Episode 3: What Emotional Intelligence Actually Is

Emotional intelligence has become one of those phrases that everyone uses and almost no one defines. You’ve probably heard it in workplaces. In therapy rooms. In parenting books and leadership frameworks and self-help articles. And most of what you’ve heard is pointing at something real. There is something genuinely important here.

But I think the popular definition is incomplete in a way that matters.

It describes outcomes — what emotionally intelligent people seem to be able to do — without touching the mechanism. The actual underlying capacity that makes those outcomes possible.

And when you miss the mechanism, you end up trying to teach the outcomes directly. Which is a bit like trying to get fit by practising looking fit.

Today I want to take the phrase apart. Clear away what it isn’t. And offer you what I think it actually is — in a way that points at something you can actually build.