The Secret to Scaling Emotionally Intelligent Culture
Richard Hua
June 17, 2026
This article was originally posted in my EPIQ Success newsletter. I am cross-posting it here for your enjoyment.
I’ve traveled all over the world telling the story of the EQ movement at Amazon: how we scaled from a small group of 12 to a global community of 70,000 members, spanning every business unit and level of leadership up through SVPs. One question comes up often:
“How did you get hundreds of thousands of data-driven, results-obsessed technical leaders to buy into emotional intelligence?”
Here’s the counterintuitive answer: I didn’t.
See publication
Tags: Culture, Leadership
The Myth of Time Management
Richard Hua
June 12, 2026
Here’s a belief I held for much of my career: if I just crammed as much as possible into every waking hour, I’d eventually reach some mythical place of productivity where everything gets done and I finally feel caught up.
I was wrong. And I’ve watched thousands upon thousands of high performers be wrong in exactly the same way.
See publication
Tags: Careers, Leadership, Management
The Surprising Connection between Emotional Intelligence and Innovation
Richard Hua
March 14, 2026
Most people think innovation is a cognitive exercise. Get the smartest people in the room, give them a whiteboard and a deadline, and magic happens. I used to believe this too. I spent years in high-IQ environments—electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley, stints at Oracle and Amazon—surrounded by brilliant people who were convinced that raw brainpower was the only thing needed for breakthrough ideas.
See publication
Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Mental Health
How a “Weird” Talk Became the Largest EQ Movement in Corporate History
Richard Hua
February 10, 2026
I was recently featured in a Forbes article entitled 3 Lessons Amazon’s Chief EQ Evangelist Learned Scaling EQ To 1.5 Million People. The article provided a wonderful overview of the work I did at Amazon, but I wanted to dive deeper and share more insights to empower others who also want to make an outsized impact as leaders. Here is my first article which details the origin story of the EQ@Amazon movement. It started with a “weird” talk.
See publication
Tags: Coaching, Culture, Leadership
We have a friction problem
The Secret to Scaling Emotionally Intelligent Culture
