Are You Hiring for Emotional Intelligence — or Emotional Avoidance?
John Elliott • March 24, 2025

Emotional intelligence is one of the most valued traits in executive leadership today.


It’s also one of the most misunderstood.


In interviews, every candidate knows how to speak about empathy, collaboration, and “bringing people on the journey.”
But when does that emotional intelligence start to look more like emotional avoidance?


If you’re hiring into a senior role in consumer goods or food and beverage manufacturing, this distinction matters.


Hiring someone who avoids hard conversations risks building a culture that performs around problems, not through them.

The leaders delivering the best outcomes in 2025 understand how to build trust and rapport — without dodging the accountability that comes with real leadership.


Emotional Intelligence: What It Gets Right


In complex, fast-paced industries like FMCG and food production, leaders need more than technical expertise.

They must influence, de-escalate tension, manage change, and build alignment across functions.

That’s where emotional intelligence shines.


High-EQ leaders are more likely to:


  • Retain talent through strong, trust-based relationships
  • Remain composed in high-stakes environments
  • Reduce conflict through proactive, clear communication
  • Drive psychological safety while still pushing for results

The research backs this up. According to a 2024 EHL Insights report, emotionally intelligent leaders improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and collaboration — all essential in manufacturing settings where coordination between departments is critical.

But there’s a fine line between emotional intelligence and emotional overcorrection.


When Emotional Intelligence Becomes Emotional Avoidance


The risk is subtle: leaders who over-index on empathy may begin to avoid the discomfort of conflict altogether.

That looks like:


  • Letting underperformance linger to “keep the peace”
  • Over-relying on collaboration instead of making firm decisions
  • Avoiding direct feedback
  • Prioritising harmony at the expense of clarity

A 2024 Forbes article described how emotionally avoidant leaders — despite good intentions — often undermine the very culture they’re trying to protect. Accountability erodes, decisions slow down, and high performers become disengaged.


We’ve seen this play out in executive search mandates across the sector. On paper, a candidate may appear ideal: emotionally intelligent, highly personable, well-liked. But dig deeper, and a pattern emerges — reluctance to address performance issues, vague language around past team challenges, and a track record of avoiding direct confrontation.


That’s not emotional intelligence. That’s fear, dressed as empathy.


Emotional Intelligence Is a Must — But It’s Not the Full Picture


More organisations are making emotional intelligence a key leadership trait in hiring — and for good reason.
In high-change environments, emotionally intelligent leaders:


  • Build trust across teams quickly
  • Navigate transformation without losing people along the way
  • Stay composed under pressure
  • Handle interpersonal complexity with clarity

But some of the most costly mis-hires we see come from leaders who present as highly empathetic, but struggle to lead through tension.

Not because they lack EQ — but because they confuse it with keeping everyone comfortable.


The difference?


The leaders delivering the best outcomes in 2024 and 2025 are doing both:

  • Holding people accountable while building engagement
  • Delivering hard feedback without defensiveness
  • Balancing calm with courage

These are the leaders who retain high performers, protect standards, and still earn trust across the business.


Hiring Outcomes Are Better When EQ Is Tested in Context


The most effective hiring processes we’re seeing in the market today aren’t just asking, “Is this leader emotionally intelligent?”

They’re asking:

  • Can this person hold accountability and empathy at the same time?
  • Have they delivered under pressure without letting performance slide?
  • Do they create safe cultures that are also high-performing?

The difference in outcomes is clear:

  • More resilient leadership teams
  • Better cultural fit
  • Fewer surprises post-placement


What to Look for in Executive Interviews

Hiring emotionally intelligent leaders isn’t just about what they say — it’s about how they’ve acted in real moments of challenge. The most effective hiring panels are getting beyond rehearsed narratives by asking sharper questions:


To probe real emotional intelligence:

  • “Tell me about a time you had to lead a team through a change that wasn’t popular.”
  • “How do you approach a conversation when someone on your team is underperforming?”
  • “Describe a time you disagreed with your CEO or board. What did you do?”

Watch for signals:

  • Are they clear and specific, or vague and diplomatic?
  • Do they show respect and resolve?
  • Do they accept responsibility, or redirect it elsewhere?

In reference checks, ask:

  • “How did they manage pressure or uncertainty?”
  • “Were they able to deliver difficult feedback directly?”
  • “Did they avoid difficult decisions in the name of team cohesion?”

When emotional intelligence is genuine, it shows up in results — not just relationships.


