In high-performing organizations, feedback isn’t just a tool—it’s part of the culture. Done well, it fuels growth, sparks collaboration, and drives continuous improvement. Feedback helps people refine skills, recalibrate behaviors, and align with team goals. In teams where feedback is normalized, trust deepens, creativity expands, and accountability becomes less about oversight and more about shared ownership.1, 2
But there’s a paradox worth pausing on: feedback is both essential and emotionally fraught. Most of us know the tightening in the chest before delivering hard truths—or the defensiveness that rises when we’re on the receiving end. These moments reveal something important: feedback isn’t just about performance; it’s about emotions. Which means it’s about emotional intelligence (EI).
Feedback as an Emotional Exchange
At its core, EI is the ability to perceive and express oneself, build and sustain relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information to make better decisions. When we talk about feedback, we’re really talking about emotionally charged exchanges. The extent to which they feel constructive or threatening often depends less on the content of the message and more on the emotional intelligence of the people involved.
Recent analysis using the EQ-i 2.0—a scientifically validated measure of EI—underscores this connection. In an MHS study of 2,947 employed adults across North America, higher overall EI was associated with greater comfort both giving and receiving feedback. That part may not shock anyone. What’s interesting is where that comfort comes from—and where it doesn’t.3, 4
Not All EI Is Equal in Feedback
Three skills that don’t automatically make feedback easier
- Impulse Control. High scores here didn’t predict higher feedback comfort. Over-indexing on staying composed can look like neutrality—or even avoidance—when the conversation requires vulnerability.
- Empathy. Counterintuitively, high empathy didn’t map to greater comfort either. Empathetic leaders may worry about causing distress or internalize others’ discomfort, making candid feedback feel riskier even when they know it matters.
- Independence. Highly independent leaders may see external input as optional unless it aligns with their own goals, which can dampen their willingness to invite or offer feedback.
Two skills that reliably help
- Assertiveness. Comfort giving feedback tracked most closely with the ability to communicate beliefs openly and directly. Assertive leaders initiate difficult conversations and say the thing that needs saying.
- Interpersonal Relationships. Comfort receiving feedback was most strongly linked to the quality of one’s relational fabric—trust, mutual respect, and genuine connection. When trust is strong, feedback feels less like a threat and more like an investment.
What Leaders Can Do Next
- Don’t assume a high EI score equals feedback fluency. Overall, EI matters, but feedback rides on specific muscles. If you want better feedback dynamics, look first at Assertiveness (for giving) and Interpersonal Relationships (for receiving).
- Name the hidden barriers. Overused strengths can backfire. Excess composure (Impulse Control), unbounded concern (Empathy), or self-reliance (Independence) can all make feedback rarer or blunter than intended.
- Train the leverage points. Build assertiveness with clear language frameworks (e.g., “When–Impact–Ask”). Strengthen relationships with consistent 1:1s, reliability micro-behaviors, and visible follow-through on prior feedback. These are the fastest routes to making feedback safer and more frequent.
Feedback is rarely easy. But in emotionally intelligent organizations, it becomes easier—not because it hurts less, but because people have the skills to engage it fully. Leaders who cultivate the right EI subskills turn feedback from an annual ritual into a daily engine of trust and growth.
References
- Baker, N. (2010). Employee feedback technologies in the human performance system. Human Resource Development International, 13(4), 477–485.
- Mulder, R. H. (2013). Exploring feedback incidents, their characteristics and the informal learning activities that emanate from them. European Journal of Training and Development, 37(1), 49–71.
- Joseph, D. L., Jin, J., Newman, D. A., & O’Boyle Jr., E. H. (2015). Why does self-reported emotional intelligence predict job performance? A meta-analytic investigation of mixed EI. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), 298–342.
- Miao, C., Humphrey, R. H., & Qian, S. (2017). Are the emotionally intelligent good citizens or counterproductive? A meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and its relationships with organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 144–156.