I’ve been thinking about this using a simple Trust X Performance map.
If we put Performance on one axis (measuring output, as defined by a system) and Trust on the other (psychological safety, reliability, moral regard), the ideal leader clearly sits in the High Trust + High Performance quadrant. What’s striking in many workplaces, though, is how much attention (and promotion) goes to the High Performance + Low Trust quadrant. These individuals deliver outcomes, often at the cost of relational damage, and the system interprets that as leadership potential. Meanwhile, people in the High Trust + Lower Performance (distinction here-- lower performance because it is undervalued, systemically) quadrant often wield disproportionate informal influence: they hold teams together, transmit context, and create coherence. Yet they are rarely promoted at the same rate as the top left quadrant. This makes the question less about whether EQ is “declining" and more about whether our systems are structurally optimized to reward performance, which is divorced from relational accountability. On the Epstein point specifically, he doesn’t strike me as low EQ at all. Rather, IMHO, he exemplifies high social and emotional perception combined with near-zero moral empathy. IMHO, he demonstrated that he could (and did, very effectively) read and manipulate emotional landscapes without perceiving others as fully human. To me, that distinction matters. So perhaps the real pathology isn’t low EQ, but a form of instrumental/ functional emotional intelligence that is removed from ethics. And perhaps, this is amplified by systems that reward results without regard for how they’re produced. Should leadership be defined as the optimization of individual performance? Or should we define it as the capacity to maintain trust when perfromance is under strain? -pavi On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 07:56, Thaths via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 5, 2026, 12:37 AM Venkatesh Hariharan via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 12:18 PM Udhay Shankar N via Silklist < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> The state of the world, and especially the Esptein files cesspool, has >>> me thinking of _Altered carbon_ (the book, not the TV show). In my reading, >>> the core point of the book is "past a certain level of wealth, you're not >>> really human any more". >>> >>> The key reasons: >>> >>> * Access to wealth, opportunities, networks and bodily modifications far >>> beyond what anyone at a lower socio-economic stratum can access. So much so >>> that you're not really comparable any more. >>> * Inability to perceive other people as even being of the same species, >>> but only as exploitable resources. >>> >>> Thoughts? >>> >>> Udhay >>> >>> >> It seems to me that many "successful" folks become so because of their >> IQ. Once success goes to their heads, their EQ becomes inversely >> proportional to their IQ. Or, perhaps, they never had much EQ in the first >> place. The number of High IQ/Low EQ folks that are in leadership positions >> is perhaps the biggest causal factor for the sad state of world affairs. My >> highest respect is now reserved for the rare breed of folks who are High >> IQ/High EQ. As for the High IQ/Low EQ folks, they have a certain stink of >> arrogance. Once you learn to detect them, it becomes easy to avoid them! >> How did we become such a low EQ society? >> > > Since Udhay started this thread talking about Epstein.... Looking at the > network Epstein built (collecting interesting people in his own way), and > the facility with which he communicated with his circle, I don't get the > impression that he was weak in his EQ. In fact, he seems to have been > highly aware of the emotional buttons of his circle and how to manipulate > them. > > Thaths > >> -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist >
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
