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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast brings together amazing leaders, entrepreneurs, and experts to share the successes, challenges, and secrets to living and leading as a VIBRANT Leader.
Tune-in each week as Nicole Greer interviews a new Vibrant Leader.
Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com
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I am going to talk about emotional intelligence today and I'm curious, would you go to the chat and would you go to the chat and would you share with me on a scale of like one to five, one being I don't really understand emotional intelligence and five being I am a pro at emotional intelligence.
Would you go into the chat for me and let me know where you're at? Okay, so lots of fours. So here's what I want to do. I want to invite you guys to come off mute at any time and ask me a question or add to the conversation because I think it's much richer when there's more than just one voice speaking.
So if you all want to help me in this conversation versus me, like giving you a lecture. , I would absolutely adore that opportunity. Now, I'm curious, why is emotional intelligence so important? How did you guys get to a four? And why, , did you study it?
Would somebody come off mute and share with me kind of your experience? Where did you first hear about it? And, and why is it important for HR, , professionals to know this information? Who would share?
Well, I'll go ahead and start it off, , Nicole.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, you know, working in the HR space, one of the first things that I realized was that you had to be able to control how you respond to people because sometimes you get people that approach you who are in an uproar and they just have so many things going on.
And a lot of times it may not be personal. It just may be the circumstances that caused them to react that way. But as a professional, you have to be able to control how you respond because the words that come out of your mouth can have a significant impact. And I selected that I was a four. Because even though I am knowledgeable of emotional intelligence, there's still a few people out there that can push my triggers.
So, yeah, until I can, you know, some people, they just know, they really know how to emotionally hijack you. So, , until I can control that point, I'll just stay at a four.
All right, that's awesome. Okay, so I'm pretty sure that everybody in this call can resonate with what Kenneth is saying and he is absolutely correct.
, this thing of emotional intelligence is so important because people are going to present themselves. Sometimes they present their best selves, just like that person that I onboarded today. Don't you know, they showed up for day one with their best self at work, you know, like it was a conscious decision.
, but you know, we don't know what will happen down the road because we're all human. And we've got this thing called emotions and emotional intelligence is absolutely imperative. Kenneth nailed it. You know, it's important to our career, our development and our success. And we have to know how to control our emotions.
And, you know, the statistics say that people who can control their emotions. and have that emotional intelligence. They are the all stars. They are the ones that get, you know, employee of the month. They are the ones that, you know, get their star on the walk of fame because they are easy to get along with.
They are conscious of their choices and decisions. And they are able to get along with a vast group of people. And so they understand that diversity is important and that we all have to get along. Now, the other thing that's really important to understand about emotional intelligence is the statistics also say the research says that you will earn on average, about 28, 000 more.
Don't, don't miss that. Write that down. 28, 000 more than the average employee if you have emotional intelligence. And you might think to yourself, really? I rated myself a four and I don't, I don't, not sure I'm getting that extra 28, 000. And here's where I think that 28, 000, , is, is showing up. It's in your leadership roles.
So, you know, the people that typically get promoted are the people that typically get along with others are great at teamwork and know how to build bridges, create relationships, do the rapport building piece. And they are the people that make the more money. Now, I want to show you this statistic. It comes out of a 2020 and this was from the world economic forum. And the world economic forum, you know, sat down and they said, you know, let's do a survey and try to figure out what are the top 10 skills that people need to have moving forward. Now this was actually, , done during COVID, which is really interesting, right? So I want you to think about, you know, the skills needed in today's workplace, and if you look at this list, , it's, it's pretty right on, you know, if we want to navigate through COVID in a really positive way, we're going to have to be excellent at complex problem solving because, hello, it's a pandemic.
How many of you have had a pandemic in your life before? Say, nope, this is my first and hopefully my last, right? And then we have critical thinking, so we have to be able to do some critical thinking and get seriously creative. We also need to understand how to do people management, and that people management piece can be very challenging. , I just, like I said, I onboarded that person this morning. , that particular company I was working with this morning, they're all live and in person and they've been back live and in person since June. Now I know other organizations still have people at home. And then I have heard that there are people that can't get people who want to to come back to the workplace. So managing our people is huge and getting them together and, , feeling emotionally connected is even more challenging than ever. And then obviously coordinating with others. But look, number six on the list is emotional intelligence, but here's Nicole Greer's take on things.
