Morning friend! ☕️

Today, the finale of the Emotionally Intelligent Manager series!
And, the thing Goleman didn't tell you.

Episodes 1-4 were about you: noticing the signal, holding the moment, reading the room, managing relationships.

Episode 5 is about what happens around you.

Because you're not just managing people. You're training a system.

Grab your coffee.

Let's chat!

The Death Star had a flaw.

A two-meter thermal exhaust port that led straight to the reactor core.

One torpedo. Total destruction.

But here's what concerns me: someone knew.

Some engineer saw it. Ran the numbers. Understood the risk.

And stayed quiet.

Not because they were incompetent.

Because speaking up cost too much.

Thandi presents the architecture of her latest app feature.

It meets requirements. Looks clean. Hits the timeline.

An engineer clears his throat.

“There’s a flaw,” he says. “This will hold in testing. But in production, at client-launch scale, it won’t cope.”

The room stills.

The PM tilts his head. “Options?”

“We rework the architecture now but the date slips,” the engineer says. “Or we keep the design, keep the timeline, and carry the risk into Q3 just before launch.”

Everyone looks at the roadmap.

Then the PM asks, lightly:

“Can we keep the date?”

Thandi nods. “If we accept the technical debt. Yes.”

“Good,” the PM says. “I’ll log it in the risk register. We’ll fix it before client launch.”

The decision is made.

The system learns.

The uncomfortable truth?

Every reaction you have is training data.

Same intelligence. Different incentives.

Watch what managers do without noticing:

The manager who says "great question!" then talks for seven minutes straight.

Their team learned: Questions are performed, not answered.

The manager who asks "any risks?" but deflates visibly when someone mentions one.

Their team learned: Risks are for the document, not the discussion.

The manager who says "challenge me" but remembers every time you did.

Their team learned: Challenge has a quota.

You think you're encouraging honesty.

Your face is teaching something else.

Vader doesn't need to appear in every scene.

His presence is felt in how people speak when he's not there.

Bridge of the Executor. Admiral Piett approaches for his morning briefing.

He's prepared. Rehearsed this twice. The fleet status is clean, but there's a minor hyperdrive synchronization issue on one of the Star Destroyers. Minor. Fixable. But technically, a delay.

He knows what happens to officers who bring Vader problems.

So he's made a choice.

"Lord Vader, the fleet has achieved formation. All systems operational. No delays to report."

The words come out smooth. Professional. Perfectly calibrated.

Vader doesn't respond. Just turns. Looks at him.

That look does more than a question ever could.

Piett feels his throat tighten. Continues: "We anticipate rebel contact within the hour. Contingencies are in place."

Vader holds the silence. Three seconds. Five.

Then turns back to the viewport.

Piett exhales.

The briefing is over.

But the lesson isn't.

The thermal exhaust port isn't hidden.

It's just too expensive to mention.

And that's the problem most leadership development never addresses.

Episodes 1-4 gave you the foundation: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills. You can't lead without them.

But there's a dimension Goleman didn't emphasize:

Systems awareness.

You can master all four skills and still create an organization that can't tell you the truth.

Because you haven't learned to see what your behavior teaches at scale.

Q3. Client launch week.

Traffic spikes.

The system slows. Then stutters.

Alerts light up.

In the war room, an engineer scans the architecture and says it flatly:

“This won’t scale.”

Thandi feels it immediately.

The review.
The flaw.
The date.

Later, someone asks, “Did anyone see this coming?”

No one looks at her.

She did.

But “early” was expensive then.

Now it’s just late.

Different team. Different manager. Same moment.

Sprint planning. A developer hesitates.

“There’s a performance risk here,” he says.

Thandi waits for the old move: park it, log it, move on.

But the manager leans forward.

“Say more.”

Then shuts up.

The explanation comes out messy and incomplete, but the risk is real.

The manager turns to the PM.

“If we keep the plan as-is, we’re choosing speed now and paying for it later. Are you comfortable owning that?”

Silence.

They trim scope. Buy time. Reduce exposure.

Thandi notices what changed.

Not the performance.

The price of truth.

The thermal exhaust port wasn't a mystery. It was a choice.

Someone knew. Looked at the cost of speaking up and made a rational decision:

Stay quiet.

The Death Star didn't fail because people were stupid.

It failed because the system optimized for surviving leadership instead of success.

So here's your question:

What is your team optimizing for right now?

Truth. Early, messy, inconvenient?

Or you. Your comfort, your confidence, your control?

Because if they're optimizing for you, they're not building with you.

They're building around you.

Managing your reactions. Filtering reality.

And when the exhaust port shows up, you'll be the last to know.

Stop asking: "How do I show up better?"

Start asking: "What is my team learning from me right now?"

Because you're always teaching.

Every reaction. Every question. Every silence.

The only question is whether you're teaching them to move toward truth...

...or to survive you.

Self-awareness showed you your patterns.

Self-regulation gave you choice.

Empathy opened your eyes to others.

Social skill built relationships.

Systems awareness is the capstone.

Where emotional intelligence becomes organizational intelligence.

Where your inner work becomes outer impact.

You can build a system where truth arrives early. Where problems surface small. Where being wrong out loud is cheaper than being wrong in silence.

One expensive moment at a time.

One truth protected.

One early warning rewarded.

Until someone walks in with the problem you don't want to hear...

...and you realize they're not there in spite of your leadership.

They're there because of it.

Because you taught them, in a thousand small moments, that truth is cheaper to tell than to hide.

That's the system you built.

And that's the Death Star you'll never become.

Next time you're in that tense meeting.

Camera off.

Silence stretching.

Someone hesitating.

That's not a breakdown.

That's your chance to teach a different lesson.

The question is: what will the system learn?

That’s it for the Emotionally Intelligent Manager series.

Next week: where does Scary Management go from here?

Vaugan ☕