You’ve likely heard of emotional intelligence (EQ). For years, it’s been positioned as the essential leadership skill: the ability to understand and manage your own emotions while empathizing with others.
EQ is valuable. In fact, it’s a massive part of the Crisis Ready® Formula for Responding to Escalating Emotions.
But if you’re looking to be a transformational, visionary leader, EQ alone is not enough.
Transformational leadership isn’t only about what you understand. It’s about what you transmit.
And that’s where emotional frequency (EF) comes in — the next evolution of transformational leadership.
What Is Emotional Frequency?
Let’s start simple.
Every thought you have creates an electrical signal in your brain. That signal is measurable. It oscillates in rhythms we call brain waves, captured by EEG machines:
- Beta (13–30 Hz): alert, often stress-driven
- Alpha (8–12 Hz): calm, focused
- Theta (4–7 Hz): meditative, intuitive
- Delta (0.5–3 Hz): deep rest
Your thoughts don’t stay in your head. They ripple through your body, releasing chemical signals, what neuroscientist Candace Pert called the molecules of emotion. These chemicals move through your system, shifting how you feel and how you show up.
So…
→ Your thoughts create your emotions.
→ Your emotions carry a frequency.
→ And your leadership radiates that frequency into every room you enter and every vision you want to bring to life.
This is emotional frequency.
There is no such thing as “positive” or “negative” emotions
I disagree with people referring to emotions as being “positive” or “negative.”
What someone chooses to do with their emotions can be positive or negative, absolutely. But emotions themselves simply are. And what they are is energy in motion.
Now, as energy is frequency and information, emotions range from low-frequency to high-frequency energy. So, rather than being “positive or negative”, emotions range from low-frequency to high-frequency.
Low-frequency emotions are fear-based emotions.
High-frequency emotions are love-based emotions.
Let me explain.
Low Frequency vs High Frequency Emotions
Low frequency emotions (or “fear-based” emotions):
- Examples: shame, anger, scarcity, grief, jealousy, fear, worry, overwhelm, anxiety
- Dysregulate your nervous system
- Contract your energy field
- Cloud your judgment and impair your brain’s prefrontal cortex function
- Keep you locked in probability — repeating old patterns, choosing what feels “safe”
High frequency emotions (or “love-based” emotions):
- Examples: gratitude, compassion, joy, excitement, love, elatedness, abundance
- Create heart-brain coherence
- Expand your energy field
- Support clarity, creativity, and resilience
- Move you into possibility — where visionary leadership lives
Psst, learning to shift your EF is how you step into your highest potential as a transformational leader. If you’re interested in learning more about this, join us for our upcoming 3-day challenge called, “From Resistance to Resonance.”
The Science of Coherence
While I’ve explained this before, let me run through the high-level science here, in case you’re new to the concept of heart-brain coherence.
Your heart produces an electromagnetic field that is measurable by ECG. This field extends several feet outside your body, which is why people can feel you before you say a word.
- In fear, this field looks chaotic. Your heart rate, brain waves, emotions, and nervous system are all out of sync.
- In gratitude or love, this field becomes smooth and coherent. Your nervous system regulates. Your presence becomes a grounded and stabilizing force, calming the room and helping other people’s nervous systems to co-regulate.
Research from the HeartMath Institute and Dr. Joe Dispenza confirms what many leaders intuitively sense: in coherence, you become more creative, resilient, and trustworthy.
Imagine walking into a high-stakes moment — not with a nervous system in chaos, but with the steady coherence people can feel and instantly feel drawn to because it makes them feel safe on an unconscious level. This is what you learn and embody inside our Visionary Leadership Certification Program. Learn more here.
Why Emotional Frequency Outpaces Emotional Intelligence
EQ teaches you to understand and manage emotionality.
EF teaches you to embody and transmit the frequency that creates instant safety and allows you to lead meaningful change.
EQ is about awareness and compassion.
EF is about resonance and transformation.
Don’t get me wrong. In order to be skilled in EF, you have to have a high level of EQ.
A leader high in EF doesn’t just empathize with others. They regulate themselves so powerfully that they help regulate others, simply through presence.
When your EF is fear-based, even the best strategy or speech won’t land.
When your EF is love-based, your vision becomes magnetic. People trust you. They want to follow you.
You Are Not Your Thoughts Nor Your Emotions
Here is some liberating truth:
You are not your thoughts.
You are not your emotions.
You are the awareness that gets to witness them.
You are the vessel through which they move.
You are the signal they get to transmit.
Recognizing this gives you agency. It’s empowering. Instead of spiraling into fear-based frequency, you can choose to pause and shift your mood, your state, your energy, and your potency. That choice is the hallmark of a transformational leader.
The Next Evolution of Your Leadership
Leadership isn’t just what you know or what you say.
It’s what you transmit.
And science shows us how people feel your energetic state before they ever hear the words you speak.
This is why emotional frequency (EF) is the next evolution of leadership. Because when you learn to raise your frequency — even in resistance, even in stress — you unlock your greatest potency and become a visionary leader.
Are you ready to embody this skill?
Next week, I’m guiding a 3-day intensive where we’ll go deep into this practice.
It’s call, “From Resistance to Resonance,” and together, we’ll explore:
- How to recognize and shift your own resistance into resonance
- How to meet others in their resistance without losing presence
- How to embody the frequency that makes your leadership truly transformational
📆 Join me on September 16, 17, and 18 at 7pm ET
🎥 Live on Zoom | Replays provided
💲 $47 enrollment
Seats are now open → Click here to enroll!
I can’t wait to see you there!
Founder and CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute, Melissa Agnes is the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, and a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is a coveted keynote speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today’s leading organizations faced with the greatest risks. Learn more about Melissa and her work here.