Emotional intelligence across four cornerstones
EQEmotional Intelligence
The capacity to recognize, understand, and work with emotions -- in yourself, with one other, inside a group, and in contact with the vast and uncontrollable.
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A short audio introduction recorded by Karey. Nothing loads until you press play.
Core concept
Emotional intelligence, as developed in this framework, scales across four cornerstones: intra-emotional (One-Self), dyadic (One-One), collective (One-Many), and transpersonal (One-Infinite). These map onto and extend the classical Goleman / Salovey-Mayer domains of self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and relationship management.
Cornerstone 1 -- One-Self (intra-emotional). The capacity to accurately sense, name, and work with your own emotional states in real time, in ways that support values-aligned action and nervous-system stability. Key capacities: emotional self-awareness, self-regulation and recovery, inner motivation and attitude.
Cornerstone 2 -- One-One (dyadic). The capacity to perceive, resonate with, and influence the emotional field between yourself and one other person while staying grounded. Key capacities: empathic attunement, co-regulation, and relational repair.
Cornerstone 3 -- One-Many (collective). The capacity to sense, shape, and steward the emotional climate of a group so it can think clearly, act effectively, and metabolize conflict. Key capacities: climate sensing, norm setting, and group regulation.
Cornerstone 4 -- One-Infinite (transpersonal). The capacity to feel and relate to emotions that arise in contact with the unknown, the vast, and the uncontrollable -- death, mystery, awe, purpose, the sacred -- and to let these inform wise action rather than collapse or bypass.
Together the cornerstones form a coach-friendly scaling from self to cosmos, with an explicit transpersonal emotional field as the fourth layer.
Featured voices
Proof sources backing this intelligence -- a visual rollup of the public thinkers, researchers, and practitioners whose work underwrites the framework.
Graphics
Top thought leaders
Curated from the Emotional_Intelligence_Leaders_2026_v4_premium worksheet. Full columns (books, podcasts, papers, social reach) are available in the original xlsx; below is the abbreviated view.
| # | Name | Domain | Score | Primary contribution | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daniel Goleman | Psychology / Leadership / Science Journalism | 99 | Made emotional intelligence globally legible for business, coaching, and leadership by organizing the field into applied competencies such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. | link |
| 2 | Marc Brackett | Affective Science / Education / Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence | 96 | Built one of the field's most robust real-world implementation systems through RULER, making EQ measurable, teachable, and scalable in schools and organizational learning contexts. | link |
| 3 | Susan David | Psychology / Emotional Agility / Harvard Medical School | 92 | Extended EQ beyond "positive thinking" by showing that emotional skill includes facing difficult feelings honestly, with flexibility, self-compassion, and values-based action. | link |
| 4 | Peter Salovey | Psychology / Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence | 91 | Co-originated the ability model that gave EQ conceptual rigor and helped distinguish emotional intelligence from looser self-help formulations. | link |
| 8 | Six Seconds | Global EQ Network / Assessment / Certification | 90 | Scaled EQ into a practical global movement by combining assessment, certification, applied curriculum, and a recognizable developmental model. | link |
| 5 | John Mayer | Psychology / Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence | 89 | Co-developed the scientific basis for treating emotional intelligence as a measurable form of reasoning with emotional information. | link |
| 9 | Travis Bradberry | Applied EQ / Leadership Development / TalentSmartEQ | 88 | Turned EQ into a mass-market management skill set by pairing accessible language with assessment products and habit-based behavior change. | link |
| 17 | Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence | Institutional Emotion Science / Education / Leadership | 88 | Anchored emotional intelligence in a respected institutional setting and translated emotion science into scalable school and leadership applications. | link |
| 6 | David Caruso | Psychology / EQ Assessment / MSCEIT | 87 | Helped operationalize the ability model through MSCEIT and turned EQ from abstract theory into a structured measurement framework. | link |
| 11 | Brene Brown | Research / Leadership / Vulnerability / Shame | 87 | Expanded the practical vocabulary of emotional courage, shame resilience, trust, and vulnerability, all of which deeply shape modern applied EQ conversations. | link |
| 7 | Reuven Bar-On | Psychology / Emotional-Social Intelligence / Assessment | 86 | Created one of the most influential and commercially durable EQ assessment frameworks, giving the field a widely used applied measurement system. | link |
| 13 | Richard Boyatzis | Leadership Development / Competency Research / Intentional Change Theory | 86 | Connected EQ to leadership effectiveness, resonant leadership, and coachable behavior change in rigorous management-development contexts. | link |
| 12 | Mayer-Salovey-Caruso / MSCEIT | Ability-Based EQ Assessment | 85 | Provides one of the clearest tools for measuring perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions as abilities rather than self-perceptions alone. | link |
| 10 | Jean Greaves | Applied EQ / Assessment / Leadership Development | 82 | Helped package EQ into a highly scalable assessment-plus-book format used broadly in corporate and professional settings. | link |
| 18 | Multi-Health Systems / EQ-i 2.0 | Assessment Platform / Leadership / Coaching | 81 | Helped sustain and distribute one of the most widely used commercial EQ assessment systems in applied settings. | link |
| 15 | Konstantin Vasily Petrides | Trait Emotional Intelligence / Psychometrics | 80 | Established trait emotional intelligence as a distinct psychometric domain, expanding the field beyond ability and competency models. | link |
| 16 | Annie McKee | Leadership / Emotional Intelligence / Resonant Leadership | 79 | Helped translate EQ into resonant leadership language focused on culture, connection, and human-centered executive performance. | link |
| 14 | Jean Decety | Social Neuroscience / Empathy Research | 78 | Strengthens the scientific basis for empathy, perspective-taking, and prosocial functioning that underlie many applied EQ models. | link |
Featured talks
One signature talk or interview per leader -- click a thumbnail to play. Nothing streams until you click.
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