The leadership skill that keeps teams engaged and clients close
In law and accounting, technical expertise is the price of entry. It’s what gets you promoted into senior roles. But once you’re there, the job changes. Leading teams, engaging people, and building strong client relationships demand something different: emotional intelligence.
Why it’s hard to build
Professional services environments don’t naturally develop emotional intelligence.
- Billable hours reward technical output, not leadership behaviour.
- Pressure and pace keep people in problem-solving mode rather than reflective mode.
- Culture often prizes being right over listening and adapting.
The International Bar Association has highlighted that while lawyers are trained to analyse, argue and advise, they are rarely trained to manage conflict, communicate with empathy, or build trust across diverse teams¹.
Why it’s often missing
Many leaders in law and accounting rise through the ranks without developing core EI skills. Research shows lawyers often score below average on measures of emotional intelligence, despite scoring highly on IQ². The gap shows up in:
- Struggles to recognise and manage their own triggers under stress.
- Limited ability to tune in to team needs beyond the technical work.
- Avoidance of difficult conversations, letting issues fester.
A study of law firm business leaders found that when leaders lacked EI, firms saw lower knowledge-sharing, weaker trust, and more fragile cultures. By contrast, leaders who demonstrated self-awareness, empathy, and social skill built stability and stronger client relationships³.
In accounting, survey research with managers in Brazil showed a clear link between EI, managerial competence, and transformational leadership behaviours. Those with higher EI were rated as more effective leaders overall⁴.
Even at the technical level, EI matters. An experimental study found auditors with higher emotional intelligence performed better on audit tasks⁵.
Why it’s needed
Emotional intelligence underpins the parts of leadership that technical skills can’t cover:
- Teams need leaders who build trust, motivate, and hold people accountable without losing engagement.
- Clients expect more than technical answers — they want advisors who listen, adapt, and understand their priorities.
- Firms depend on leaders who can influence across functions, manage conflict constructively, and sustain culture under pressure.
As Karen Degenhart’s study of law firm leaders noted, emotional intelligence is what enables stability, trust, and resilience in an environment otherwise built on relentless technical demands³.
The bottom line
Law and accounting firms don’t struggle because their leaders lack technical skills. They struggle when leaders can’t connect, engage, and build the kind of relationships that make people want to follow them — or clients want to return.
Emotional intelligence isn’t a soft skill. In professional services, it’s the leadership skill that turns a group of experts into a high-performing team clients can trust.
References
- International Bar Association. Why Lawyers Need to Be Taught More About Emotional Intelligence.
- American Bar Association. How Successful Lawyers Use Emotional Intelligence to Their Advantage (2017).
- Degenhart, K. Emotional Intelligence Competencies of Highly Effective Law Firm Business Leaders (2020).
- Engelman, R. et al. Consequences of Emotional Intelligence: Managerial Competence, Transformational Leadership, and Performance (Santa Catarina accounting firms, Brazil).
- Puspitasari, E. et al. The Influence of Emotional Intelligence on Auditor Performance (Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems).
