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High emotional intelligence allows individuals to perceive subtle workplace tensions and emotions, but this sensitivity can lead to empathy burnout and exhaustion in toxic environments.
This sensitivity is an ability to perceive emotions such as tension or anxiety, even if no one expresses aloudDid you ever feel that something was just “off” with a colleague, a team or with your boss?
Were you the first to realise that lay-offs were about to happen – without any solid facts to support it – or that Sorcha from accounts and Lloyd from sales were secretly dating? Maybe you sensed that your team leader Sanjeev was offered a big job by a competitor weeks before he said a word about it? If so, you might have a high level of emotional intelligence .
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions such as tension, anxiety or incongruence in the room even if no one expresses these things out loud. This skill can be a blessing and a curse in professional settings, says psychologist Elise Dyer, a clinical lecturer and PhD researcher at the University of Kent, who specialises in workplace wellbeing.
In toxic workplaces – which are no fun for anyone – those with a higher level of EI may suffer more and for longer with things like empathy burnout or compassion fatigue. Aoife Matthews, Jennifer O’Connell and Louise O’Riordan: ‘This is for our mothers, sisters, friends, and ourselves – so only the best will do’While emotional regulation can serve as a protective mechanism, high emotional intelligence also means these individuals are more attuned to dysfunction, which can lead to exhaustion as they use their skills to compensate for an unhealthy organisational system or structure.
High EI team members might naturally act as a team peacemaker, individual confidant or spend time worrying about what’s going on behind the scenes while their colleagues carry on with business as usual. Some of those colleagues might even think their high EI coworker is a “worry wart”, paranoid or overly sensitive for imagining these things. Dyer’s work focuses on what happens to high EI workers and the relationship between emotional intelligence, toxic workplace dynamics, psychological safety and emotional exhaustion.
“Research on sensory processing sensitivity, the scientific framework that underlies much of what we colloquially call being highly sensitive, describes EI as depth of processing. It is not a flaw. It is a form of very precise social intelligence,” she says.
“But in a dysfunctional team, where communication is indirect and emotional information is often contradictory or dishonest, that depth of processing becomes overwhelming rather than useful. The signal is too loud and the environment is too noisy,” she said. Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation and positive connections. It’s multifaceted; it’s not just one single ability, says Dyer.
Someone might be excellent at reading other people’s emotions but less able to protect or regulate themselves emotionally from what they perceive. This can lead to stress, anxiety and burnout. For companies, though, there are many benefits – including an element of team protection – as high EI employees can act as early warning systems for problems within a group, like a canary in a coal mine.
They notice dysfunctional cultures very quickly and can identify the warning signs that a workplace is becoming psychologically unsafe. Understanding and supporting these workers can help foster healthier, higher-performing teams that are able to adapt faster and maintain resilience through change. There’s a gendered dimension to it too. Women and men tend to have similar levels of emotional intelligence, but their areas of strength differ, possibly due to the way they’ve been socialised growing up.
A study a decade ago of 55,000 professionals by Korn Ferry Hay Group found that women outperformed men in 11 out of 12 emotional intelligence competencies. The only category in which women didn’t receive the better scores was emotional self-control, where no gender differences were found at all. Women consistently scored higher in areas involving empathy, interpersonal relationships, coaching, mentoring and social responsibility. Men tend to score higher in stress tolerance, assertiveness, confidence and managing distressing or intense emotions.
These score variations may come from a mix of biological differences and societal expectations, say researchers. From a young age, girls are often socialised to express their feelings, nurture others and focus on relationships, while boys are often encouraged to develop emotional control and a competitive and assertive nature. A recent Gallup analysis found that women are more engaged at work, but they also have higher levels of burnout. Why?
Women tend to perform more emotional labour at work, such as relationship management, conflict de-escalation and informal people support. They’re the “office moms” and “office sisters” people turn to when things are not going well. This labour is appreciated culturally – and for keeping the show on the road – but it’s rarely rewarded financially, structurally or with a promotion.
Women are not just carrying the job and the tasks; they’re also carrying the emotional stability of the team.found that burnout among women in the US was at its highest level in five years. Nearly 60 per cent of women in senior roles reported frequent burnout compared to 50 per cent of their male counterparts. Emotionally intelligent employees do not need more training or mentoring; they need a system that supports them.
Resilience training – often the first go-to for employee burnout – is insufficient to address toxicity, as it risks individualising an organisational problem rather than fixing the underlying system, says Dyer. Organisations must shift their focus from teaching employees how to survive toxic cultures towards structural changes and leadership accountability. Trust is rebuilt through repeated, consistent experiences of psychological safety.
Think of how your boss treats you during the day, responds to emails, keeps you in the loop – or not – and you’ll see how trust builds or decays in consistent layers until it becomes a solid cultural supporting wall. To support emotionally intelligent employees in challenging work environments, Dyer recommends that leaders respond to concerns with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
Leaders should model accountability themselves and treat silence, or staff exits, as valuable organisational data indicating deeper issues that need to be addressed.
“When somebody comes to you with a concern, listen to it with an open mind and curiosity. Leaders can say things like: ‘Tell me more about what you’ve noticed and what effect this is having on you or your colleagues. Is this an isolated incident or part of a pattern you notice? What would a safe and constructive workplace look like for you?
’ “Examine patterns, not single dramatic incidents, because workplace harm is often cumulative and not a single situation, interruption or incident. It’s usually repeated patterns that create unsafe climates in workplaces,” Dyer says.
“So, as a leader, try to recognise and identify those patterns and make accountability consistent. Don’t rely on the most empathetic employee to absorb all that tension and repair relationships and keep everyone calm,” he adds. Build a top-down structure where psychological safety is present in team meetings so people can raise concerns, discuss situations or dysfunction openly and honestly and model repair. Emotional intelligence should not become an organisation’s unpaid emotional cleanup service.
Ultimately, organisations should not ask how employees can become better at surviving toxicity, but instead: what leadership practices are allowing toxicity to thrive?
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