Eba doesn't do drama. No shakara, no attitude. Whatever soup shows up, egusi, okro, ogbono, vegetable, eba shows up too, always reliable and consistent. That, right there, is the whole job, whether you're managing a team full of very different "soups" or trying to keep the trust of colleagues, clients, partners and the talent we represent.

Emotional intelligence, more than IQ, often separates the good employee from the great one. The research backs this up: around 90% of top performers score high on emotional intelligence, and EQ accounts for well over half of performance across job types. Skills get you into the room. How you make people feel decides whether you get invited back. Nothing illustrates it better than a humble ball of swallow.

The Emotional Bank Account

Think of every working relationship as an emotional bank account, an idea Stephen Covey made famous and one I watch play out in client work every single week. Deposits: empathy, recognition, kindness, reliability, showing up. Withdrawals: missed deadlines, excuses, absences, unmet expectations. Make too many withdrawals without deposits and the account goes bankrupt, and the trust with it.

In client success, that bankruptcy has a number attached. Winning a new client costs anywhere from five to twenty-five times more than keeping an existing one, and Bain's research found that improving retention by just 5% can lift profitability by 25% to 95%. The average professional services firm keeps about 84% of its clients year on year; the best agencies keep over 95%. The gap between those two numbers usually comes down to trust, deposited consistently over time.

Eba never overdrafts

Eba is flexible without losing itself. Hot or cold, campaign launch or client crisis, it delivers the same reliable result. That's the standard I want to set: not flashy, just dependable.

And dependable is having a moment. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found Nigeria defiantly optimistic while trust collapses globally. Nearly 70% of consumers say they value brands rooted in their own country, and more than half feel connected to people who use the same brands they do. Trust has become the growth strategy. It is also why the industry is moving from paying for reach to paying for results, a shift we wrote about when we welcomed Susan Pwajok to the Eggcorn roster. Results are trust, made measurable.

So what does a deposit look like on an ordinary Tuesday in Lekki? Smaller than you think:

• Reply when you said you would, even if the answer is "not yet."

• Flag a problem early, before the client finds it themselves.

• Recognise quietly excellent work, out loud, in the room.

• Show up the same way on a bad day as on a good one.

• Deliver the boring things brilliantly. Reliability compounds.

So who are you investing in?

When should the deposit happen? And what about the people who seem to have everything, do they still need your empathy? Is it only the ones already struggling, or the quiet ones who seem to have it all together?

Yes. Especially them. The colleagues who never miss and the clients who never complain are often the accounts running quietly toward zero, because everyone assumes someone else is making the deposits.

Good work relationships need trust, respect, self-awareness, inclusion, and open communication. No favouritism, just consistency, soup after soup.

So here's the challenge I'm setting for myself, and for you: be flexible, be reliable, be teachable, and be approachable.

In all your doings, be like eba.

Key Takeaways

• Emotional intelligence beats raw talent over time: around 90% of top performers score high on EQ.

• Every relationship is an emotional bank account. Deposits are small and daily; withdrawals are expensive.

• Trust is a retention strategy: keeping a client costs far less than winning one, and a 5% retention lift can raise profit by 25% to 95%.

• Nigerians reward consistency: nearly 70% of consumers value brands rooted at home.

• Invest in the quiet ones too. The accounts that never complain are often the ones running low.

• Be flexible, reliable, teachable, approachable. Be like eba.