The final paper studies the concept of emotional intelligence and its impact on business and academic performance. Emotional intelligence is a set of competencies related to understanding, regulating and expressing one's own and others' emotions and their application in everyday life. The introduction briefly explains the origin and course of the development of the idea of emotional intelligence. An insight into three models of emotional intelligence is given: the Mayer and Salovey model, the Bar-On model, and the Goleman model. Through the final paper, the concept of Goleman's model of emotional competencies is used, which contains five competencies divided into two groups. The group of emotional competencies refers to selfawareness, self-control, and motivation. The group of social competencies contains empathy and social skills. Based on them, the profile of the ideal manager is described. In short, important qualities of a manager are self-confidence, motivation, reliability, communicativeness and creativity. Furthermore, studies are presented that explain the effect of emotional intelligence on business life. The results of the studies show that the emotional intelligence of managers increases their own productivity, efficiency and morale of employees and reduces stress in the workplace. Research on academic performance and social engagement was also presented. The research part of the paper studied the emotional intelligence and social engagement of students at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek. Using the survey method, the data needed for the research was collected. The research sought to determine whether emotional intelligence has a positive relationship with academic success and student engagement.