Why This Matters Now

Organisations in the consumer goods and food manufacturing sectors are undergoing constant disruption — from digitisation to regulatory shifts to cost pressures. In this environment, leadership soft skills aren’t optional.

But it’s not enough to hire likeable leaders.
The ones delivering real impact are those who bring empathy and edge.
They’re able to sit with discomfort, hold the mirror up, and still bring people with them.

That’s what true emotional intelligence looks like in 2025.


So when you’re hiring your next senior leader, don’t just ask if they care.
Ask if they can care and confront — with courage, with clarity, and with conviction.


Because your culture doesn’t need more harmony.
It needs more truth.

Your Culture Report Won’t Show You This

By John Elliott • June 6, 2025
On paper, they were fully resourced. No complaints logged. No formal red flags. Delivery metrics holding steady. But behind closed doors, the signs were there. Delays. Fatigue. Silence in meetings where pushback used to live. And a growing sense that key people were leaning out, emotionally, if not yet physically. When the cracks finally showed, the conclusion was predictable: “We need more people.” But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was trust. And most organisations never see it until it’s too late. The Hidden Cost of Disengagement In Gallup’s 2023 global workplace report , only 23% of employees worldwide reported being actively engaged at work. A staggering 59% identified as “quiet quitting”, psychologically detached, going through the motions, doing only what their job description demands. Source: Gallup Global Workplace Report 2023 Disengagement is expensive. But it’s also quiet. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t send a Slack message. Disengagement isn’t new, just silenced. And in executive teams, it looks different. It looks like polite agreement in strategy meetings. It looks like leaders shielding their teams from unrealistic demands, instead of confronting the system causing them. It looks like performance metrics still being met… while people emotionally check out. The issue isn’t always capability. It’s safety. Psychological, political, and professional. Many senior leaders don’t raise concerns, not because the problem isn’t real, but because they don’t believe they’ll be heard, supported, or protected if they do. And this is where the failure begins. The Leadership Lie No One Talks About We talk a lot about leadership capability. About experience, commercial acumen, execution strength. But we don’t talk enough about context. Every leadership hire walks into a culture they didn’t create. They inherit unwritten rules, quiet alliances, and legacy power structures. If those dynamics are broken, or if trust is fractured at the top, no amount of capability will compensate. According to a 2022 Deloitte mid-market survey, 64% of executives said culture was their top strategic priority. But only 27% said they actually measured it in a meaningful way. We say culture matters. But we rarely structure around it. And so new leaders walk in with pressure to perform, but little real insight into what the role will cost them emotionally, politically, or personally. We Don’t Hire for Trust. And It Shows. In executive search, the conversation is often dominated by pedigree and “fit.” But fit is often a euphemism for sameness. And sameness doesn't build trust, it maintains comfort. We rarely ask: Does this leader know how to build trust vertically and horizontally? Can they operate in a low-trust environment without becoming complicit? Will they challenge inherited silence, or unconsciously uphold it? Instead, we hire for confidence and clarity, traits that often mask what’s broken, rather than reveal it. And when those hires fail? We call it a mismatch. Or we cite the usual: “lack of alignment,” “wasn’t the right time,” “they didn’t land well with the team.” But the truth is often uglier: They were never set up to succeed. And no one told them until it was too late. The Cultural Infrastructure Is Missing One of the most damaging myths in leadership hiring is that great leaders will “make it work.” That if they’re tough enough, experienced enough, skilled enough, they’ll overcome any organisational dysfunction. But high-performance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It requires psychological safety. A clear mandate. The backing to make hard decisions. The freedom to speak the truth before it becomes a PR problem. When that infrastructure isn’t there, when the real power dynamics are unspoken, good leaders stop speaking too. And the silence spreads. What Trust Breakdown Really Looks Like Often, the signs of a trust breakdown don’t show up in dramatic ways. They surface subtly in patterns of underperformance that are easy to misread or excuse. You start to notice project delays, but no one flags the root cause. Teams keep things moving, quietly compensating for the bottlenecks rather than surfacing them. Not because they’re careless, but because they’ve learned that early honesty doesn’t always earn support. New leaders hesitate to make bold calls. Not because they lack conviction, but because the last time they did, they were left exposed. Board reports look flawless. Metrics track nicely. But spend five minutes on the floor, and the energy tells a different story. These are not resource issues. They’re relationship issues. And the data backs it. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report , just 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged. Worse, around 60% are “quiet quitting.” That’s not just disengagement. It’s people doing only what’s safe, only what’s required, because trust has quietly eroded. Gallup also found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a staggering figure that reinforces just how pivotal leadership trust is. When people don’t feel psychologically safe, they shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. Invisibly. What’s breaking isn’t the org chart. It’s the ability to speak plainly and be heard. And by the time it’s visible? The damage is already done, and someone calls for a restructure. “Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $8.8 trillion, 9% of global GDP.” Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 So What’s the Real Takeaway? If you’re seeing performance issues, before you jump to headcount, ask a different question: Do the leaders in this business feel safe enough to tell the truth? Because if they don’t, the data you’re reading isn’t real. And if they do, but you’re not acting on it, then they’ll stop telling you. Leadership doesn’t fail in obvious ways anymore. It fails in the gap between what people know and what they’re allowed to say. And the price of that silence? Missed opportunity. Reputational damage. Cultural decay. Sometimes, the problem isn’t who you hired. It’s what you’ve made it unsafe to say.

