Cover Executive coach Michael X Campion, who advises top CEOs across Asia on emotional intelligence and authentic leadership. (Photo: Instagram/@michaelxcampion)
Executive coach Michael X Campion, who advises top CEOs across Asia on emotional intelligence and authentic leadership. (Photo: Instagram/@michaelxcampion)
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Ex-footballer turned executive coach Michael X Campion has been in the ears of Asia’s top CEOs. He says the future doesn’t belong to whoever masters AI first but whoever stays the most human
Everyone is racing to fine-tune their prompts. Michael X Campion is more interested in fine-tuning you.
The former professional footballer now spends his days coaching some of Asia's most powerful executives at companies like Decathlon, Standard Chartered and Microsoft, through boardroom nerves, townhall speeches and the occasional identity crisis. He has a theory that cuts against the grain of every “AI will replace you” headline doing the rounds.
“Call me old-fashioned,” he says, “but there are large parts of my life where I don’t want artificial intelligence. I want the emotional intelligence and sense of connection that only another person can provide. I want to look someone in the eye. I want to share a meal. I want to sit across from another human being and laugh until my stomach hurts.”
As artificial intelligence gets terrifyingly good at answering questions, he argues, the real advantage shifts to something much older and much harder to automate: emotional intelligence, or EQ. “We can’t put the AI genie back in the bottle,” Campion says, “but given that I rely on soft skills to make a living, here are two principles that bring me comfort. One: what’s rare becomes valuable; and two: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
“Don’t we all crave connection; now more than ever? My bet is that if you can be someone who provides it, you will still thrive in this new world. When everyone has access to the same artificial intelligence, emotional intelligence becomes the great separator.”
Here, Campion shares seven ways to sharpen your EQ while everyone else is busy upgrading their AI.
1. Use self-awareness as a competitive edge
One of the great privileges of my work as an executive coach is the access I get to highly accomplished leaders all over Asia. There is a pattern that keeps showing up repeatedly in these executives, which is that they all have the self-awareness to realise that they have blind spots and levels to unlock; the humility to accept outside help when it’s offered to them; and the ability to take direct feedback without getting upset.
None of those things is easy, but they are learnable traits in the wider growth mindset that is prevalent among the most influential and objectively successful—people who also tend to have an insatiable desire to sharpen their competitive edge.
One of the CEOs I work with said to me: “You don’t have to be sick to want to get better”. In his case, he’s already a phenomenal operator, author and communicator, but he wants to go from an 8/10 to a 10/10 with his public speaking. He’s identified an area that needs development and he’s humble enough to take my feedback.
But it’s important for everyone, not just CEOs and founders, to look inward. Self-awareness is a pre-requisite for self-development. Ask yourself what you actually want from life, rather than what you think you should want based on external influences. Most people never take that time to listen to their own voice.
That ability and willingness gives you the edge over not only AI, but others who have yet to learn to listen.
2. Tell your origin story—people buy your “why”
There’s an old line often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Each of us has a unique origin story: how you got here, what shaped you and what made you the way you are. We are impossible-to-copy combinations of personality, geography, history and serendipity. And yet most people neglect to articulate why they care about what they care about, and what makes them different.
Often, this reluctance to tell one’s story is simply fear in better clothes—dressed up as humility or modesty. The enemy here is the fear of being judged; of rejection; of failing in public by betting on yourself.
Whether it’s a person or a brand, we give ourselves the greatest chance of success when we can occupy a unique position in the marketplace and have a clear voice. The easiest way to test this is to write something and ask yourself: “Could somebody else have written this?”
If the answer is yes, keep tweaking until you find the angle that is uniquely yours.
If you can lean into your origin story and learn how to narrate it effectively, it acts as a great filter for attracting exactly the kind of people you would want to work with.
3. View vulnerability as strength
If you trace the word “vulnerability” back to its Latin roots, you come to the word vulnare, meaning “to wound”. To be vulnerable, then, is to open yourself up to the possibility of being hurt, which is scary for anyone. But the leaders who are willing to take a risk and show their humanity—the ones who show us they’re not corporate drones and who wear their heart on their sleeve—are the ones we truly want to follow.
If there is one thing I see over and over again when speechwriting with CEOs, is that 99 times out of 100, their first draft is way too safe. I tell them their speech has no emotional centre. They nod. We then work on walking that fine line between being memorable and over-sharing.
It’s also important to remember that, the more senior and recognised you become, the more impactful vulnerability can be. When an industry veteran reveals a chink in their armour or makes a joke at their own expense, we find it humanising and endearing. But when a fresh graduate tries to use self-deprecation or admits to a character flaw, it lands very differently. Be self-aware enough to know where you stand with your audience.
I was painfully shy, but telling other people this is what I feel gives me the authority to teach them to communicate with confidence. It’s a story that creates connection with the introverted, the fearful and the anxious—and people want relatability. To truly connect with someone, that person must see something in their own story reflected in you.
