Sara Sweat, MA – Founder & CEO, Mindshift Advisors
You walk in Monday morning with your emotional intelligence dialed in. You read the room, sense the undercurrents, and preemptively smooth over conflict. You’re not just doing your job—you’re tending the invisible threads that keep your team high performing & collaborative.
And then… your boss barrels in, tone-deaf and tunnel-visioned, delivering feedback like a wrecking ball and leaving a trail of confusion and tension behind them.
Sound familiar?
If you’re a high-EQ professional working under a low-EQ leader, you’re not imagining it: the gap is exhausting. But you’re not alone, and you’re not powerless.
The Hidden Cost of Low-EQ Leadership
While your company might not have a budget line item for emotional intelligence, its profitability is impacted by it.
As described in the recent Harvard Business Review article – New Research on Why Teams Overwork – and What Leaders Can Do About It low EQ (emotionally intelligent) leadership correlates with reduced productivity, stalled innovation, & higher employee attrition.
Problems like these are costly not only because they take time to appear, but because we often attribute them to the wrong root cause.
We try to fix productivity problems with pressure, innovation with competition, and blame attrition on poor hiring practices or managerial ineptitude. This misdiagnosis worsens conditions, slows resolution, and increases burnout – especially in top performers.
Ultimately, this completely avoidable cycle halts great ideas and good leaders in their tracks.
What Low-EQ Bosses Get Wrong (And Why It Matters)
Low-EQ leaders often:
- Dismiss emotional cues or overload conversations with logic
- React instead of reflect
- Struggle to effectively give or receive feedback
- Prioritize control over connection
- Undermine trust with inconsistency or micromanagement
- Overvalue their own observations and conclusions
They don’t mean to create dysfunction. As Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found, less than half of managers ever receive any training on how to lead. But their blind spots disrupt the performance ecosystem high-EQ professionals work so hard to sustain.
The result? You absorb the emotional labor. You mediate miscommunications. You overfunction to stabilize what their leadership destabilizes.
Thriving Anyway: Practical Strategies for High-EQ Pros
So what do you do when your EQ is a strength but the system isn’t set up to reward it?
1. Stop Translating Their Chaos Into Your Value
You are not obligated to mop up every emotional spill. Low EQ Leaders are often removed from the implications of their behavior. So, set some boundaries. Allow them to experience the discomfort they’ve created. Your value isn’t in how much dysfunction you can absorb or deflect – it’s in how much you can transform.
2. Lead From Where You Are
Even without formal authority, your EQ gives you influence. Normalize naming tension when it occurs. Model reflective solution focused communication. Build micro-moments of psychological safety. You’re not trying to fix your boss. You’re shaping the culture within your sphere of influence.
3. Document Patterns, Not Just Problems
If you’re escalating issues or trying to advocate for change, you need data. Track patterns. Document their impacts. It’s easy for Low-EQ leaders to believe their disruptions are isolated events. They’ll say things like, “Oh, I forgot all about that – I was just having a bad day”. Patterns give you data. Data give you traction.
4. Find or Build an EQ Ally Network
One emotionally intelligent colleague can buffer the effects of a low-EQ leader. A few can shift the climate. Find your people. Trade notes. Experiment and innovate together. Focus not on the problem, but on the actionable changes that might make it irrelevant.
5. Consider the Long Game
While it’s never an easy decision, sometimes the most emotionally intelligent move is to leave. That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you chose to stop bleeding energy into a system that won’t evolve. Use your EQ superpowers in choosing your next role.
Bottom Line: You’re Not Crazy. It’s Just Low EQ.
The worst part about being in a low EQ environment, is that it makes YOU feel like the problem. Like you’re “too sensitive” or “focused on the wrong thing”. But, emotional intelligence isn’t a liability. It’s a leadership advantage.
Your High EQ strategies – and the phenomenal results they achieve – serve as an example to those who don’t yet understand what you already know.
That HOW you achieve – matters just as much as the achievement itself.
You’re already doing the hardest part: showing up. You’re creating systems that make high quality results sustainable and replicable. And, you’re doing it in the human centric way that amplifies value to employees and customers alike.
That? That’s success. And, even a low EQ boss can’t argue with it.
Ready to shift from surviving to leading? Join E-Suite – a 3 month coaching group exclusively for High EQ professionals. Book a free Introductory Call to learn more and let’s make space for the kind of leadership you were meant to grow in.
