Emotional Intelligence for High-Performance Cultures
Abi Adamson
Abi Adamson, Founder of The Culture Partnership, is a pioneering voice in workplace culture transformation, recognized by The New York Times as one of the "Stars of LinkedIn." She has designed and implemented cultural strategies for global industry leaders, including Spotify, Sony Music, SoHo House, and Wise, focusing on creating environments where belonging thrives. A sought-after consultant with demonstrable impact, Abi regularly contributes insights to prominent publications including The Metro, Raconteur, People Management, and HR Zone. She will deliver her first TEDx talk "Who Owns Culture" in November 2025 and release her debut book "Culture Blooming: Nurturing Workplaces Where People Grow" with Berrett-Koehler Publishers in August 2026. Abi transforms organizations by equipping leaders with practical tools to navigate complex conversations around inclusion and psychological safety, ensuring everyone can authentically contribute their unique strengths.
- Recording: Yes
- Language: English
- Duration: 45 min / 15 min
Session Summary
Emotional intelligence isn't a personality trait you either have or you don't. It's a practice shaped by the culture around you. You can have the highest EQ in the building, and it won't matter if your environment punishes vulnerability and rewards performance over people. This session reframes emotional intelligence as a business-critical capability that drives how teams communicate, collaborate, make decisions, and show up under pressure. We'll explore why some teams create the conditions for people to show up fully while others unintentionally train people to perform rather than connect, and what leaders can do differently starting today.
Interaction
During the expert session, engages participants through a series of interactive activities and Q&A.
Key Learnings
-
EQ is a Business Capability, Not a Trait: Emotional intelligence is not an inherent personality trait, but a critical business capability and practice that drives team communication, decision-making, and performance under pressure.
-
Culture Overrides Individual EQ: Even an individual with high emotional intelligence cannot thrive in an environment that rewards performance over people or punishes vulnerability; EQ is a practice shaped by the surrounding culture.
-
Low Awareness has Tangible Costs: A lack of emotional awareness results in measurable organizational damage, including misalignment, frequent rework, slowed decision-making, and the loss of talent.
-
Detailed session description
What we'll cover:
- Why emotional intelligence is a business capability, not a soft skill
- The real cost of low emotional awareness: misalignment, rework, slow decisions, and lost talent
- The EQ Equation: self-awareness, regulation, and responsiveness as a shared practice
- The intent-impact gap and why "that wasn't my intention" is the most dangerous phrase in leadership
- Your defaults under pressure: fight, fix, freeze, or flee
- Emotional permission: who gets to be human at work and who has to perform
- What psychological safety actually requires from leaders
- Why empathy and presence aren't soft gestures, they're performance infrastructure
- Practical shifts you can put into action in your very next conversation
This session gives participants both the self-awareness to recognise their own emotional patterns and the leadership insight to build cultures where emotional intelligence can actually thrive, not just exist on a values poster.
Other Sessions by this Speaker
Working Across Generations: Beyond the Stereotypes
Five generations in one workplace, and we're still pretending the tension is about work ethic or technology. This workshop exposes how ageism flows in all directions and why generational conflict is often about power, respect, and whose experience counts as expertise.
Leading with Empathy and Humility
Leadership isn't about having all the answers; it's about creating space for everyone's brilliance to emerge. This workshop challenges the myth that vulnerability is weakness and explores how the strongest leaders admit what they don't know.
Active Allyship: Actions Over Announcements
Allyship isn't a title you claim; it's work you do when no one's watching. This workshop moves beyond performative solidarity to explore what meaningful support actually looks like in practice.
Conflict Management and Resolution
Most workplace conflicts aren't about the surface disagreement; they're about unmet needs, unheard voices, and unequal power dynamics. This workshop explores how conflict shows up differently across diverse teams and why traditional resolution methods often fail marginalized employees.
Delivering Feedback Without Destroying Trust
Feedback is meant to help people grow. So why does it so often damage relationships, destroy confidence, and create defensiveness? Because most feedback fails to account for psychological safety, power dynamics, and cultural context. This session gives you a practical framework for delivering feedback that people can actually hear, receive, and act on - without the dreaded "feedback sandwich" or corporate scripts that feel robotic.
Can You Hear Me Now? A Guide to Hearing Disability and Workplace Inclusion
This session explores hearing disability as an often invisible workplace reality affecting 1 in 6 people globally. It dispels common misconceptions about deafness and hearing loss while providing practical strategies for genuine inclusion. Participants will learn about different hearing disabilities, assistive technologies, and how workplace systems create unnecessary barriers. Through lived experience and interactive scenarios, the session reveals how accessible practices like captions and visual cues improve communication and productivity for everyone. You'll leave equipped with concrete tools to transform your workplace from one where some struggle to hear into one where everyone can truly be heard.
The Human Advantage: What AI Cannot Copy About Culture
Most workplaces are getting AI wrong. Not because they are investing too much in the technology, but because they are forgetting to invest in the humans who have to use it. This session names the quiet shifts happening in workplaces right now (who gets heard, who gets developed, whose contribution disappears from the record) and gives participants a practical framework for actively growing culture in the AI age. The Human Advantage isn't a strategy or a slogan. It's a daily choice. Participants leave with the TEND framework, a 60-second Human Audit tool they can use in any meeting, and a sharper understanding of what makes their humanity irreplaceable at work.
Reviews