In a world increasingly populated by bots and artificial intelligence, being unmistakably and unapologetically human is one of the greatest strengths you have.
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4. See your presence as a superpower
It’s such a gift these days to be completely present for someone. If I’m honest, I’m often better at doing this for my clients than I am for my own wife and kids; I’m a work in progress like everybody else. But one thing I’ve noticed in the most charismatic leaders is their ability to make you feel like nobody else exists when they are speaking to you.
That is an increasingly rare quality; it’s so tempting to check your phone instead of looking someone in the eye; it’s so easy to check past someone’s shoulder at a networking event for somebody more important to talk to.
Don’t do it.
Think about how many opportunities for connection you miss when your head is buried in your phone or when trying to find someone “better”: at home, at a bar, walking through Central during your lunch hour.
Look up. Look around. Give serendipity a fighting chance. Your life, and your relationships, will be richer for it.
5. Learn to sell
“Sales” is not a dirty word. Neither is “persuasion”, which is really just the skill of making people care about what you do. If you believe you have a great idea, product or service that can make the world a better place, then you owe it to yourself to become a more persuasive communicator.
There is no shame in being good at sales: a boring truth will not be looked at, but a thrilling fib will. So, if your heart is in the right place, you should learn how to tell a good story, even if it stretches the truth a little bit.
Selling is a skill that anyone can (and should) work on.
Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur, or working in a traditional sales role, you are selling something all the time. As an employee, you are selling your boss every day on the idea that the company is better off having you around, than not having you.
And if you are officially filling some sort of “selling” role, your skills of persuasion are your most powerful tools. AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting you into the boardroom. It can access enormous amounts of information and synthesise it into a polished deck in minutes—but it can’t persuade someone to invest in you, trust you, write the cheque. It can’t persuade them to trust you. That final mile is where the best communicators—the best salespeople—succeed.
6. Self-regulate so that you can help others regulate
The world’s richest companies are throwing huge amounts of cash at some of the world’s smartest people, whose sole job is to keep you scrolling, to keep you on the app for just a little bit longer. We all need to learn the art of responding rather than reacting; this requires us to develop our emotional control and self-regulation.
The newsfeed can be depressing, shocking and almost designed to make you feel as though everything is out of your control; but if anyone or anything you see can sap your mood at any moment, or if your entire day can be thrown off by a single news article or comment on social media, you will forever be at the mercy of other people.
Do not let your own happiness and motivation become so cheap.
I often reflect on why someone hires me as an executive coach. What I’ve discovered is that sometimes, what a person is really buying is proximity and access to my nervous system, so they can better regulate theirs. People are drawn to and gain comfort from proximity to confidence, calmness, conviction and joy for life. Those qualities can be infectious in the best possible sense.
I think that sense of agency and optimism rubs off on people; the beautiful thing is that this capacity isn't reserved for coaches, it’s a choice we can all make and a gift we can decide to give.
But it starts with protecting our own attention, in an economy that’s designed to steal it away.
7. Master the art of the beautiful question
As I get older, I find myself increasingly fascinated by the quality of someone’s questions, rather than their speed at answering them. A person’s character and intellect is often revealed by the depth of their questions. The right question, at the right time, seems to unlock opportunities and possibilities that just didn’t appear to exist seconds earlier.
A beautiful question is like a master key that opens many doors.
So while everyone is working on their AI prompts (which is also a useful skill), I’d encourage you to build your own collection of beautiful questions. The art of conversation is often carried by the quality of your questioning and your listening—but people tend to obsess over the answers part.
Life hack: Worry less about appearing interesting. Focus more on being interested.
Like begets like; beautiful questions beget beautiful answers. Here are some questions I always enjoy hearing the answers to:
“If you couldn’t tell anybody about something—a job, a project, striving for promotion—would you still do it?”
“What is one question you’re too afraid to ask because of what you might hear?”
“What commitments have you made that you no longer believe in?”
AI is getting extraordinarily good at answering questions. Perhaps humans’ most competitive advantage is knowing which questions are worth asking in the first place. While technology may have access to more information than any human in history, it still doesn’t have your curiosity, your courage, your lived experience or your ability to look another person in the eye and say: “Tell me more.”
That, for now, remains wonderfully human.
As Content Director at Tatler Hong Kong, Tara shapes the brand's editorial vision across social, digital and print. She also drives the planning and execution of Tatler's flagship IPs. In her dual role as Head of VIP, she reports on Asia's most influential figures — from CEOs and leaders across business, style and the arts — curates star-studded events, and builds the relationships and communities that define the brand. Born and raised in the Middle East, she honed her craft in Dubai, crafting communication strategies for luxury brands across the Gulf. Follow her on Instagram @tarasobti.
