Career Compass | Building Your Emotional Intelligence to Build Your Career

Welcome to a special edition of Career Compass, here to help MMDC learners navigate any career shifts with confidence! We have summarized the latest research from global industry leaders to help turn complex trends into clear, actionable strategies for career growth.

In celebration of our National Mental Health Week 2026, we are focusing on Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an important and crucial career competency to build, no matter the professional background. Read on to find out more! 

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According to the World Economic Forum (2025), emotional competencies alongside creative thinking and resilience remain as some of the fastest-growing skill priorities globally; EI has been featured among the top ten skills needed for the future workforce in each Future of Jobs Report since 2016.

EI, according to Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, is the ability to navigate emotions through skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions to achieve meaningful goals (Brough, 2025). As a soft skill, EI has been the subject of decades of rigorous scientific inquiry, and research shows it is measurable and — critically for active working professionals — it is learnable. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis published in BMC Psychology, covering 50 workplace intervention studies across multiple professions, confirmed that emotional competencies such as EI can be effectively improved through training, and that the benefits of these training such as better stress management, stronger teamwork, and better job performance are sustained over time (Mehler et al., 2024).

EI is also proven to positively affect individual and team performance. A landmark meta-analysis by O’Boyle et al. (2011) synthesised published research across three major EI measurement approaches and confirmed that EI is a reliable and meaningful predictor of job performance across industries and role types. More recently, a 2023 hybrid literature review of 104 peer-reviewed articles on EI and work teams found that emotionally intelligent leaders consistently improve both team behaviours and measurable business results (as cited in Mehler et al., 2024).

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With these in mind, here are some evidence-based steps to build your Emotional Intelligence:

Journal Your Emotions
At the end of each day, write down one significant emotion you experienced, what triggered it, and how you responded. Research on emotional granularity — the precision with which people can identify their feelings — shows that people who use more specific emotion words regulate their responses more effectively and experience lower stress reactivity (Barrett et al., 2001, as cited in Mayer et al., 2016). 

Take A Pause Before You Respond
When you notice a strong emotional reaction such as frustration at someone, anxiety before a deadline, or even defensiveness during feedback, introduce a deliberate pause first before you act or speak. Goleman (1995) describes this as the foundation of self-regulation: creating a gap between stimulus and response, even as short as three to five seconds to shift the brain from reactive to reflective processing. Over time, this pause can allow you to create composure and demonstrate lower stress reactivity. 

Use A Different Perspective
Before your next conversation or team interaction, spend time to ask yourself: what pressures, fears, or goals might each person be carrying into this interaction? Research on empathy training confirms that this simple habit of deliberate perspective-taking improves interpersonal accuracy and reduces interpersonal conflict over time (Mehler et al., 2024). This may even help provide unique solutions or ideas to your discussion that are not in your immediate attention! 

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References

Brough, E. (2025, July 17). Workplace success starts with emotional intelligence. Yale School of Medicine. https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/workplace-success-starts-with-emotional-intelligence/
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bantam Books.
Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2016). The ability model of emotional intelligence: Principles and updates. Emotion Review, 8(4), 290–300. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073916639667
Mehler, M., Balint, E., Gralla, M., Pößnecker, T., Gast, M., Hölzer, M., Kösters, M., & Gündel, H. (2024). Training emotional competencies at the workplace: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychology, 12, Article 718. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-02198-3
O’Boyle, E. H., Jr., Humphrey, R. H., Pollack, J. M., Hawver, T. H., & Story, P. A. (2011). The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), 788–818. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.714
World Economic Forum. (2025, January 7). The future of jobs report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025