And I'm wondering if you would agree. If you agree, you could go down to the reactions, which is in your bar across the bottom on zoom. If you agree, you could give me a thumbs up. If you think I'm wrong, you could give me a thumbs down. But I think actually all other nine in the top 10 are part of emotional intelligence.
Judgment, decision making, having a service orientation, negotiation, cognitive flexibility. Hello, all of those are related to emotional intelligence. So really the top 10 skills, thank you Ramon, thank you Fenetta, thank you Alicia, I see you, thank you Kenneth, , all of these people, or all of these, , , skills are actually imperative for emotional intelligence.
So just think about how important it is. Now here, here's the truth about, , you know, your emotional intelligence is that the way you feel about things is all mixed up and on the inside of your head with a lot of things that are going on. And when you have emotional intelligence, you do these things, you handle pressure in a really healthy way.
So you're like, you know, not a stress monster. You know, you know how you've got that one person you work with and they're like, Oh, I'm so stressed out. I'm so overwhelmed. Big sign that this person needs some, some coaching or help around their emotional intelligence. Somebody who has emotional intelligence cooperates, listens, is open to feedback.
They're empathetic. They can set an example for other people to follow when the going gets tough, and when the tough gets going right. They're also an example to follow because they're celebrating, they're congratulating the people around them, and they're also more thoughtful and thorough in their decisions.
They're actually thinking things through. So let's think about the brain, you'll see in the background here I have a little brain. But, before we talk about how everything works, I'm going to tell you about Phineas Gage. So I am curious if anybody here has ever heard of Phineas Gage. Phineas Gage was the first like, you know, time that scientists sat down and they thought about what, how does the brain work and, and how, how does emotional intelligence play a part?
, And they, they did this research on Phineas Gage. It was actually done, , at Harvard Medical School. So this gentleman, Phineas Gage, was a railroad worker and, , he was using a 43 inch tamping iron. So everybody get your head wrapped around that. Okay. So a big piece of iron, 43 inches long. And back in the day when we were laying railroad tracks across America from the East to the West, we would have to dig a hole.
We would have to put some dynamite in there or explosives, and then we would have to tamp in that dynamite, and then blow a hole so that we could get the, , tracks laid and get the, , the, the nails, the big giant nails that held the track down. So, Phineas Gage was doing this work. He was a foreman, so that meant he was in charge of others, he was a leader.
And Phineas Gage, on September 13, 1848, , he miscalculated what he was doing. And he had that iron go up through his eye and out of his head. Now, I want you to look at this picture of the skull on here. It's pretty gruesome. Really? It looks like a Halloween thing or something, but this is the truth. And this gentleman had this happen and then he lived
after it happened. Isn't that amazing? In 1848. Now his skull is still at the Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. , And this is what happened to Phineas after, after that happened. He, , was actually a family man, very loving. , he was known as a great guy, got promoted because he had emotional intelligence into a foreman position.
But then after this happened, he lost all of his ability to control his emotions because what happened was, is he removed part of his limbic brain when this tamping iron went up through his eye and out the top of his head. So Phineas, , lost his job, lost his family, and, , And the rest, as they say, is history.
But his particular case started scientists down this pathway of thinking about the physical pathway for emotional intelligence. So you guys have all heard about, you know, left brain and right brain. , and most people like to claim a side of our brain. , and I think that's human nature. Humans want to kind of classify themselves, you know, they're like, I'm this kind of person I'm not That kind of person. But the truth of the matter is, is everybody on this call has both sides of their brain. And because you have both sides of your brain, you can use both sides of your brain and emotional intelligence is doing just that. It is the ability to use the left side of the brain, the right side of the brain and the brain all the way from your amygdala to your prefrontal cortex.
Now, the truth of the matter is, is, you know, as we move through life, you know, we are experiencing things , and usually people have like ideas about what the future holds. Now, this first model at the very top is what I call the lifeline. And the lifeline is really, really important. It's a coaching diagram I use all the time when I'm coaching clients and working with people about what they want to do in the future, because I want people to understand that all along this lifeline, from the day you pop on the planet to the present, you have had things happen to you, experiences, educational moments, educational pathways, and all of those have molded how you react to things.
So, , truth, telling, honesty, and candor. I'm wondering, I'm wondering if anybody on this call ever had, , like an excited parent, a person that flew off the handle, a grandmother who got excited about things. Does anybody have this experience? , you know, if you grew up in this kind of environment, odds are that's how you learned how to deal with your emotions.
