Eh, most managers are like you. And you know what? That's why I can pretty consistently hire very capable people at dramatically below market rates.
The way I see it, if you are the more emotionally capable team member, well, sometimes it makes sense to put a little bit of that emotional capability into helping your more mentally capable team members deal with the team and be productive.
I'm not saying I'm more emotionally capable than average; By those tests, I'm probably not. But I do seem to be pretty good at interacting with people that are generally thought to have low emotional intelligence, and that's probably what you want for a manager of Engineers.
See, the fact that I'm pretty good when dealing with "low-eq" types but generally much less good when dealing with "high-eq" types (and further, that I tend to make friends with foreigners faster than other Americans in work situations) indicates to me that emotional intelligence is a relative sort of thing. A person who is good at dealing with one type of person or one culture may be less good at dealing with another.
I find that a lot of people persons understand about 75-90% of people great, and do terrible at trying to interact with the remainder, because their various norms are so far apart and the person just can't picture the other's perspective in that situation.
Also, I'm completely with your other point: if your job at the company is to help manage emotions, why isn't it reasonable to expect that you impart some of that knowledge and experience on coworkers?
If I'm hired to do math/software, the expectation is generally not only that I develop new math/software ideas/code, but that I also explain these ideas to coworkers, and give my less technical coworkers the benefit of my knowledge and experience, including training them in basic concepts they need for their job.
I think a lot of companies would be well served by having managers/HR/etc run seminars for less people oriented people who want to develop their people skills (similar to the training that is given to people in people position roles, eg sales).
The way I see it, if you are the more emotionally capable team member, well, sometimes it makes sense to put a little bit of that emotional capability into helping your more mentally capable team members deal with the team and be productive.
I'm not saying I'm more emotionally capable than average; By those tests, I'm probably not. But I do seem to be pretty good at interacting with people that are generally thought to have low emotional intelligence, and that's probably what you want for a manager of Engineers.
See, the fact that I'm pretty good when dealing with "low-eq" types but generally much less good when dealing with "high-eq" types (and further, that I tend to make friends with foreigners faster than other Americans in work situations) indicates to me that emotional intelligence is a relative sort of thing. A person who is good at dealing with one type of person or one culture may be less good at dealing with another.