The Bob Effect and the EQ Illusion
There’s a certain kind of party guest who makes you seriously consider faking your own death. I met one recently, let’s call him Bob. He cornered me by the hor d’oevres, clearly convinced that what I needed more than stuffed olives or breathing room was a step by step breakdown of his recent course on emotional intelligence (EQ).
"The thing is, I've got this sixth sense about what makes people tick," he proclaimed, apparently having concluded that what makes people tick is being lectured about their own psychology by someone they'd met five minutes ago.
Bob is steadfast in his belief that he's emotionally intelligent. Rather like someone who's knows he's a great driver because he's never technically crashed.
Unfortunately, run into “Bob” with alarming frequency. After two decades as a psychologist helping leaders excel, I’ve learned it’s best to keep my profession under wraps. The moment ‘they’ find out, I attract Bob, Nigel, and their friends like teenagers to a free Wi-Fi code.
The irony? Bob’s swagger is proof he’s missing the very self-awareness he claims to have. In fact, research finds that those most confident in their emotional intelligence are often rated the lowest by everyone around them.
Where Empathy Wears a Name Badge
You start spotting “Bob” everywhere once you know what to look for. After that, there’s no going back
Business districts, in particular, are bursting with managers who know just enough pop psychology to get in the way.
The CEO who thinks his open-door policy compensates for the fact that people actually cross the street to avoid him (which of course he doesn’t notice).
The middle manager who believes remembering his assistant's birthday proves he’s deeply attuned.
The team leader who learned about "active listening" and has started repeating everything you say back to you like an enthusiastic parrot.
It’s not just an office phenomenon. Turn on the TV and you’ll see it everywhere. There’s the politician who visits a disaster site, surveys the damage, and somehow makes the tragedy all about his own leadership. Or the one who hugs a grieving mother for the cameras, then turns her heartbreak into a soundbite to attack his opponent by lunchtime. He calls it emotional intelligence. The rest of us call it PR.
The first paradox of EQ? ‘Bobs’ use words like “empathy” and “emotional regulation” the way I use “photosynthesis”. It sounds impressive until someone asks a follow-up question.
Emotional Intelligence, Explained
Before we go any further, it’s worth asking, what is emotional intelligence, anyway? Expert Daniel Goleman identifies four key components:
self-awareness
self-management
social awareness
relationship management.
Master these, and you’ve reached basic human functioning. The catch is that you can excel in one area and fail spectacularly in others. True emotional intelligence rarely announces itself; instead, it shows up quietly, often where you least expect it.
The Dangers of Incomplete Wisdom
You’d think as a psychologist I’d have high EQ, and in some ways you’d be right.
I can read a boardroom like a weather map, spotting pressure systems, approaching storms, and the subtle shifts before someone makes an expensive mistake. I see when a CEO stops listening, when the real conversation starts happening beneath the official one, when a group dynamic's about to implode.
Yet while I decode everyone else's emotional subtext, I've developed a peculiar blind spot to my own.
This is the second paradox, and it's particularly brutal (for me at least). Social awareness without self-awareness is like being a brilliant driving instructor who consistently reverses into lampposts.
Master of Insight, Novice at Chit-Chat
For some, things work the other way. Enlightened and fully in tune with emotions but somewhat bewildered by ordinary human interaction.
Take Dr. Davidson who can spot your defense mechanisms from across a room but becomes visibly uncomfortable when asked about his weekend. After decades of therapeutic neutrality, he has the social reflexes of someone emerging from a sensory deprivation tank.
Or Samuel, a Buddhist monk who radiates otherworldly calm but seems baffled by ordinary conversation. Complain about waiting forty minutes for a table, and he’ll pause for what feels like an eternity before launching into reflections on the value of unhurried time. What you really wanted was someone to share your hunger-fueled frustration.
These wonderful people have achieved emotional mastery like someone becoming fluent in Latin. Impressively, thoroughly, and with absolutely no opportunity to use it in conversation with living people.
They are the third paradox; masters of self, but not of social.
The Quiet Signs of Emotional Wisdom
Real emotional intelligence often appears quietly.
Take Jodi for example. She manages forty people and somehow knows that Jennifer in accounts is struggling with her teenager's eating disorder even though she’s never said, that Marcus in marketing needs extra time to process criticism, and that everyone on the third floor is in a frenzy over restructuring rumors management believes are still under wraps.
Ask her about her people skills, and she’ll smile and admit, “I’m always learning. The more I understand about people, the more I realize how much I still don’t know.”
That’s the fourth paradox of emotional intelligence. The better you get at reading people, the more you recognize just how complex human behavior really is.
Jodi might catch a hint of tension in a meeting, but she knows there’s always more beneath the surface. Real emotional intelligence is about spotting the subtle lessons that each encounter quietly offers.
So while Jodi lies awake thinking about how she could have handled that difficult conversation better, Bob sleeps like a baby, blissfully unaware of what he doesn't know.
The Paradox of Emotional Intelligence
This creates what philosophers might call an epistemic paradox, and what the rest of us might call "deeply annoying." The people who've actually developed these skills are often the most skeptical of their own abilities, while the people most confident in their emotional sophistication are usually the ones you'd cross three car parks and a small field to avoid.
Self-Awareness, Self-Delusion, and the Bob Effect
Perhaps the most unsettling truth is that we all have a bit of Bob in us, most convinced of our own sophistication precisely where our blind spots run deepest. I've caught myself explaining the neuroscience of empathy to people who just want to wait quietly in line for the bathroom.
This is why I prefer the term emotional wisdom over emotional intelligence. It's not a fixed ability but something we can continually develop through humility and curiosity. And the most simple indicator that someone has a modicum of emotional wisdom? You walk away from them having felt seen, heard, and like you matter. Not like you've just survived a TED talk delivered by someone whose education came from three self-help books and a weekend workshop.
The most emotionally wise thing we can all do is stay skeptical of our own abilities, remain curious of ourselves and others, and remember that the moment we start explaining our emotional intelligence to people is precisely the moment we've turned into Bob.
Life Connected™
This whole piece is Life Connected in action. Reminding us that emotional wisdom isn’t about saying the right things, but about how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the world we’re part of.
Connection to Self - feeling your emotions, not just analyzing them.
Connection to Others - meeting people as they are, not as a reflection of your own story.
Connection to the World - understanding the bigger picture without losing your place in it.
For more honest takes on the art of connection? Subscribe to my Substack and get Life Connected in your inbox, tune in to my podcast for real-world stories, or grab one of my books for a deeper dive. I’d love to connect.
