As Web3 humans, we love to make gains that are two or three times higher than the market average. But what if I told you that there is a skill that may provide such results in way more important, non-investment areas of your work?
Let’s explore emotional intelligence together – from the perspective of a “typical” Web3 leader.
Breakfast at Discord: a Web3 founder’s monday chaos
It’s Monday. You open your communication channels and check the messages that came in over the weekend.
There are two important notifications: one from your project’s Discord, where multiple community members tried to involve you in weekend discussions. Apparently, they wished you’d open this message in the heat of “Saturday Night.” But you know this trick already!
Another one comes from Roger, your employee. He’s complaining on Slack about another colleague, Ana, and her inability to progress with tasks related to the TGE campaign efficiently.
Then, you open the email and notice a message from Hugo, the project’s ambassador in Africa. He’s concerned about his skills for making the next event happen and wants to have a “quick chat” with you.
Sigh! There’s no time to reply to any of them. You need to join a retrospective call about the last X campaign. Luckily, only a few process-related issues were spotted and the meeting ends positively. Or so you think, because right after, two participants reach out to share concerns regarding:
- the way the feedback was discussed,
- the lack of understanding of this particular campaign’s audience.
So now you stare at your Macbook while you wait for the next call to start, hoping no more issues land on your desk. Especially since you have your own concerns: the current market conditions and the floor price of your recently launched NFT collection.
Web3 leadership and quick problem solving
I hope that for all of you, the description above was an exaggeration rather than the reality.
However, no matter how packed your Mondays are, such problems may occur every other day of the week. And, usually, it’s you, as a founder, leader, or manager, who will need to at least kick off the process of facing the challenge(s).
First, let’s explore a non-emotional-intelligence way of doing so.
It already gives you plenty of tools to use. And a couple of dangerous pitfalls to get into. You can see them all on a spectrum – starting from the most hot-headed and ending with the most avoidant tactics:
Tackling issues without emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence, welcome to the stage
If the above approaches don’t sound convincing to you, that’s good.
However, let’s be honest. How many times have you tackled similar issues by firefighting, micromanagement, or even (but hopefully not!) avoidance?
Fortunately, there is one not-so-secret weapon that helps to change the mental model when managing teams and projects.
What is emotional intelligence?
By definition, emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own feelings while effectively responding to the emotions of others. It’s about problem-solving, same as other types of intelligence, but on a slightly more human level.
EI has a lot to do with “being emotional.” But it’s not about hot-headed or impulsive reactions. It’s about managing them – both in ourselves and for people working with us. Especially if their emotional state simply requires the aforementioned recognition, understanding, and smart response.
So, let’s now explore how to achieve it on different levels.
What makes a leader emotionally intelligent?
According to David Goleman, who popularized emotional intelligence to the mainstream level, this concept can be broken down into 5 main components:
- Self-awareness – recognizing your own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses – and understanding how they influence your decisions and leadership style.
- Self-management – regulating your own feelings, particularly in tricky situations.
- Social awareness – understanding and considering the perspectives of others.
- Relationship awareness – the ability to communicate, influence, and build meaningful relationships effectively.
These areas seem quite self-explanatory and easy to implement. However, it’s nowhere as tricky and difficult to manage as in Web3.
Why should Web3 founders care about emotional intelligence?
In his famous book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,” Goleman indicated that emotional Intelligence is considered twice as important as academic or technical knowledge.
Later, in the coaching bible “Coaching for Performance,” the authors hypothesized that for leaders, it may be thrice. And I’d personally argue that this number may be even higher for Web3 founders – for the following four reasons:
1. Decentralized systems demand relationship-driven leadership
Decentralization, no matter if related to blockchain protocol or a team setup, creates a very clear case for trust building activities.
On the one hand, it’s about the confidence in your leadership skills and the vision you outlined. But even more importantly, it’s about the trust in your team and their competencies.
One of the core principles of coaching leadership (that is inextricably linked to EI) is a simple rule of thumb: recognizing that everyone around you is “capable, resourceful, and full of potential.” If that’s not the case, you’ve likely haven’t built the team you really need.
Hence, if you follow this rule, you also need to make your co-workers feel trusted. If Hugo, the project’s ambassador we met in the intro, doubts his skill, your job is to empower him – even if he lives 10,000 km away and has a big initiative on his plate.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution – as every case and human are different. That’s what lies at the core of EI. But in this specific situation, a good leader would:
- Schedule an empathetic listening session – based on the 1:1 call, which is full of open questions about Hugo’s concerns, skill gaps, and stress sources.
