When we hire someone, we can spend a great deal of time looking at where they studied, what qualifications they have and what positions they have held. Within a few months of working with them, however, we often find ourselves talking about completely different things. Do they listen? Can they read a room? How do they react when someone disagrees with them? Can they deliver difficult news without creating unnecessary conflict? Do people trust them?

None of these qualities appears prominently on a CV, yet they can tell you far more about how someone will perform in an organisation than another line under education or professional qualifications. I have met many intelligent and highly qualified people over the years who were very good at what they knew, but far less effective at understanding the people around them. Someone can understand a complicated financial model and still fail to notice that the person sitting opposite them has stopped listening. They can present the strongest argument and damage a relationship in the process of winning it.

This is where emotional intelligence becomes difficult to account for. It does not fit neatly onto a CV, and there is no qualification that tells you whether someone knows when to speak, when to listen or how to disagree without making the disagreement personal. These abilities are hard to measure, so our education systems and businesses tend to place more weight on the things that are easier to measure.

Academia naturally rewards academic performance. Students learn how to absorb information, analyse it and demonstrate their understanding under examination. Those who do this particularly well move on to increasingly selective institutions and leave with credentials that open doors. But once they enter the working world, the conditions change. The answer is no longer always clear, the problem may not be clearly defined and success often depends on getting several people with different interests to work towards the same outcome.

I have seen this many times in business. The person with the deepest technical knowledge is not always the person others want to work with. A manager can be excellent at identifying what has gone wrong but poor at explaining it in a way that helps someone improve. A negotiator can push hard enough to get everything they want from one deal and make sure there is never a second one. These are not failures of intelligence. They come from failing to understand how your behaviour affects the people around you.

The higher someone rises in an organisation, the more obvious this becomes. Early in a career, individual ability can take you a long way because much of your value comes from the work you produce yourself. As responsibilities grow, more of the job depends on other people. You need to persuade rather than instruct, understand what motivates different personalities and recognise when a problem that looks commercial is really a problem of trust. Knowing the answer is useful, but getting people to move with you is a different skill.

Emotional intelligence is sometimes mistaken for being agreeable or avoiding difficult conversations. I see it differently. Some of the most emotionally intelligent people I know are very direct. The difference is that they understand how to be direct without making the other person feel small. They can deliver bad news, challenge an idea or say no while keeping the relationship intact. They pay attention not only to what they want to say, but to how it will be received.

This becomes especially important when something goes wrong. Most people are easy to work with when business is good and everyone agrees. You learn much more about someone when a deal falls apart, a colleague makes a mistake or a decision goes against them. The ability to control your first reaction, understand another person’s position and respond without making the situation worse is difficult to capture in an interview or an academic transcript. In practice, it can determine whether a difficult situation is repaired or becomes a lasting problem.

There is another side to emotional intelligence that receives less attention, which is understanding yourself. After enough years in business, you begin to recognise your own patterns. You learn which situations make you impatient, which personalities you find difficult and when pride is affecting a decision more than you would like to admit. That kind of self-knowledge is not always comfortable, but it changes the way you deal with people.

None of this reduces the value of academic achievement. Knowledge, discipline and technical ability remain important, and many professions rightly demand rigorous qualifications. The mistake is assuming that credentials give us a complete picture of someone’s ability. They measure certain forms of achievement very well while leaving others largely invisible.

When I think about the people who have impressed me most over the course of my career, their qualifications are rarely the first thing I remember. I remember how they treated people, especially when there was nothing to gain from doing so. I remember who could bring calm to a difficult conversation, who listened before forming a view and who could disagree with someone without losing their respect.

We have become very good at displaying what we know. Degrees hang on walls, qualifications sit after our names and job titles tell the world how far we have progressed. Emotional intelligence is harder to display and much harder to certify. Over the course of a career, however, it becomes very difficult to hide.