Well, you fly off the handle, you throw something across the room, you yell at people or whatever. So, you know, you learn things about how to manage your emotions. Now, some of you on this call might have the opposite upbringing, the opposite educational experience. It's like, you know, we don't cry. Stop crying.
No crying. You know, smile, you know, you're told how to feel about things, right? And so you just keep it all packed in tight. You don't, you don't dare show your emotions because that was kind of how you were brought up. Now, the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, emotions are so valuable. They're so stinking valuable, especially in the workplace.
Because, you know, here's what I know, if people are excited, I mean, even a stressful excited about the work that we're doing, we get way more done. Now, if we're all walking around with all of our emotions packed in tight, and we just have our head down, we're grinding it out, we're probably not operating at optimum production, right?
So, we want to have the right kind of emotional set point. , in the workplace. And so we have to think about, you know, how people were raised, , so that we can kind of help them learn to manage their emotions. Now, one of the biggest complaints I get from leaders is, , is this kind of comment, like, I mean, did their mama raise them right?
You know, what is with my employees? Why are they emotional? And it's like, you know, it's very good. It's very good that your employees are emotional, that they have an opinion, , that they care enough to voice it. And then it's our ability to help them voice their opinion properly through emotional intelligence training and talking about this subject.
And then also like harnessing whatever that energy is that's high and putting it to work because that's really the end game of emotional intelligence. It, it is about like, I got to manage myself for sure. But I think the end game is leaders managing the people in front of them. Right? So that's what we really want to think about because we want to take whatever emotion we have in the present and apply it to the vision.
Now, , I'll give you an example. So how many of you have ever been just really happy and excited and you moved into action? You're like, this is so great. And you're just working like, like, here's a good example. , like, , they say to you, here's your new job. You know, you're going to be over this department.
You go in and you're like, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And I'm going to have a team meeting and I'm going to do all these things. And you've got all this happy energy. Now there might be this other energy where, you know, we just lost the biggest client we have. This is going to be a huge dent in our revenue.
And so now we have, , , an emotion called fear. Now fear is bad, but it can really get everybody motivated to get the sales calls going and to get, you know, the, the costs reduced in the interim before we find that client that refills that one spot, right? So emotions are something that, you know, people are going to have, and we need to recognize them and we need to use them for fuel to move us forward.
So don't miss it. E motion. Motion, moving people forward. Now the other, , model I have on here is the learning curve. Now the learning curve is an essential coaching model. I show this to every group I ever work with, these two models, because I think leaders need to like have them in their mind so they can draw them on a napkin at the cafe.
You can draw them on a piece of paper at a meeting, put it on the whiteboard in the conference room. Because one of the things leaders ask people to do, especially in our technological ever changing world we live in. We are constantly asking people to go through learning curves and learning curves are one of the biggest stressors for people when they have to learn something new.
So I'll give you an example. I am currently working with an organization that is changing their software that over 4, customer service people are using. So I want you to think about that, just for a skinny minute. Okay, so we got all these people that have to learn an entirely new software system. Now here, here's the thing, the, the ladies and gentlemen that are currently using this software system, They can like drink a cup of coffee, talk on the phone and with one hand use the old software.
Are you with me? Like they, they can do it through like automatic movement, the things that they need to do, right? Now we're asking them to have new vocabulary. There's a whole new vocabulary with the system. We're asking them to have all new keystrokes. And we're asking them to click in all different places on the screen that they've been in front of for maybe five, 10, 15 years.
So when you announce this to people, what do you think their emotions are? And then we're surprised that they're like a little resistant and upset and, you know, unhappy about things, right? So it's like, we have to anticipate that people are going to go through emotions, right? And so with a learning curve, you know, usually there's this opportunity for learning.
And look at this first thing that happens to people. They have to go against the grain or gag. Okay. Go against the grain gag before they can start performing at a higher level. So since we are all HR folks, many of us dabble in the training part of it, the learning and development part of this process, we have to understand when we get people in for training, they are going to be down the feeling scale gagging on things.
So our ability to be emotionally intelligent in the training process, the onboarding process, the offboarding for all those places where people have to go through a new thing. , we have to hold that up so we can get them through because once they do, it's amazing. Now here's the truth about humans. This is a picture of a human.