- Empower through support – instead of micromanaging and planning Hugo’s next steps painstakingly, offer tools and learning resources or help him break down the process into smaller, actionable steps.
- Reinforce the trust – follow up with Hugo shortly to address pressing issues and outline the subsequent actions together.
2. Navigating market volatility requires emotional self-mastery
Web3 means volatility and leadership means… volatility. Combining both creates a very strong need for emotional self-management.
The above case of “tricky market conditions and concerns regarding the floor price of the NFT collection” is likely something we’ve all coped with multiple times. If accompanied by other problems, it can lead to a leadership death spiral, where the lack of positive events makes your attitude progressively more pessimistic.
Instead, you may apply self-awareness and combine it with self-management:
- Recognize the emotion you feel when looking at the market bloodbath and put a label on it. Be specific – the research showed that the more words describing feelings we know and use, the better we can deal with them.
- Determine what you can actually influence – the market situation or your emotional state.
- It’s likely the latter and you’re confident that your strategy makes sense in the long term, you may close your portfolio.
- If necessary, you can apply self-soothing (for example, a warm drink, a quick walk, or a chat with a loved person).
3. Remote, asynchronous teams thrive on emotional awareness
I work with people coming from six different continents. They all have very distinct cultural backgrounds. And may react to the same situations differently.
Web3 is full of such teams – as this beautiful and remote-first industry gives people equal opportunities to succeed, no matter their country, language, or race. However, this diversity also creates managerial challenges, especially in the communications area.
We could clearly see it in the example of the “retrospective call about the last X campaign,” – where the reactions to the meeting and discussed topic varied per person. Moreover, Roger’s complaints about Ana’s inability to move forward with tasks may have also been related to the way the entire case was discussed with both.
Hence, as an EI-competent leader, you need to focus on social awareness:
- Understand your colleagues as best as you can. Think about simple personality tests – such as DISC or Working Genius assessments. They’ll tell you a lot about the preferred ways of working and communicating.
- Encourage others to learn more about their colleagues. Share the assessments’ results with the team and discuss them openly.
- If needed, schedule quick sessions between “tricky” pairs, 1:1s, or group meetings where you discuss the next steps regarding the discovered human alpha. They can be divided into:
- What does each person like at work?
- What usually blocks them?
- What do they enjoy and hate when working with others?
4. Community building relies on empathy and… boundaries
Pieces of advice regarding the decentralized or asynchronous groups of people also relate to community building – the heart and soul of Web3 marketing.
Creating a thriving community isn’t just about being approachable or empathetic, though. The main challenge lies in finding the right balance between being responsive and protecting yourself against losing focus. Too much availability can lead to burnout and decision fatigue, while too much distance will alienate a passionate community.
If your project is running Discord or Telegram, you’ve likely encountered a situation similar to the one in the intro. Community members simply love to “summon” leaders and founders in all sorts of discussions, treating them as either the main source of truth or the best person to complain to.
Impulsive reactions to messages or avoiding them completely will never lead to long-term benefits. Instead, you might consider two types of defense mechanisms.
One relates to your own boundaries. Despite a way closer connection between you and your “clients” than in non-Web3 businesses, you don’t always have to be available. Define when you want to communicate and provide feedback in an empathetic manner.
However, as the challenges posed by the team, community, or the market may become much tougher than the case above, you should consider more long-term defense mechanisms, too:
- Sleep – humans are the only species that compromise their sleep for trivial reasons – think about breaking out of this trend.
- Exercise – helps lower cortisol levels and boosts mood-enhancing endorphins.
- Routines – critical for maintaining self-discipline and emotional control in the chaotic Web3 landscape.
- Social relationships – provide emotional support and perspective, which are essential for navigating leadership stress.
Emotional intelligence in Web3: edge or survival tool?
Next time you open Discord or Slack on a Monday morning, the notifications will still be there. But the real difference will be in how you handle them.
The strategies above aren’t just for getting through the day. They’re for staying in the game for the long haul. In a space where burnout lurks behind every market dip (or the dip of the dip), emotional intelligence can be a survival strategy. And it’s your role, as a leader or a founder, to practice it.
Both for yourself and your entire “decentralized and diverse” team.