---
title: "Is Emotional Intelligence More Important Than IQ? Debunking the Biggest Lie in Management!"
description: "In management, which is more important, IQ or EQ? A widely circulated saying is that successful people don't have to be the smartest, but they must have the highest EQ. However, after years of management experience, the editor believes another saying: EQ is a trick invented by scientists to fool people with low IQ! The editor thinks the biggest lie in the workplace is that EQ is more important than IQ!"
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2014-08-02"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-emotional-intelligence-more-important-than-iq-debunking-the-biggest-l-b7893ec1/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-emotional-intelligence-more-important-than-iq-debunking-the-biggest-l-b7893ec1.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/krST9Rsv0WWcThgh8b7kqQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%83%85%E5%95%86%E6%AF%94%E6%99%BA%E5%95%86%E6%9B%B4%E9%87%8D%E8%A6%81-%E5%88%B0%E6%8F%AD%E7%A9%BF%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E5%BD%93%E4%B8%AD%E6%9C%80%E5%A4%A7%E8%B0%8E%E8%A8%80-b7893ec1.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-emotional-intelligence-more-important-than-iq-debunking-the-biggest-l-b7893ec1/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Is Emotional Intelligence More Important Than IQ? Debunking the Biggest Lie in Management!

> In management, which is more important, IQ or EQ? A widely circulated saying is that successful people don't have to be the smartest, but they must have the highest EQ. However, after years of management experience, the editor believes another saying: EQ is a trick invented by scientists to fool people with low IQ! The editor thinks the biggest lie in the workplace is that EQ is more important than IQ!

**Warm Tip: Click the blue text above “快消品经销商专业咨询” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management.**
In management, which is more important, IQ or EQ? A widely circulated saying is that successful people don't have to be the smartest, but they must have the highest EQ. However, after years of management experience, the editor tends to believe another saying: EQ is a trick invented by scientists to fool people with low IQ! The editor thinks the biggest lie in the workplace is that EQ is more important than IQ!
Don't believe it? Listen to a story first:
The editor knows a female leader. When I first met her three years ago, she was starting a business. Graduating from a prestigious university, she was smart, empathetic, and charismatic. She was good at boosting employee morale, motivating them to strive for company goals, achieving a win-win situation. The team of over 30 members all admired her. In my view, her management style was exemplary, fully demonstrating the charm of female leadership: high EQ, minimal confrontation with employees, and harmonious relationships.
Three years later, I met her again. I expected her company to be doing well, but she looked struggling. She told me that caring too much about employees' emotions made her hesitate, preventing her from fully exercising management; she didn't correct or persuade underperforming employees to resign in time, leading to low team efficiency. Being a likable leader exhausted her.
"Now, I don't care if they like me or not. Employees just need to know I'm the boss, and I only care about one thing—my company's survival!" Now she has become a strong leader, which has greatly improved efficiency and helped the company survive fierce competition.
A German study also found that women with good temper earn 40,000 euros less over their lifetime than those with more masculine, assertive traits.
This finding applies to both genders. To succeed in the workplace, IQ is always the decisive factor. Remember Steve Jobs? He was a typical example of high IQ and low EQ.
As a leader, he violated all management norms that tell us managers should be sincere, considerate, humble, delegate authority, and care about employees' feelings.
But Jobs was both autocratic and overstepping; he made decisions based on intuition rather than data, and often insulted employees. Fortunately, Jobs had a rare combination of scientist and artist instincts among entrepreneurs, and could keenly translate these into company strategy and products. Moreover, he had strong personal charisma and execution drive.
Jobs' genius and ability made his management flaws tolerated. Although he wasn't a "good boss" in the traditional sense, Apple employees were still sad when he retired.
In the workplace, IQ is used to gain superiority, while EQ is used to gain satisfaction. Without superiority, how can there be satisfaction? To survive and succeed, you must use IQ to win.
In the workplace, when you have a colleague you dislike, you don't mock them to their face but smile instead—that's EQ.
When you encounter a terrible situation, you don't lose your temper or complain, but seek ways to overcome it—that's also EQ.
Why would you make such a choice when you know it will make you temporarily uncomfortable? Because you know it's beneficial to you and easier to control the big picture in the long run.
Only when a person has high enough IQ can they make such a better choice. Without wisdom, how can you control emotions?
Moreover, if you overemphasize EQ, you set two stumbling blocks for your career development.
High EQ means having empathy, but empathy can be the biggest stumbling block to career success: when making key decisions, you consider others' feelings too much, and you may sacrifice your own interests to help others. Overthinking will entangle you in details, preventing you from grasping the essence of things.
People with high EQ are often humble and self-aware, which is another stumbling block to career success, leading you to underestimate and doubt yourself. In fact, most successful people are somewhat arrogant and narcissistic, never doubting their decisions and management styles, and once they decide, they execute firmly.
Of course, high EQ is not a bad thing. But in work, you don't need too high EQ. To succeed, you should know when to use your EQ and when to show your tough side.
Those criticized as high IQ and low EQ simply don't bother to spend time pleasing you.
In the workplace, high EQ only pleases colleagues, but high IQ takes you to the top of your career, ultimately pleasing yourself!
In the workplace, colleagues have different levels of IQ and EQ. I want to ask you: when dealing with colleagues, do you value IQ or EQ more?
\----------------------------------------------
**Like this article? Feel free to share it to your Moments by clicking the top right corner;**
About us:
WeChat ID: 快消品经销商专业咨询管理
Account intro: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, specializing in distributor internal management:
Click the "**阅读原文**" below to enter our micro-community for interactive communication and questions.
**Learning and exchange QQ group: 344257092**
**Reply 1 to enter the micro official website to view historical messages.**
\-----------------------------------------


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671