I know it doesn't look like a human, but this is the picture of a human. And, , at the core of a human, there's two things. , and what, you know, I showed you the lifeline where people pop on the planet. Well, here's the truth about that. When people pop on the planet, they have personality and IQ. Okay, so that is, that's in there from the get go.
And the reason I know that is I have two children, same husband, same house, same rules, totally different. How many can I get an amen from anybody who's got two in the house? And you're like, they're polar opposites, right? So it's in there, I promise. And then, , you know, as you nurture them, they start to get beliefs and character traits.
and a way they think about things and a way they react to those things, which is EQ. So here's the good news about EQ. It's not hardwired like personality and IQ. EQ is something we can actually change and teach, okay? Now, a lot of people would tell me that you can't train and teach beliefs or character, but, but you absolutely can.
You know, I could take a, a 40 year old person or a 60 year old person or a 20 year old person, and I could talk to them about what they believe about their work, or what they believe about the value of what we're producing for our clients, or the quality of their character when they deliver customer service.
So, for example, Really everything beyond personality is something that we can teach people, but EQ is the thing we want to talk about. Now, look at this gal. She's got quite a face, doesn't she? And so these are all the different faces you might see during the day. Hopefully you don't have like second row, third from the left, you know, somebody's not sticking their finger down their throat, but you know, at work, but like we see all of these faces.
And, , as I said before, some of us have faces that show every emotion. And some of us have faces that just show no emotion. So I'm one of those faces that shows all my emotion and, and we want to be able to tune in, even if they're not showing us faces like this gal and go, you know what, I think he or she is feeling frustrated, angry.
you know, mad, you know, whatever it might be. So as leaders, we got to really take a look at people, see what's going on. Now there are four buckets to emotional intelligence. The first one is self awareness, , which is really like, what's going on with me? And I sent Kenneth a, , EQ assessment. And I'm going to ask Kenneth, if you would give me a thumbs up, Kenneth, would you shoot that EQ assessment?
Would you put it up in the chat, , if you have the capability? I went in and tried to do it, but I was unable to do it because I didn't have the right drives. I, my drive didn't show up when I tried to put it in, but he'll get it out to you. I know he will, or I'll be glad to send it out if you'll put your, , email in the chat and you'll get an EQ assessment you can take.
And here's what I suggest is that you sit down with your entire team. You know, your HR team, sit down with the leadership team and have everybody take an EQ assessment. And then, instead of just having them take it and letting them self assess, is, you know, you need to have a dialogue about what's found on, on the assessment, right?
Like, where did you score low? Where did you score high? And have a conversation about, you know, those different areas. , EQ assessment. It is a great team building exercise. , and of course I would love to help you with that if you need help, but getting that self awareness is important because once you get it, then you can actually begin to self manage and that's job number one, you know, it's kind of like, , you know, the whole thing about getting on the airplane and putting on your own oxygen mask before you put on the guy next to you is oxygen mask, this is the same thing, right?
So, you know, you can't go talk to your people about emotional intelligence until you have some. That's how that works. Otherwise, they think that, you know, we, you know, we're, we're a hypocrite, right? We don't, we're not doing the right things. So we've got to have this self awareness. Now the last two buckets are social awareness and relationship management.
So now that I'm exercising, , emotional intelligence on my own, , part. Now I have the credibility and the authority to help others with their emotional intelligence, right? So I can be that person that moves in the world in a really healthy way. So you want to think about how well do you know yourself?
, people have this thing called a blind spot. Like, they don't know they have one of those faces that says they're scowling, right? , they don't, they ha they don't know they have one of those faces that, that, that says that they're really happy when you're sad. I mean, you know, people don't know that about control over this face, right?
, the other things they don't know is that they, they do raise their voice. Or that they point when they talk to people. There's all sorts of little things that people don't know. So you've got to really know yourself well, and you've got to have a partner or a team that helps you grow in your emotional intelligence.
, you can look at your strengths and your challenges, and then you want to think about how does your self perception align with how other people see you. So I want you to think about this. I want you to write down this very, very powerful question. And here's the powerful question. It is. What is it like to experience you?
What is it like to experience you? And I will tell you, , that I ask this question all the time in my coaching sessions. That's the first question I ask when I get a new client. I say, you know, what is it like to experience you? And you know what people say? They say, , I don't know. I've never thought about that before.
