Every time I speak to people, from students to CEOs, teachers to exhausted parents, there is a recurring theme that slips into the conversation, and it’s not politics or economics or even technology. It’s something much simpler:

“People have stopped trying to understand each other.”

You hear it in workplaces, in homes, and in public life.
And when people stop trying to understand each other, everything else becomes harder – cooperation, trust, creativity, problem-solving, even basic conversation.

We talk a lot about “global instability”, but underneath all the big issues sits a very human problem:
We are emotionally depleted, individually and collectively.

In this exhaustion, empathy feels like something optional. Something we practise when we have time – which most people don’t. But the more I observe, the more I am convinced that empathy is not a soft, sentimental concept. It’s a structural necessity. A stabiliser. In many ways, an emotional currency that influences everything from families to governments.

And when one person uses it, the impact doesn’t stop with them. It spreads. That’s the part we underestimate.

Emotional intelligence isn’t a personality trait anymore.

Experts like Daniel Goleman have talked about emotional intelligence (EQ) for decades. At first, it seemed like the kind of concept HR teams loved and business schools taught in elective courses. But the world has changed. Now EQ sits at the centre of how societies function.

Research from Harvard psychologist Susan David shows that emotional rigidity weakens institutions from the inside. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson has demonstrated that compassion literally shifts the brain’s capacity for resilience. And Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability explains why conversations collapse when people feel misunderstood or unsafe.

Different fields, different approaches, but the conclusion overlaps:
Emotion drives behaviour far more than we want to admit.

If emotion drives behaviour, then the people who can read emotional landscapes – those with EQ – quietly steer environments, whether that environment is a family, a team, a community, or a nation.

Where empathy actually does its work

Empathy manifests in subtle, almost unremarkable moments.
A manager who makes enquiries about the situation of an overburdened employee rather than forming conclusions.
A parent who manages their frustration to determine the underlying reasons for a child's behaviour issues.

A leader who pauses before escalating conflict.
A community that refuses to treat outsiders as threats.

None of these moments fix the world, but they change the emotional direction of that particular interaction. That change, in turn, influences the next one. And the next.

In policy, we often talk about “scalability”. Funny enough, empathy is scalable. Not through systems or funding, but through imitation. People who experience empathy tend to extend it. And people who are consistently met with hostility tend to reflect that back too.

The emotional tone of a society is built through these tiny exchanges more than through any official programme.

The multiplier effect we don’t measure

What makes empathy powerful is not its intensity but its ability to multiply.

One supervisor in a workplace practising empathy can reduce an entire team’s stress response.
One classroom where children are treated with dignity produces emotionally healthier adults.
One neighbourhood with a culture of looking out for each other becomes safer without heavy intervention.

These shifts ripple outward.
Empathy is like placing a warm hand on a cold surface; it spreads through contact.

UNESCO has documented this in post-conflict education programmes. Community mental health research shows it. Even corporate studies published by the World Economic Forum point to the same pattern: environments grounded in emotional intelligence have better outcomes across productivity, trust, innovation, and social stability.

Measurement varies. But the impact is visible.

We keep trying to fix global issues with tools meant for symptoms, not causes.

We create policies for violence but tend to ignore the emotional desperation that fuels it, we introduce workplace wellness programmes while rewarding burnout, we promote diversity while ignoring the emotional safety required for inclusion to actually work, and we address mental health with “awareness” but overlook loneliness, disconnection, and social fragmentation.

These are emotional failures more than operational ones.

The instinct is always to create another system, another task force, another strategy. But strategies work only when the emotional climate supports them. Without that, systems crack, no matter how well-designed they look on paper.

This is why empathy-driven leadership, whether in government, schools, business, or the home, tends to create longer-lasting change. It addresses the upstream issue: how people feel.

And how people feel determines how they behave.

Emotional intelligence as a form of governance

That phrase may sound unusual, but it’s essentially true.

Nations don’t run on GDP alone.
Workplaces don’t run on KPIs alone.
Families don’t run on rules alone.
Communities don’t run on infrastructure alone.

Systems and processes rely on emotional collaboration, whether individuals feel acknowledged, respected, secure, safe, and valued. When this emotional foundation deteriorates, the stability of all subsequent structures is compromised.

Notable figures like Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan commanded global influence beyond their official capacities; their authority was grounded in emotional intelligence.

They treated dignity as a political instrument, not a poetic one. And that approach multiplied, spreading into communities, institutions, and future generations.

We’re missing that today.

An emotional change, not a new conceptual framework, is needed for the future.

After working in a variety of human realities for decades, if there's one thing I've understood, it's this: Change doesn't stick until the emotional context supports it. The data is important. Strategy matters. Policy matters. But without emotional intelligence, none of these things translate into lasting impact.

And this isn’t about being idealistic. It’s about being realistic.

When empathy is present, people step back from the ledge.
They de-escalate quicker.
They negotiate better.
They collaborate more willingly.
They become less defensive, less afraid, and less reactive.
That in and of itself is development in a world where defensiveness is the norm.

We talk about repairing the world. Maybe the repair starts with repairing how we speak to one another. How we listen. How we interpret the intentions of others. How we give people room to be flawed without deciding they don’t deserve understanding.

If emotional intelligence is a currency, then the more we spend it, the richer our societies become.

That, to me, is the multiplier worth paying attention to.