5 red flags leaders should watch for early in the new year

Leadership patterns often become visible early in a new year.

It’s the time when goals are clarified, priorities are set, and the way of working begins to take shape for the months ahead.

I’ve been delivering a lot of leadership development programs recently, and here’s what I see consistently:

When challenges surface, they’re not so much about strategy, systems, or technical skill. More often, they’re about emotional intelligence and how the leaders understand themselves, relate to others, and navigate everyday interactions.

Daniel Goleman, who popularised the Emotional Intelligence (EI) model, identified five core capabilities that underpin personal and professional success. When these are strong, individuals and teams thrive.

When EI is shaky, it can affect psychological safety in the workplace. When people don’t feel safe speaking up, asking questions, or sharing concerns, the early cracks in culture tend to widen quickly.

Goleman defines EI as:

‘The ability to understand other people’s emotions, needs and concerns, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially and recognise the power dynamics in a group or organisations.’

Here are five early red flags that may signal it’s time to intentionally build your emotional intelligence as a leader this year.

1. Self-Awareness: You’re getting feedback you didn’t expect

If you’re surprised by how others are responding to you – perhaps they are withdrawn, defensive or disengaged – it’s often a self-awareness issue.

People with strong self-awareness understand how their mood, tone, and behaviour land on others. If you’re not recognising and understanding your emotions and how they affect the people around you, even the best of intentions can create friction.

Early signs include:

Feeling misunderstood more often than usual
Hearing the same feedback repeatedly
Noticing tension with individuals you can’t quite explain

If your impact doesn’t match your intent, that’s a signal worth listening to.

2. Self-Regulation: Small things are triggering big reactions

The new year can amplify pressure. Tight timelines, new targets, and “let’s hit the ground running” expectations can quickly wear down your teams’ patience.

A red flag appears when reactions feel sharper than necessary, for example, snapping in meetings, withdrawing under stress, or replaying conversations long after they’re over.

Self-regulation isn’t about shutting down your emotions. If you can self-regulate, you’re able to manage your emotions well enough to stay steady, credible, and constructive, especially when others are watching you for cues.

3. Motivation: Just going through the motions

Motivation in emotional intelligence isn’t about hype or hustle. It’s about purpose-driven energy.

A warning sign emerges when people feel flat, disengaged, or overly task-focused early in the year. This often shows up as:

Low enthusiasm for goals you once cared about
Difficulty sustaining momentum
Leading because you “should,” not because you’re inspired

When intrinsic motivation dips, performance usually follows. Reconnecting to meaning, not just metrics, really matters.

4. Empathy: You’re solving problems too quickly

Empathy gaps often appear when people move straight into fixing mode. If you find yourself shifting straight to solutions when problems arise, you might be missing important underlying issues that will keep surfacing if they aren’t addressed.

If people are becoming quieter, resistant, or emotionally distant, it may not be because they’re unmotivated, but because they don’t feel understood. Early red flags include:

Conversations that feel transactional
Team members disengaging after “solutions” are offered
Clients or colleagues feeling unheard

You need to recognise the gaps with your people, get curious and ask more questions to get to the bottom of the issues. Listen to your team members’ challenges and meet them with understanding and recognition of their feelings. Empathy builds the currency that makes everything else work.

5. Social Skills: Relationships feel harder than they should

Strong social skills are fundamental to psychological safety. They create environments where people feel comfortable speaking openly, sharing mistakes, and raising challenges without fear of judgment. When psychological safety dips, relationships feel strained, and trust is compromised.

If alignment feels harder than usual, or relationships require more effort to maintain, it’s often not a personality clash but more likely a lack of skills in communicating effectively, building rapport, or leaning into hard conversations.

Researcher Brene Brown talks about the importance of being clear in your communication with your teams.

Through her Dare to Lead program, Brene and her team have this mantra they use in all their interactions: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Brene speaks to the need to provide feedback (both positive and negative) with clarity – always. Sometimes, having a hard conversation is something we want to avoid, but it’s kinder to the person to provide them with the information and feedback they need to improve or make changes. Avoiding conflict or having hard conversations is ‘unkind’ to both the individual and the team, especially when it’s linked to behaviours that affect culture.

The good news? Social skills are learnable. With awareness and practice, they improve quickly.

The bottom line

Early in the year, these red flags are easy to ignore. But they’re also early invitations.

Teams thrive when people feel safe to be honest, ask for help, question ideas, and admit uncertainty. Emotional intelligence is one of the strongest predictors of whether that safety exists. Leaders who notice and respond early strengthen not just connection, but the cultural foundations their teams rely on.

The leaders who pause early, notice these signals, and invest in their emotional intelligence will set their teams up for success from the outset.

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Final thoughts...

If any of these red flags feel familiar, take them as important feedback you can act on early.

This is exactly why Building Resilient Pathways: A Guide for Job Coaches. was written. The book explores how emotional intelligence shows up in real leadership moments under pressure, in complexity, and when the answers aren’t obvious. It offers practical reflections, frameworks, and tools to help leaders and consultants strengthen self-awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation in ways that actually stick.

It’s perfect for frontline workers, managers, leaders and anyone looking to build their confidence and communication skills.

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