotional intelligence with theirs, and we can do the same at work.
It’s reminds me of a skill I practised for over a decade while directing films and commercials. I would tell an actor to raise their performance a few notches from a 5 to a 9, or tone it down to a 6, and would invariably get a decent result. However the best results came when I prompted, “Remember a time when...” so they attached the desired action to something real and their performance soared. Actors call it using the method to enact actions and emotions triggered by genuine or simulated personal truths.
Equally if we’re struggling to force-adjust our emotions we could tie our EI to something real to get a true spike, although even an artificial shot is plenty for most situations. We’ve seen this many times in sport. How many “flat first half” teams come out guns blazing in the second? A legendary half-time team talk, a cornerman’s wise word, or a private breathe-to-ten, is essentially a stimulating or calming shot of legal drugs.
One may think from this that EI is performative, and in part it is, but simulating feeling is inherent to our nature and we use it every day. When you ask, “So how was the weekend, John?” He won’t reply, “Life is bloody unbearable, Femi, and I’m considering quitting and doing a retreat in an ashram. How are you?” In reality John arranges a smile, blinks slowly and exhales that all is well. Essentially we display and modify our EI constantly to survive in a multitude of social situations. In fact what I love about travelling is observing how EI changes across cultural boundaries, where in some places they genuinely want to know how you are (Rwanda and East Africa) and others who pretend they do (UK and US).
So now as we come to build a comprehensive EI strategy we can look no further than when EI became art with Messi’s World Cup winning Argentina. Where player, team and management combined to transform EI into a philosophy.
In recent Argentine history there has been a media-fuelled national urgency on the Selección to not waste their chance of winning the World Cup during Messi’s tenure, and take full advantage of his other-worldly abilities as the greatest player of the modern era. However, in recent years the team regularly lost their composure in big moments, famously the irritable striker Higuaín missing a golden opportunity to win the World Cup eight years prior against Germany.
But that all changed in 2018 with their manager Lionel Scaloni. A man who wove EI into the team’s game strategy and playing style while sending out a message that they would not let any occasion overcome them. Soon they became unbeatable and won the Copa America, beating Brazil and Colombia on the way––where notably both teams lost their composure in big moments. But how did Scaloni integrate EI into their playing style and how did it become a winning philosophy?
We must look at Argentina’s wonderful fluid formation. Simply put, this means that with the ball their shape instantly changed and they flooded the centre and flanks, while Messi made more aggressive and adventurous movements between the opponent’s defensive and midfield lines. Without the ball, they immediately built a long and tight defensive line while their midfield closed the between-space but left creative players, like Messi and Enzo, in the spine available to pivot for a deadly counter-attack. Critically, the fluid formation was also fluid emotionally, and incredibly, they inverted expectations.
Against prevailing football styles of slick possession and high-octane press-defence, Argentina were more aggressive in attack and calm in defence. In the final, they swarmed France early on and Di Maria obliterated some of the best defenders in the world with abandon. Notorious Argentine hot-head defenders, Otamendi and Romero rarely lost their cool. Emotional control-as-strategy percolated into the player’s mindsets, and was clear to see after losing comfortable two or three goal leads against Holland in the Quarter Finals, and France in the Final, where both occasions led to penalties. Most teams would've hung their heads from the disappointment, but you never got a sense of that with this group of men, and if you picked a winner based on what was “written on their face” Argentina had it in the bag, and with no surprise, they thumped their penalties home.
What can we learn from their example? EI works both ways. We may bring our own to work, but what is more successful is if a company integrates EI as part of their philosophy and culture. Understanding personality types, individual strengths and weaknesses, matching the right people in teams and having leaders with provably high EI, makes for a more harmonious and productive work environment. It begs us to ask the job poster during the, “Do you have any questions?” moment: “Well, what is your company’s EI strategy, how will it change during deadlines and why is it better than Acme Enterprises down the road?”
Realistically, I don’t foresee many companies having an answer to this so we can glean another takeaway from Argentina and their dynamic formation. Because we too can have an offensive and defensive EI strategy. During a tense period, with clashing egos or looming deadlines we need a sound defence. Good EI calls for composure, diligence, reaching out to others and communicating.
However in a competitive situation, pitch or networking event where you’ve got the ball, it may need a more aggressive strategy. But to reach the goal doesn’t have to be combative. Focused aggression could be re-channelled charm, quiet confidence or a rigorous tunnel-vision to achieve an objective. At the sharp end of the scale, emotional intelligence is constantly in motion and like––Argentina’s football journey––requires trial, error and constant adjustment to fully master it. But when you do victory will be within reach and the real beauty is, if you fail, your control will be so absolute you’ll be able to manage your reaction to failure too.
Now we will look at 2 remarkably powerful but lesser discussed benefits of EI and note 6 practical techniques to stand your EI in good stead…
This is the end of part one, please hit the subscribe button below to receive part two as soon as it is published