Are Relationships the Most Important "Skill" for Success

As my seniors wind up their high school careers and my juniors prepare for AP exams, college applications, and school leadership, my English classroom often becomes a place more overly centered on character education than it is earlier in the year.  Specifically, I am engaging them in reading, writing, and thinking, but the subject is as much themselves as it is the text.  For example, while my seniors work their way through Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, we discuss their "emotional intelligence" and encourage them to cultivate empathy as much as literacy.  It seems there is much support for this approach, as revealed by Emily Smith for The Atlantic this month with her article "Relationships are More Important than Ambition."  What do you think?  Are they?