Emotional Intelligence Training for Managers

Most managers were promoted because they were good at the job they were doing before. Very few were taught how to handle the part that comes next: the under-performer who's also going through a divorce, the team member who goes quiet in meetings and vocal in the corridor, the restructure they have to sell to people they like. Emotional intelligence training is what fills that gap. This is what a credible programme covers, what it costs, and how to tell afterwards whether it worked.

What is emotional intelligence, in a management context?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise what you're feeling, understand what's driving it, and use that information deliberately rather than reacting to it, while reading the same signals in other people. For a manager, that shows up in three places: the conversations they're willing to start, the decisions they make under pressure, and whether their team tells them things early or late. It's a set of skills, not a personality type, which is why it can be trained at all.

What managers actually take away

Not "greater self-awareness" that isn't something you can observe six months later.

These are behaviours a line manager can see:

• Handling the conversation they've been avoiding.

  Preparing for and running a difficult conversation so it ends in an agreed action rather than a bad atmosphere.

• Deciding faster under pressure.

  Using a decision-making structure that separates what's known from what's assumed and what's felt.

• Reading motivation accurately.

  Recognising that what motivates one team member actively demotivates another, and adjusting.

• Recovering from setbacks.

  Getting back to focus quickly after something goes wrong, and helping the team do the same.

• Repairing trust.

  Knowing what to do when a working relationship has broken down, rather than waiting for it to heal on its own.

Our Emotional Intelligence for Managers programme runs across two days and is built around these behaviours specifically. It's also rated 4.8 stars by 4,721 participants.

Does it actually work?

Fairly, yes. With a caveat worth stating.

A 2024 review of fifty workplace studies found that emotional competencies improve through training, with effects still measurable more than three months later. The authors also noted variation between studies and limitations in their quality, which is worth knowing before anyone quotes it at you.

But improved assessment scores don't establish a financial return. They show the training moved something. Whether that something was worth the money depends on evidence from your own organisation. Which is why the measurement question below matters more than any statistic a provider shows you.

What a credible programme contains

Four things. If a proposal is missing any of them, you're looking at an event, rather than a programme.

A validated baseline. Not a self-scored questionnaire. Summit uses the EQ-i 2.0, which is scientifically validated and reports 15 sub-scales across five composite areas. Without a baseline you can't prove anything happened.

Feedback from others. The whole point of low emotional self-awareness is that you don't perceive it. Which is exactly why self-report alone will tell you a manager is fine when their team would say otherwise.

Practice, not content delivery. Rehearsing difficult conversations, working decisions under pressure, applying feedback to real situations from their own roles. A day of slides changes whether people enjoyed themselves and nothing else.

Something after the last day. This is the component most commonly missing, and the reason so much training produces nothing. Summit clarifies the outcome before delivery and provides self-paced online resources afterwards, so nobody is reconstructing course content from memory six months later.

How to tell whether it worked

The Kirkpatrick model grades training at four levels: did they like it, did they learn, are they behaving differently, did an organisational outcome move.

Level one is easy and close to meaningless. Levels three and four are what you're paying for.

So write objectives you can actually test. "Develop greater self-awareness" fails - nobody can assess it. "Recognise a personal trigger during a difficult conversation and choose a response that keeps the discussion productive" passes, because recognise and choose describe something a person either does or doesn't do.

Agree those before the programme starts, with whoever holds the budget. Then review against them at three to six months for behaviour, and six to twelve for results.

What it costs (and how to justify it)

Emotional intelligence training rarely pays for itself by generating something new. It pays by preventing things that already cost you money.

Research prepared for Acas estimated annual UK workplace conflict costs at £28.5 billion, and costed the common outcomes for employers. So the business case isn't what percentage will we get back. It's a simpler question: how many of these does the programme need to prevent before it has paid for itself?

Take the price you've been quoted and divide it by the outcome you're most trying to prevent. A £10,000 programme covers itself by preventing a single conflict-driven resignation — before you count the other eleven managers in the room.

That sum uses your quote, your problem and published UK figures, which makes it considerably harder to argue with than a percentage borrowed from a consultancy blog. We've set out the full method in how to build the business case for emotional intelligence training.

One thing most L&D teams miss

The budget may not be yours. A retention problem belongs to operations. A change-management problem belongs to the transformation programme. Summit is often commissioned directly by CEOs and Operations Directors rather than through learning and development — because the person who owns the problem usually has more money than the person who owns the training budget.

A worked example

A major mortgage provider had 29 telephone advisers struggling to retain customers at the end of their fixed-term deals. The Operations Director wanted better retention conversations.

Summit used EQ-i 2.0 assessments to select six advisers for the intervention. Those six retained £8.2 million of customer accounts in twenty days.

Two honest caveats. That figure is business retained, not profit, and not a calculated training ROI. And the programme was funded by operations, where the problem sat — which is the point of the section above.

Five questions before you commission anything

The answer you don't want is in italics.

1. Which emotional intelligence model is this built on, and why that one for our managers? "We draw on all the leading thinkers." Nobody builds on all three. That means no model at all.

2. What validated instrument do you use, and when do you re-measure? "We use our own diagnostic." An unvalidated in-house questionnaire can't give you a baseline, so it can't give you proof.

3. What proportion of contact time is practice rather than content? "It's highly interactive." Ask for the number. Under half and your managers are watching, not rehearsing.

4. What happens after the last day? "Delegates receive the slides." Ask specifically what the line manager is expected to do.

5. Can you show a case study where a business metric moved? "We have excellent feedback scores." Satisfaction is the easiest thing in training to produce and the least connected to results.

Any provider worth hiring will welcome all five. Ask us.

Who should attend

Start where the stakes are highest: managers handling difficult conversations, anyone leading through change, and teams whose working relationships affect customers or delivery.

The 2024 review found training effective across professions, with no significant difference between teachers, health professionals and managers. But that measures movement in EI scores, not business value. Universal effectiveness isn't an argument for universal rollout — it's an argument for prioritising by role stakes.

Learning with Summit

Our founder, Scott Watson, is trademarked as Mr Emotional Intelligence® and was the first Certified EQ-i Master Trainer in the UK. Every programme is designed and delivered by him and a team of qualified emotional intelligence specialists. Not generalist trainers working from a manual.

Emotional Intelligence for Managers runs across two days, at your offices or an off-site venue, tailored to the situations your managers actually face. It's built on the EQ-i 2.0 framework, with post-training resources so the learning survives contact with the day job.

Talk to us about your managers — we'll start with one question: what value do you want from this?

Related reading

• What should emotional intelligence training include?

• The benefits of emotional intelligence training: what the evidence shows

• Seven emotional intelligence activities for your team