Checkout last month's article.
It started with a conversation.
I was at a networking event recently when someone mentioned they’d just replaced their entire telesales team with AI.
A smart move? Maybe. It’s efficient, cost-effective, predictable, absolutely!
But, and it's a big but and something that's made the conversation stick with me since.
Not because of the tech, we know that’s here to stay, that genie is well and truly out of the bottle. No, but because of the questions it raised:
"What happens when we strip out the very roles that teach people how to communicate, influence, adapt, and grow?"
It’s not just a philosophical question. It’s a talent problem, a pipeline problem, a long-game problem. Because the roles we’re so quick to automate or outsource are often the very ones that help people become the emotionally intelligent, commercially savvy professionals we all say we want to hire now and in the future.
“Emotional intelligence emerges as a much stronger predictor of who will be most successful, because it is how we handle ourselves in our relationships that determines how well we do once we're in a given job.” Daniel Goleman (The Godfather of Emotional Intelligence)
The Foundations We’re Quietly Deleting
Entry-level roles have always done more than pay the bills. They’ve taught us how to:
Handle rejection without losing confidence
Stay calm when someone’s angry on the phone
Ask better questions, not just push harder
Read tone, timing, and human signals
Telesales, retail, customer service, reception, junior support. These aren’t “just jobs.” They’re practice grounds for emotional intelligence. They’re where people get their reps in. And EQ, unlike IQ, doesn’t develop in theory. It develops in real life, in the mess of it.
EQ Needs Doing, Not Just Knowing
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Here's the Paradox
We talk a lot about wanting experienced, emotionally intelligent people in our businesses. People who can think on their feet, read a room, and handle conversations with care and impact. People with resilience. With influencing skills. With empathy. With the ability to build trust and navigate relationships.
These aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re essential skills in roles that sit at the heart of business performance, particularly in professional services, leadership, and sales. Whether it’s building client relationships, leading teams through change, delivering pitches under pressure, or navigating complex stakeholder dynamics, emotional intelligence isn’t optional – it’s the edge. These are roles where people are the product, the service, and the differentiator.
But here’s the paradox: we want professionals who are emotionally intelligent, resilient, persuasive, and great with people.
But we’re stripping out the very roles that build those skills.
We can’t keep saying “people skills matter” while removing the roles that teach them.
According to McKinsey, demand for social and emotional skills is expected to rise by 22 to 26 percent by 2030. At the same time, entry-level knowledge jobs, the ones where those skills are formed, are among the most at risk of automation (Stewart Townsend, 2023).
Where EQ Is Still Being Built (and Why It Matters)
But the good news is that this is not happening in every industry.
Not every industry has lost the plot.
Some sectors still offer rich, real-time emotional practice:
Hospitality: High-pressure people skills on tap
Health and Social Care: Empathy, boundaries, emotional regulation
Retail: Adapting tone, reading people, influencing
Beauty: Emotional attunement, trust-building, one-to-one interpersonal connection. Studies show that high EQ among beauty professionals improves client satisfaction and emotional resilience.
Construction: Teamwork, communication, situational awareness, and managing human complexity on site. Research links emotional intelligence in construction teams to improved safety, leadership, and project outcomes.
Apprenticeships and Traineeships: Structured learning plus lived experience
These roles aren’t just service based. They’re emotionally demanding, behaviour shaping, and deeply formative. We shouldn’t just protect them, we should be investing in them.
And Then There's School....
Where are we expecting young people to start learning these skills?
Because it’s not always happening in the classroom. In fact, we’re squeezing out the subjects that cultivate emotional depth and connection:
According to the Cultural Learning Alliance 2024 Annual Report Card, in England:
42 % of secondary schools no longer enter any pupils for GCSE Music.
41 % have dropped Drama.
And a staggering 84 % no longer offer GCSE Dance.
Overall, entries for arts GCSEs have fallen by 42 percent since 2010, with expressive arts now making up just 6.8 percent of all GCSE entries compared to 14 percent in 2010!
Let’s not pretend that removing the expressive curriculum doesn’t impact EQ. It does, and the effects show up later, in the workplace.
Creativity, collaboration, conflict resolution, risk-taking. These don’t just happen in PSHE. They happen in rehearsal rooms, art studios, sports fields, and group projects.
Let’s not pretend that removing the expressive curriculum doesn’t impact EQ. It does, and the effects show up later, in the workplace.
So What Can Employers Actually Do?
You don’t have to halt progress. But you do have to design it better.
If you’re serious about talent, not just efficiency, consider the following.
Reimagine entry-level roles as human development zones, not task fulfilment
Partner AI with coaching and feedback, not just dashboards
Create structured EQ development pathways, from induction onwards
Value EQ-heavy roles (like customer service) as core business contributors
'TalentSmart found that 90 percent of top performers have high EQ, and it accounts for 58 percent of success across roles.
The World Economic Forum lists EQ in its Top 10 Future Skills'
So let’s stop seeing it as a “nice to have” and start treating it as critical infrastructure.
My Final Thoughts....
If We Strip Out the Practice, We Kill the Progress
AI can simulate a voice. But it can’t build a person.
Emotional intelligence is grown through discomfort, reflection, interaction, and repetition. It needs real people, real conversations, and real messiness. If we take away the roles that allow people to practise being human, we’ll be left wondering why no one’s ready for leadership, client work, or even feedback.
Let’s stop eroding the ground floor. Let’s rebuild the emotional gym.
Because the future doesn’t just need coders and analysts.
It needs people who can lead, connect, adapt, and do it all with emotional intelligence.
Who Am I?
I’m Tracey Clay, founder of Pivotal Partnerships, a people consultancy that helps businesses bring heart and intelligence to how they hire, lead, and grow.
With over 20 years of experience in recruitment, leadership development, and emotional intelligence, I work with founders, senior leaders, and teams to build emotionally intelligent cultures that perform and thrive.
I’m an Association for Coaching accredited coach and an accredited Emotional Intelligence ECR Practitioner with RocheMartin, and I’m passionate about helping people grow through real, grounded, human development, not just theory.
If you're ready to get the people stuff right, with EQ at the heart, let’s have a conversation, human to human.
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