Now don't miss that. That is the very first thing. We got to have is this self awareness, right? Cause, cause we're, we're a little blind to how many layers we have and what we expose, , you know, we have a tendency to really like who we are and we have a tendency to not like, or judge, dare I say it, everybody else out here, right?
So doing emotional intelligence work, take somebody who's, who's really humble and somebody who's really, you know, has a desire to show up as their best self because we have many, many layers. Now, the truth about what is it like to experience you is that whatever that experience is, it puts ripples out into the atmosphere, right?
Out into the body of work that we're doing. Now, , my guess is everybody on this phone call has had the good boss. and the bad boss. Give me a thumbs up on the reactions on your little pic on your little squares. Is that true? You guys have had a good boss and you've had a bad boss, right? And we all know that the experience of that great boss was fantastic.
And here's the thing, don't miss this, see this up here about the, , comfort zone? , I had a wonderful boss who pushed me. Put stress on me, , but told me I could do it pushed me out of my comfort zone and I made magic happen as a result of her. Her name was Nancy Freeman, and Nancy Freeman pushed me and made me self-aware.
She gave me feedback consistently about how I showed up and what , what I should say and what I should not say. She was so hard on me, and don't miss this. I love her. She made me grow in to a really beautiful person of character. I still got work to do. Hello. But, , you know, in my early years, in my, in my twenties, when I was first in business, she shaped me and she formed me and made me very self aware.
And that's what excellent leaders do. Now, Kenneth kind of said this earlier. He said, you know, I got some people that can push my button. So this probably feels right on for Kenneth right here. And it's true. Some people will push your buttons. But here's what you have to think about is after your button is pushed, why does that bother me?
Why did, why did I let that bother me? They were just words. It was just an action that he did. Nobody hit me, touched me personally, did anything to me. It's just like what it was to experience them, right? Like, don't miss that. So there's this experience of me that I can manage. And then there's that experience of them.
that you can't always manage. You can coach it. You can give feedback on it, which I totally implore you to do. Oh, I like what Kenneth said. He says you gave them control over you. That's exactly right. So we, we don't want that to happen. We want to be able to step back and go, Oh, whenever he does that, it makes me very angry.
So I'm going to choose not to get angry because that's like a little tactic or he has a blind spot, you know, it's like this thing where you can have grace for people because they push your button. So you got to think about, you know, what move do I want to make, right, you know, so, , do I want to be somebody who allows other people to upset me, or do I want to be the person that says let me look at the, let me look at the chessboard and let me figure out what my next move might be.
Okay. , and being able to step back. That is one of the greatest skills a leader can have is to step back and do that. All right. Now I want you to look at my little, , stress model here. , so it, you know, people all the time say I'm so stressed out or everything's so stressful. Well, here's the truth about things.
Stress is healthy. And you actually need it to be optimal, , to operate properly. You know, if, if somebody said, listen, you can have the, the, the entire year off sounds like COVID, but with a job. Anyway, so you could, you could stay home for an entire year. I don't know what happened to you during your year of COVID, but I've been at the house a lot.
And, you know, like I got real comfortable, I got to dress on today, even though I'm on video, I got to dress on today, but I'm gonna tell you, there's been a lot of slippers and yoga pants at the house. Are you with me? And so, so it's really important that we have something to kind of push us to be better, to make us show up as our best self.
And. And really, you know, that is, that is what work is for. It's a four letter word that pushes us forward. And so we want to have this optimal stress, right? Because that's where happiness performance and health hangs out. You know, when I'm laying around the house in my yoga pants, I don't feel that great about myself, but when I go out, I do something.
I perform, I make something happen in the world that benefits others. It's a good day. So, so people need the stress in their life. And what we need to do is we need to provide a climate, so people can seek feedback and feed forward and feedback as we all know, is what people need in order to know what it's like to experience them.
Now, the opposite of that is this concept called feed forward. And feed forward is a concept where we invite people, , to listen to areas of our life that we want to change and give us suggestions about how we want to change. So for example, if you did an emotional intelligence, , program at your organization, , you would teach feedback and feed forward.
As part of your emotional intelligence process, because people have to look in the mirror and then people have to choose something to work on so that they can improve. So you want the feedback as well as this process called feed forward, where each individual on the team identifies what it is they want to change and we hold them accountable for it.
