Why We Invest in Emotional Intelligence and How It Helps Our Dealers

There's a stat that stopped me cold the first time I read it.

Daniel Goleman — the psychologist who brought emotional intelligence into the business mainstream — studied nearly 200 large, global companies. When he compared star performers with average ones in senior leadership, nearly 90% of the difference came down to emotional intelligence. Not IQ. Not technical skill. Emotional intelligence.

That finding changed how I think about building VAN.

The Skill That Scales

We're a 67-person company. Fully remote. Growing fast — we were 15 people a year ago. When you scale that quickly, the temptation is to focus entirely on systems, processes, and metrics. And we do. But we also made a deliberate investment that most companies our size don't make: we partnered with the Junto Institute.

I first went through The Junto Institute in 2018. It changed how I lead. The experience was significant enough that we've since brought the program to our broader team — because what I gained as a founder, I wanted every leader at VAN to have access to.

What Junto Is

The Junto Institute was founded by Raman Chadha, who merged a career in startups and higher education with a deep understanding of entrepreneurial psychology and a growing passion for emotional intelligence and neuroscience. Raman launched the first cohort in Chicago in 2013 with five companies. What started as a CEO development program has evolved into one of the most thoughtful emotional intelligence training platforms for growing companies.

Junto's Emotionally Intelligent Leadership (EIL) program is a 13-session, 21-hour live coaching experience — not pre-recorded modules, not a self-paced course. Every session is human, interactive, and built around real-world application. The curriculum is based on Daniel Goleman's four domains of emotional intelligence:

1. Self-Awareness — knowing your emotions, strengths, and limitations
2. Self-Management — regulating emotions, adaptability, driving toward achievement
3. Social Awareness — empathy, reading the room, organizational awareness
4. Relationship Management — influence, conflict resolution, building high-performing teams

The model is sequential. Self-awareness is the foundation. If you can't understand your own emotional patterns, you can't manage them. If you can't manage them, you can't read others. And if you can't read others, you can't lead a team.

This isn't theory. It's practice. Every session includes real-world exercises that participants apply in their actual work — not hypothetical case studies.

Why This Matters in a Remote Company

Here's the thing about remote work: you lose the hallway conversations, the lunch table reads, the nonverbal cues that help you understand how someone is really doing. Research confirms this — virtual communication strips out the emotional context that builds trust and prevents conflict.

A 2022 study published in the Journal of International Business Studies found that emotional intelligence directly reduces interpersonal, task, and process conflicts in virtual teams. People with higher EI communicate with appropriate emotional tone during disagreements, preventing escalation.

In a remote environment, soft skills aren't soft. They're structural. They're what holds the team together when there's no office to walk into.

Satya Nadella understood this when he took over Microsoft. He transformed one of the most competitive, siloed cultures in tech by centering the entire organization around empathy. He views empathy as a key source of business innovation — because the ability to grasp unmet, unarticulated needs is what drives breakthroughs.

If empathy can transform Microsoft, it can transform a 67-person vehicle acquisition company.

What the Best Leaders Know

The leaders I admire most all say the same thing, in different words:

Simon Sinek puts it simply: when people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. That distinction is everything. We don't want people who show up for a paycheck. We want people who show up because they care about the mission.

Brené Brown takes it further: you can build an innovative, creative work culture only if your team feels comfortable failing and taking risks. That requires vulnerability. And vulnerability requires trust. Trust is built through emotional intelligence.

Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, said the only way to hold onto employees — especially the next generation of talent — is by hooking them emotionally to the company. She was right. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs report confirms that 39% of core skills will change by 2030, and the skills that endure are human-centric: collaboration, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence.

What This Looks Like at VAN

At VAN, the EIL program isn't a perk. It's infrastructure.

Our team members are in the field every day — coaching dealers, training managed buyers, having difficult conversations about performance and expectations. The ability to listen deeply, manage conflict with empathy, and build trust across a screen is not optional. It's the job.

When an Acquisition Coach helps a dealer navigate a staffing challenge in their buy center, that's emotional intelligence. When a Managed Buyer builds rapport with a private seller in 90 seconds over text, that's emotional intelligence. When our COO David Long — a 42-year automotive veteran — coaches a team to exceed 40 acquisitions per buyer per month, he's not just teaching process. He's teaching discipline, consistency, and the soft skills that turn a good buyer into a great one.

Why It Matters for Our Dealers

We invest in our people because it directly impacts yours.

A team trained in emotional intelligence doesn't just answer tickets faster — they listen better, coach more effectively, and build the kind of partnerships that produce results like Lakeway's: 40 acquisitions per month to 112, with just two buyers.

The dealers who work with VAN aren't getting a software platform. They're getting a team that has been deliberately developed to understand people — sellers, buyers, dealer principals, and everyone in between.

We're Building Something Different

75% of job seekers research a company's brand before applying. Over 50% say culture matters more than salary. And candidates are three times more likely to trust what an employee says than what a company puts in a job posting.

So here's what we'll say: VAN is a place where growth is the expectation — for our dealers and for our people. We invest in emotional intelligence because it makes us better at what we do. We work remotely because it gives us access to the best talent in the country. And we show up every day because we believe that consumer vehicle acquisition is the future of how dealerships source inventory.

If that resonates, we're hiring. And if you're a dealer looking for a partner that invests as much in their people as they do in their platform — book a call. Let's talk.

VAN is a proud participant in the Junto Institute's Emotionally Intelligent Leadership program, founded by Raman Chadha.

Sources: Daniel Goleman, "What Makes a Leader?" (Harvard Business Review); World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025; Journal of International Business Studies, 2022; Glassdoor Employer Branding Statistics.