Today's soft skills are the hard skills good leaders need

EVERY year, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, sits down to write a letter... in fact, 400 of them. In each one, she tells the parents of her senior executives what their child is doing for the company, and why they are a gift to the company. The response from her colleagues: "This is the best thing that's happened to my parents. And, it's the best thing that's happened to me!"

Needless to say, Ms Nooyi is enjoying a high approval rating in her 11th year as CEO. Why is that? Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory would say it has everything to do with her mastering "the soft stuff".

Before this new paradigm infiltrated business schools and boardrooms, strong leadership was top-down, empirical and calculated, emotionally invulnerable. Bedside manners and empathy were optional at best. But increasingly business is waking up to the idea that IQ and Ivy League-splattered résumés won't necessarily translate into running a tight, productive, happy ship.