Emotional intelligence in leadership is rarely the first thing we think about when we talk about employee wellbeing. Organisations invest in surveys, wellness apps, mental health days, and engagement initiatives. And yet there’s one group we consistently overlook in these conversations, the leaders themselves.

The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026 report contains a finding that should give every HR professional and business owner pause. Global employee engagement has fallen to 20%, its lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity. But buried within that headline is something even more striking: while leaders score highest on engagement, they also report higher levels of stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness than individual contributors, and they are less likely than others to say they smiled or laughed a lot the previous day.

The people we rely on to hold everything together are quietly struggling. And most of the time, nobody is asking.

Lonely at the Top and Why It Matters

Leadership is a uniquely isolating role. You carry information you can’t share, make decisions others will question, and are expected to project calm and confidence regardless of what’s happening inside. The higher you go, the smaller your circle of genuine trust becomes.

But here’s what’s important to understand: loneliness in this context isn’t about being physically alone. Research published in the Journal of Management, combining 233 empirical studies, found that loneliness is the subjective feeling that one’s social relationships are deficient, meaning people can feel deeply lonely even in a crowded office. For leaders, that gap between the connections they have and the ones they need can be significant, even when their diary is full, and their door is always open.

The researchers are clear: loneliness is not a personal issue; it is a business issue. And the business consequences are real. Employees experiencing workplace loneliness are five times more likely to miss work due to stress-related issues than their non-lonely counterparts. When that lonely employee is also the leader, the impact extends to every person they manage.

Research confirms that empathic, empowering, and supportive leadership is associated with reduced loneliness across teams. Which means a leader who is struggling to connect is less able to create the conditions for others to thrive. Their well-being and their team’s well-being are inseparable.

What Gets in the Way

Most of the leaders I work with aren’t struggling because they lack capability or experience. They’re struggling because the very qualities that helped them succeed, drive, self-reliance, high standards, and the ability to keep going under pressure can make it harder to acknowledge difficulty, ask for support, or show any form of vulnerability.

Add to that the pressure to always have the answer, the reluctance to burden the team with their own challenges, and the sense that admitting struggle might somehow undermine their authority, and you have a recipe for quiet, chronic isolation. Many leaders describe feeling that they have to be “on” all the time, with no safe space to process what they’re actually experiencing.

This isn’t weakness. It’s an entirely understandable response to an incredibly demanding role. But left unaddressed, it takes a toll on the leader’s mental health, on their decision-making, and on the culture they’re creating around them.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership Wellbeing

Emotional intelligence, the ability to notice, understand, and manage our own emotions and respond effectively to the emotions of others, is often talked about purely as a leadership communication skill. And it is that. But it’s also deeply personal, and it plays a critical role in how leaders experience and navigate their own well-being.

Leaders with stronger emotional intelligence are better at recognising what they’re feeling and why, rather than pushing difficult emotions down until they surface in less helpful ways, such as impatience, withdrawal, or poor decisions under pressure. They’re more likely to build genuine, trusting relationships rather than purely transactional ones. And they’re better equipped to seek support when they need it, without framing that as failure.

Employees who are more emotionally intelligent are less stressed and less emotionally unstable than those who struggle with emotional intelligence, and this is as true for leaders as it is for anyone else in the organisation. Taylor & Francis Online

Importantly, emotional intelligence is not fixed. It can be measured, understood, and developed. That’s precisely what a structured emotional intelligence assessment does: it gives leaders a detailed, evidence-based picture of their emotional strengths and the areas where some development would help them lead more effectively and feel more connected.

Psychological Flexibility — The Missing Piece

Alongside emotional intelligence, another quality makes a profound difference for leaders under sustained pressure: psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay connected to what matters and do what matters, even when uncomfortable thoughts and feelings show up, rather than being driven by the need to avoid or suppress them. It’s developed through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an evidence-based approach with a strong and growing body of research behind it.

When leaders are psychologically flexible, they can sit with uncertainty without feeling compelled to project false confidence. They can acknowledge their own struggles without being overwhelmed by them. They can stay present and available to their teams, even on a difficult day, because they’re not using all their energy fighting their own internal experience.

This combination of emotional intelligence and psychological flexibility is what I work on with leaders. Not as a one-off workshop, but through a structured programme of assessment, individual feedback, and coaching that creates lasting change rather than a short-term boost.

A Question Worth Asking

If you’re an HR professional, a people manager, or a business owner, I’d invite you to think about the leaders in your organisation right now. When did someone last genuinely ask how they were doing and create the space for an honest answer? Not “how’s the project going?” but “how are you?”

The loneliest people in your organisation might be the ones at the top. They deserve support too.

If you’d like to talk about how emotional intelligence development and coaching can support the leaders in your organisation, I’d love to hear from you. You can get in touch at julie@julieallenconsulting.com or visit julieallenconsulting.com.

Julie Allen is a Leadership Development and Organisational Well-being Consultant based in Holywood, Northern Ireland. She is the only Certified ACT and ProSocial Matrix Facilitator on the Island of Ireland, and is an Internationally Certified user of Thomas International’s Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue). She works with leaders and organisations across the private, voluntary and community sectors to build emotional intelligence, psychological flexibility, and genuine team connection.