The Energy’s Gone, But Everything Still Looks Fine

By John Elliott • May 27, 2025
Why Culture Decay in FMCG Is a Silent Threat to Performance It doesn’t start with resignations. It starts with something much quieter. A head of operations stops raising small problems in weekly meetings. A sales lead no longer defends a risky new SKU. A team member who used to push ideas now just delivers what they’re asked. Nothing breaks. Nothing explodes. It just... slows. And from the outside, everything still looks fine. The illusion of stability In food and beverage manufacturing, where teams run lean and pressure is constant, performance often becomes the proxy for culture. If products are shipping, if margins are intact, if reviews are clean, the assumption is: we're good. But that assumption is dangerous. According to Gallup's 2023 global workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while a staggering 59% are "quiet quitting ", doing just enough to get by, with no emotional investment. And in Australia? Engagement has declined three years in a row. In a mid-market FMCG business, those numbers rarely show up on dashboards. But they show up in other ways: New ideas stall at the concept phase Team members stop challenging assumptions Execution becomes rigid instead of agile Everyone is "aligned" but no one is energised And by the time the board sees a drop in revenue, the belief that once drove the business is already gone. The emotional cost of cultural silence One thing we don’t talk about enough is what this does to leadership. When energy drains, leaders often become isolated. Not because they want to be, but because the organisation has lost the instinct to challenge, question, or stretch. I’ve seen CEOs second-guessing themselves in rooms full of agreement. Seen GMs miss red flags because nobody wanted to be "the problem". Seen founders mistake quiet delivery for deep buy-in. The emotional toll of unspoken disengagement is real. You’re surrounded by people doing their jobs. But no one’s really in it with you. And eventually, leaders stop stretching too. We train people to disengage without realising it Here’s the contradiction that most organisations won’t admit: We say we want initiative, but we reward obedience. The safest people get promoted The optimists get extra work The truth-tellers get labelled difficult So people learn to conserve energy. They learn not to challenge ideas that won’t land. They learn not to flag risks that won’t be heard. And over time, they stop showing up with their full selves. This isn't resistance. It's protection. And it becomes the default when innovation is punished, risk isn't buffered, and "alignment" becomes code for silence. Boards rarely see it in time Boards don’t ask about belief. They ask about performance. But belief is what drives performance. When culture begins to fade, it doesn't look like chaos. It looks like calm. It looks like compliance. But underneath, the organisation is hollowing out. By the time a board notices the energy is gone, it’s often because the financials have turned, and by then, the people who could've helped reverse the trend have already left. In a 2022 Deloitte study on mid-market leadership, 64% of executives said culture was their top priority, yet only 27% said they measured it with any rigour . If you don’t track it, you won’t protect it. And if you don’t protect it, don’t be surprised when it disappears. The real risk: you might not get it back Here’s what no one likes to admit: Not all cultures recover. You can try rebrands. You can run engagement campaigns. You can roll out leadership frameworks and off-sites and feedback platforms. But if belief has been neglected for too long, the quiet ones you depended on, the culture carriers, the stretchers, the informal leaders, they’re already checked out. Some have left. Some are still there physically but not emotionally. And some have started coaching others to play it safe. Once that happens, you're not rebuilding. You're replacing. So what do you do? Don’t listen for noise. Listen for absence. Absence of challenge. Absence of stretch. Absence of belief. Ask yourself: When was the last time someone in the business pushed back? Not rudely, but bravely? When did someone offer an idea that made others uncomfortable? When did a leader admit they were unsure and ask for help? Those are your indicators. Because healthy culture isn’t silent. It’s alive. It vibrates with tension, disagreement, contribution and care. If everything looks fine, but no one’s really leaning in? That’s your problem. And by the time it shows up in the numbers,t might already be too late.