Emotional Intelligence in Leaders: Nina Kjellson

I think it takes high EQ to be a really successful and enduring leader.

I am Nina Kjellson. I’m a Managing Partner at InterWest Partners. Great CEOs also bring a certain amount of humility, humor, often charisma, they’re the types of people that you want to be around. In an ideal circumstance, we’ve certainly had very successful CEOs that don’t have those qualities, but when I think about where it’s easy to recruit teams to and where there is a wave of success, it tends to be behind leaders that are not only skilled, self-aware, open but also good to be around.

Good CEO’s are problem-sniffers, they look for the issues and they study the issues that come up but they also are very solution-oriented. So they’re not just defining either a market problem that they want to solve as company with the product or an issue internal to the organization that they need to wrestle with and deal with, they are  actively thinking about how to solve them and how to draw on other resources, other people.

And I do believe in this concept of mindfulness, of really taking the time to make space, to really sit with a problem or an issue and allow it to sort of rotate in your mind in different ways it creates a different creative energy and sheds new perspectives.