The Guest – Craig Hughes, CTO at Nas Neuron Health Services
Craig Hughes is a software executive with over 20 years of experience in leading large scale digital transformations, mainly in the banking sector. He is now the CTO at Nas Neuron Health Services, UAE’s largest group of health insurance third-party administrators.
In this episode, Craig dives deep into the critical role of emotional intelligence in tech leadership, drawing on lessons from his global career and personal experiences, including pivotal moments of insight. From defining what emotional intelligence looks like in engineering teams to the pitfalls of promoting purely on technical merit, this conversation explores how empathy, self-awareness, and interpersonal skills shape effective leadership, team cohesion, and organisational health in today’s tech landscape.
Some highlights of this episode include:
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Tech Leadership
- How to Identify Future Leaders
- Technology, Isolation, and the Decline of EQ
- Building EQ Without Frameworks
- The Future of Software and the Loss of Fundamentals
Q: When did you actually really see the importance of emotional intelligence? Was it something you nurtured over time?”
“I think it’s something I developed. I was a very logical person. The defining moment came when I was working for a manager who lacked EQ — he would scream and blame. I told my wife I wanted to resign. She said, ‘You’re going to work tomorrow and learn from him.’ That’s when I realized how essential it is to understand people.”
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