So just imagine if you picked something, right, that you wanted to get better at, at work, and you started getting better at one of these behaviors, right? So, you know, like, let's say from an emotional intelligence, , perspective, you want to be somebody that, , greets people with a smile, walks in in the morning, , with, you know, their to do list, excitement about whatever project is ahead, , demonstrates leadership capacity, , asks lots of questions, is curious, self managed, and people began to see those behaviors over a significant period of time.
What might happen to your business and your environment? or your place of work, right? How might that impact your organizations, your home and your relationships? It would be amazing, right? Just, just imagine if people walked into work up the feeling scale. So let's talk about the feeling scale for a quick skinny second.
So at the top of the feeling scale is this feeling called euphoria, right? This is an amazing, beautiful feeling. And at the bottom of the feeling scale, , and this is not a joke and HR people know is this feeling called suicidal. And And according to the statistics, you know, if you've got, you know, a hundred people, you've got 10 people that are way down here in depression and suicide.
I mean, that's just statistically proven. And so, you know, we have people way down here that are looking for something to give them life. Right. So the conversation with them about mission, vision, how their role, no matter what the role is, is imperative to our outcome and our results, , you know, and setting goals with that person, , will take them up the feeling scale.
When I go into organizations and work with them, I'll ask people, show me your written down goals and they're like. Well, we've got a budget, , or the organization has these goals, but individually, those humans do not have written down goals for them personally that are going to add up to this big outcome that the organization is going to have.
And in my mind, goals are so important as a self assessment process. You know, you need to be able to answer these questions. What do you want to accomplish in a lifetime, in the next three years, in the next 12 months, in the next quarter, in the next week? You know, these are the kinds of goals that leaders hold people accountable for.
All right. So look how happy this dude is. He's taking a nap, , smiling in his sleep. One of the things you can do for self management and self assessment is to make sure you get good sleep. Another thing that's really important is to smile. , so I don't know if you've heard this before, but it takes two muscles to smile and 52 to frown.
And so, , it's much better for your, for your, , face, , to smile as well. You get the right kind of wrinkles. And if you smile immediately, you release serotonin back here from your hypothalamus gland, and it starts to go all over your body. Now don't miss this. When serotonin runs all over your body, you start marinating, like a steak, marinating in your olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, and your salt and pepper.
It's the same thing. You're marinating yourself in great, great endorphins. Now, here's the truth. If that gal is walking down the hallway and looks at me, I'm going to smile back. So like, while you might be like, smiling is your tip, it is absolutely my tip today because it produces other smiling people who start to release the serotonin, who start to marinate in good stuff, and then everybody starts to go up the feeling scale together.
So smiling is an absolute self management, self assessment thing. The other thing you need to do is learn to take a time out. Right? So here's the thing. Let's say Kenneth does get triggered, okay? Which, hello, even Stevie and Shanika and Lashondra and Regina and Ramon, all of them get triggered. And when that happens, you have to learn to do a timeout.
So you have to do what your mama, mama did. I don't know, faint. I don't know what happened to you guys. But anyways, so if I was in a bad mood, I I was told, you know, you need to snap out of it. You need to take a time out. And so we need to do that as adults too. Take a walk, right? And then we need to manage our self talk.
, this is also very, very important. I don't know about you, but I do talk to myself. Dare I confess this? So I talk to myself, , and sometimes the stuff I'm saying to myself is not helpful. It's just not helpful. And I need to shut down that voice. I need to listen to the voice on the other shoulder. , do y'all remember Tom and Jerry cartoons?
There was like a devil and there was an angel. , I need to like, be like, if I'm listening to the devil over here, like telling me all sorts of negative and the sky is falling and bad things, and he's a terrible person and I'm judging and I got all this bad stuff going on, I got to switch it up and go to my angel over here and listen to her, cause she's going to help me come out of things and help me get thinking with my prefrontal cortex, which is so important.
Another thing we need to do is we need to have a mentor or a coach, right? So, , you know, the May 4th is coming. So may the 4th be with you. , but you need to have a, a mentor or, or a sage in your life, , that demonstrates emotional intelligence. So I want you to think about who is it in your life that, , it just is calm and wonderfully, , peaceful to be around yet still gets things done and just moves with like disgrace.
