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From Membership to Partnership: Developing Emotionally Intelligent Leadership at Doctors Without Borders

How Doctors Without Borders managed to strengthen engagement, trust, and sustainable performance through emotionally intelligent leadership in complex humanitarian environments

Overview

Situation: Doctors Without Borders operates in highly complex and emotionally intense environments, where the quality of leadership is essential to ensure operational effectiveness and sustainability. The humanitarian context is constantly evolving, and it does so very rapidly: for this reason, the intention is to equip managers with as many resources as possible to handle new situations, while caring both for impact on one side and for people on the other. As part of a leadership development journey, the organization chose to support a group of managers in strengthening their people management skills.

Solution: The solution was a development pathway based on Emotional Intelligence, designed to strengthen engagement and foster the shift from a membership mindset to a partnership mindset within teams. The program integrated emotionally intelligent feedback practices, evolving into feedforward, and supported managers in developing conscious leadership oriented toward connection, trust, and meaning, through experiential training, assessment, and coaching.

Results: The pathway had a tangible impact, strengthening a more conscious, intentional, and partnership-oriented approach. Team relationships became more collaborative and trust-based, while feedforward and attention to Emotional Intelligence transformed daily interactions into levers for development, motivation, and sustainable performance, also supported by identifying talents through the Brain Talent Profile.

“Working in a humanitarian organization, we realized that the quality of our impact does not depend only on what we do, but above all on how we do it. We operate in complex, intercultural, often emotionally demanding contexts, where operational pressure is high and relationships — among colleagues, with local partners, and with patients — are central.”

– Maria Luisa Garofalo, Culture and People Development Coordinator

Situation

Doctors Without Borders is an international humanitarian organization operating in contexts of high emotional and organizational intensity, where decisions must be rapid, responsible, and impact-oriented toward people and communities. In this scenario, leadership plays a central role in sustaining the quality of action, team well-being, and alignment with the organization’s core values. Within a continuous training pathway, MSF found itself supporting a group of professionals who, although already experienced within the organization, had recently taken on managerial roles.

The transition to managerial responsibility brought new challenges: leading diverse teams, sustaining motivation and performance, managing complex feedback conversations, and making decisions in contexts characterized by pressure and emotional load. In many cases, technical and professional competence needed to be integrated with greater awareness of the relational and emotional dynamics involved in managing people.

Solution

The starting point was the concept of partnership within the team, understood as an evolution of the relationship between leaders and team members: no longer based exclusively on role, but on shared responsibility and mutual trust. The common thread of the intervention was connection, understood as the ability to create authentic and functional relationships grounded in listening, non-judgment, and attention to the emotional dimension. The pathway explored the link between leadership, engagement, and results, highlighting the leader’s role as the primary facilitator of connection.

Feedback practice represented another distinctive element of the pathway. Feedback was revisited and practiced from an emotionally intelligent perspective, evolving toward feedforward as a tool to support development, strengthen trust, and guide future action, reducing judgment and increasing the quality of dialogue. Through the Brain Talent Profile, participants were also able to identify their most developed talents and understand their impact on their leadership style. This work supported a pathway that integrated the three key dimensions of the Six Seconds Model.

“We already had strong technical skills and solid project management practices, but we felt a growing need to strengthen our capacity for listening, emotion management, empathy, and effective communication. In particular, we wanted to address some key needs: preventing burnout, fostering smoother collaboration in diverse teams, supporting more conscious and inclusive leadership, and creating a space where people could feel seen and recognized not only as professionals, but as individuals.”

– Antonella Volino, Culture and People Development Officer

The Contribution of the Preferred Partner: Manimal – Horse & Coaching

The Manimal method is an experiential approach used in coaching and training pathways for the development of Emotional Intelligence and relational skills, through guided interaction with a horse or dog. The direct experience becomes a learning lever to stimulate awareness, reflection, and concrete action, supporting the maximization of individual and team potential. Within the pathway, Manimal supported participants in recognizing and managing emotions, patterns, and biases that influence the quality of relationships, facilitating the building of authentic and effective connections. The approach encouraged the development of new perspectives that strengthened personal effectiveness, sense of belonging, and conscious leadership.

“We observed more cohesive teams, leaders more capable of reading the group’s needs, and colleagues more attentive to one another’s well-being. Even in complex situations, there is a greater ability to pause, listen, and choose how to respond, rather than reacting automatically. This has had positive effects both on the internal climate and on interaction across different areas.”

Antonella Volino
Culture and People Development Officer

Results

From the earliest stages, the pathway enabled managers to observe and reflect on their leadership style, integrating Emotional Intelligence as a concrete lever to manage people, guide performance, and create a climate of trust and collaboration. Participants progressively developed greater intentionality in their managerial choices: from managing difficult conversations to modulating their emotions, to defining decisions that were more conscious and aligned with team objectives. The integration of personal talents through the Brain Talent Profile consolidated a strategic and sustainable approach over time.

TRUST AND COLLABORATION WITHIN THE TEAM

100% of Managers perceive a clear contribution to creating trust, connection, and collaboration.

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GREATER INTENTIONAL DECISION-MAKING

84% also report making choices, managing difficult conversations, and modulating emotions more intentionally.

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EMOTIONALLY EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

82% of respondents perceive a concrete or significant improvement in managing people and performance.

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“This pathway is perfectly aligned with our human-centered vision: we place people at the center, not only processes. The human-centered design approach, which we apply to our way of working both at headquarters and in projects, must necessarily be reflected in how we take care of our people. Over the past year we have focused strongly on Emotional Intelligence and the role of feedback, and we are noticing the impact it has both on effectiveness and on employee well-being.”

Maria Luisa Garofalo
Culture and People Development Coordinator

Products & Services Delivered

Six Seconds’ Emotional Intelligence Assessment™

SEI – Six Seconds’ Emotional Intelligence Assessment is a validated psychometric tool for measuring emotional intelligence, used by over 500,000 people worldwide. It provides in-depth feedback on specific EQ competencies and results and is ideal for 1:1 coaching or advanced training.

EQ Skills

The Six Seconds Model aims to develop Emotional Intelligence competencies across three areas: becoming more aware (noticing what you do), more intentional (doing what you believe), and more purposeful (acting with a purpose).

Coaching

Coaching – Six Seconds’ coaching methodology blends neuroscience and emotional intelligence with the International Coach Federation competencies.

Brain Talent Profile™

Snapshots of your brain’s styles and talents to effectively leverage emotional and cognitive data. A powerful, 1-page report that gives feedback on people’s brain talents. Ideal for training, onboarding & talent strategy.

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