Adaptability and resilience are now cornerstones of success in a post-COVID world, where hybrid work, digital transformation, and people-centric business models are the new norms. Amidst this shift, Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Emotional Agility are essential skills across all levels of leadership and team dynamics.

In these times of tech entrepreneurship and a "move fast, break things" mentality, it's not surprising that there are some high-profile examples of companies that, in their quest to push the envelope and drive innovation, have neglected the need for EI in their company cultures. In this article, we look at toxic companies built by maverick leaders who failed to develop their own EI and lacked the emotional agility to succeed, sometimes flatlining their own careers and, in other cases, causing their businesses to crash and burn.

Our founder explores the continued needed for International Women’s Day in elevating he hidden voices across the world that this day helps shine a light on.

An IWD article from the BBC says it plainly and without judgement: sexual violence used as a weapon of war, girls being denied secondary-school education and the continued use of women and their bodies as commodities. If there were ever an argument needed for continued efforts to highlight women’s issues, these are just a few.

There are some key reasons why high EI is important for leaders. These may seem obvious however, I’ve seen too many times individuals promoted quickly up the ladder who have excellent professional acumen, but poor emotional agility and little self-awareness.

A highly capable leader who feels they are doing their job to the highest level of excellence can still fail themselves, their company and their team if they lack the essential skills of high emotional intelligence.

Why would teams buy-in to something that they haven’t helped shape? Especially when the benefits have not been made clear or worse, there are no clear benefits to them. In the context of agile adoption at a team level, or agile transformation at a department or company level, a culture shift is involved. This can be hard to define.

In this article I’ll look at some tools and approaches to support agile adoption through sensitive change management.