Emotional fitness: the three-step path to stronger leadership

Executive overview

Most leaders know they need emotional intelligence but lack a concrete path to develop it. Susan Packard, co-founder of HGTV, offers a three-step framework she calls EQ fitness — a progression beyond standard emotional intelligence toward genuine self-transcendence.

It starts with self-awareness, moves through trust-building, and culminates in "we principles" — leading for others rather than self. Each step depends on completing the one before it.

The core insight: you cannot give trust if you don't feel worthy of receiving it — self-awareness comes first.

Step 1: self-awareness

• Identify which emotions are keeping you stuck — fears, anxieties, unsettled feelings brought into work.
• Give voice to those emotions (coach, therapist, trusted friend) — naming them reduces their hold.
• Understand how you are wired: what you love, what you are good at, what drives your passion.
• Distinguish between workaholism (robot mode, no meaning) and genuine drive (motivated by the promise of an idea).
• Without clearing unproductive emotions, good EQ is inaccessible — they consume the bandwidth needed for it.

Step 2: trust-building

• You cannot offer what you don't feel worthy of receiving — self-worth is the foundation of authentic trust.
• High-achievers often self-persecute; reducing that self-criticism is prerequisite to building real trust with others.
• Face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) communication is essential — text and email strip out tone, distress, passion.
• Trust requires accepting that people will make mistakes; a calm, problem-solving response (not punishment) reinforces it.
• Cover for each other: mutual backing signals trust and frees people to do their best work.

Step 3: we principles

Three components make up the "we principles" stage:

• Generosity of spirit — being present for your team, expressing gratitude, seeing their success as your success.
• Hope — leading with optimism; its absence produces cynicism, resignation, and paralysis.
• Moral courage — acting on your ethics even when standing alone; courage is not fearlessness but action in the face of fear.

Leadership behaviours that build EQ fitness

• Model the boundaries you want the culture to have — if the CEO fires 3 a.m. emails, everyone's anxiety follows.
• Giving back the first million dollars of profit to employees (weighted by tenure, excluding leadership) signals that people matter.
• Ending every one-on-one with "is there something I can do for you this week?" shifts body language and reminds the team you are in it with them.
• Servant leadership: authority comes from title, but real power comes from commitment to the mission and the team.
• Avoid political environments deliberately — it requires ongoing, conscientious effort, not a one-time decision.

The Angela case study

• Mid-level director who was addicted to work — reactive, passive, no clarity on what she actually loved doing.
• Chasing perfection while disconnected from meaning left her unable to access emotional intelligence.
• Over roughly two years she developed self-awareness, started proactive conversations with her manager, and built new relationships across the organisation.
• The change was not instant — patterns formed over a lifetime require time and reinforcement to shift.

Culture and communication at HGTV

• The startup team held near-daily in-person problem-solving sessions — physical presence enabled real-time reading of body language and tone.
• Shared history of political environments created strong collective motivation to build something different.
• All-hands and weekly meetings were used to reinforce core values and remind everyone of the mission's meaning.
• Ken Lowe actively modelled work-life respect: told clients his COO was home with her family — and meant it as a compliment, not an excuse.
• Covering for one another required trust; that trust required believing in each other's intention and commitment, not perfection.