Why The AI Era Demands EQ

Forbes

07-07-2025

Kempton Presley, CEO of AdhereHealth , has expertise in health economics, analytics, digital health integration and value-based care. getty
Just a few years ago, knowledge of the Python programming language felt like a ticket to guaranteed employment for life.
But today, AI can write passable code in seconds, with tools like GitHub and Copilot automating many of the tasks that previously earned employees a permanent spot at the top of recruiters' call lists. I'm not saying engineers will be replaced by AI. But I am saying technical skills alone are no longer enough to set candidates and employees apart.
The ability to understand and manage emotions—known as emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ)—is critical for helping leaders and teams bridge technical expertise with human concerns and business outcomes. At organizations that place a premium on EQ, teams are typically adept at soft skills like adaptability, communication and collaboration.
These qualities have always been important, but talented employees, and even some leaders, have often been able to get by without them if they possessed the right hard skills.
Not anymore.
To build teams that will succeed in the age of AI, leaders must recruit and retain workers who bring emotional intelligence to technical environments. Turn cooks into chefs.
In this analogy, a 'cook' is someone who knows how to follow a specific recipe, using a specific tool. By contrast, a 'chef' understands the full kitchen and surrounding context (including ingredients, timing, staff and customers) and can adapt on the fly. Almost anybody can become a decent cook with a little bit of training. By contrast, becoming a chef takes talent, time and determination. A good cook can broil one perfect medium-rare steak after another. But if a group of gluten-sensitive vegans walks into the restaurant, you're going to need a chef who can improvise what's available.
Think back to our Python developers. Mastery of their great coding skills alone makes them cooks. The same can be said for Power BI experts and AWS infrastructure specialists if they only focus on one skill in isolation. In the past, their tool-specific knowledge has meant they've been constantly in demand. But soon, people in these roles will also need to have a deep understanding of data science concepts and the ability to identify the right solutions for the right problems. They'll need to become chefs. Recognize communication as currency.
Any fan of Apple's origin story can tell you Steve Jobs wasn't the primary technical wiz behind the company's earliest successes. That was cofounder Steve Wozniak. One reason we continue to associate Apple so closely with Jobs nearly 15 years after his death is that he was one of the great communicators in business history. Although he didn't have the technical skills needed to bring the iPod or iPhone to life himself, he knew how to communicate his vision—first to the engineers who would design the products and then to the public who would buy them.
Not all team members need to be able to deliver a mic-drop keynote, but they do need to be able to explain the value of their work. And they need to be able to translate technical data into business insights. Often, effective communication is the difference between an idea that never gets put into action and one that transforms the entire organization. Optimize working relationships.
Jobs and Wozniak are just one team famous for achieving far more together than they ever could have separately. For example, compare the soaring heights reached by the Beatles to their relatively pedestrian solo careers. Or consider the fact that Bill Belichick and Greg Popovich, arguably the greatest football and basketball coaches of all time, respectively, actually have losing records without star players Tom Brady and Tim Duncan.
Although some people are naturally better teammates than others, collaboration isn't a fixed trait. It's a teachable, coachable skill, and employees are much more likely to improve if leaders reward it and treat it as a core competency.
Collaboration has always been important, but the rise of AI may finally kill off the myth of the 'lone wolf' for good. As technology improves, no hard skill will be so prized that it outweighs an inability to work well with one's colleagues. Yesterday, organizations bent over backwards to keep employees who accumulated institutional knowledge and swept in to save the day. Tomorrow, they will compete for employees who can solve problems as part of a team. EQ In Action
Many employees already possess the EQ-related soft skills their organizations need. They simply haven't been asked to put those skills into practice in their job roles. In fact, some engineers might not even recognize they're good communicators, effective collaborators or creative problem solvers. Often, these employees view their job performance purely through the lens of their technical skills, and historically, so have their employers.
It's up to leaders to identify these soft skills, nurture them and assemble teams where the pieces all fit. We're entering an era where AI can increasingly handle coding, data analysis and even task execution. But only humans can come up with new ideas, communicate those ideas across an organization and work together to put them into practice. Tech trends will come and go, but EQ will never become obsolete.
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