, you want to maybe go interview that person and say, You know, I went to this lunch and learn at Sherm and they were talking emotional intelligence and they, they told me to identify somebody who I think has emotional intelligence and I identified you. And even if that person doesn't know about emotional intelligence, first of all, you could tell them about it because you're learning about it and that's how you learn as you teach, but then you could say, you know, how did you get to that place where you could do that?
You'll be amazed at what you learn from that person. And then finally, we want to learn, , people's names. Now, , I don't know if you've ever heard the statistic. , I know we can't do this right now. We have to have our masks on, or maybe we have our gloves on and we shake hands, but we need to greet each other.
, one of the things that I think, , is, , so imperative, especially in a where you work, where there's a very long tenure. , a lot of times people, where there's a very long tenure, people's emotional intelligence goes down. , they stop greeting each other in the morning. They like, you know, look at each other, give like one of these when they walk by their, by their desk, you know?
, there's not that, you know, that outpouring of, Hello, our happiness, I'm happy to see you, right? It's more like we have meetings that look like this. Right? So, you know, again, the leaders have to model what the meeting's going to look like. You know, we really, we want to, we want things to look like this and, and not to look like that.
, so it's really important that we bring some energy and things to our meetings. Another thing that we can do to be emotionally intelligent is we can clean up our act. We can absolutely clean up our act. , in the world that we live in, things are fast paced and being organized, you know, even if your desk is clean, your computer could be a hot mess.
You could have files over the place or you could have an email, , you know, I, I was, I was in a meeting recently and this gentleman laid down his phone and he had, you know, next to your little mail icon on your phone, he had like 2, 420 unread emails. And I was like, what do you do that? How do you operate like that?
Right? And so he had that, , on his phone and I thought, oh my gosh, I bet you he's so stressed out. So some of the stress we, we do it to ourselves because we're not organized. We don't have our ducks in a row. And then we also have this idea of perspective. Right? So one of the things that we can do is we can kind of, , think about somebody else's perspective.
So if somebody comes in my office and they are fired up about something, hot, bothered, mad, sad, and unglad, , I, I need to address that, , from their perspective, right? So instead of saying, you shouldn't be mad. Okay, which is kind of how I was raised. My, my dad would always tell me I shouldn't have these emotions instead of asking me why I had those emotions or share with me what just happened, right?
I'm here to help you. , you know, that's the proper perspective we need to have with people who are sad, mad and unglad is I'm so glad you came to me, right? So the minute you say, I'm glad, happy that you came to me with this. It totally diffuses the other person. So whenever anybody's upset with me, I say, I'm so glad you came to me.
Because first of all, if you're mad with me, I want you to come to me first. Don't tell everybody else and then come to me last. That's really upsetting, but come to me. I'm so glad you came to me. I want to help. Right? So really a person, , who has emotional intelligence is service minded. Like it said, on those top 10 skills from the world economic forum, we saw at the beginning, really important.
And then we need to be great. listeners, great, great listeners. , so you, I know, , I know people on this call, you all have that thing where, you know, you've heard that, you know, you've got two ears and one mouth because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk. And I do absolutely believe that is the absolute truth.
, but there's a kind of listening that I think is super helpful with emotional intelligence. And that is, , listening, , to understand. Now that might sound familiar to those of you who, , from the way back, , took training from the Stephen Covey company, or maybe, , watched, , videos or read a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but I'm telling you, if you haven't read that, you need to read it.
, and he talks in there about, you know, listening to understand or seeking to understand first before you respond. So, Listening actually involves talking, which I know sounds weird. But what we want to do is we want to listen to the person. And when we listen to them, we want to be able to say back to them, this is what I just heard you say.
This is what I just heard you say. And then stopping. And saying, did I get that right? Is that, is that what you you're talking? Do I have it? The minute you do that, something inside of the person in front of you is mine. Everything kind of calms and it's like, yup, that is just what I said. And that's exactly how I feel.
Okay. Perfect. So may I ask some questions, right? So make sure you don't miss that. We're going to listen them back, right? Which is reflective listening. And then we're going to ask some questions for clarity. So then you say, may I ask you some questions? Now that's really important in the listening process is to ask permission.
And, and you might think to yourself, I don't have to ask permission. Yes, you do. Reason you do is because the minute you give permission or you ask permission and they grant it to you, they stand in choice. So, wow, you just gave this person some power. And if people are upset, that's usually what they're seeking.
They're seeking one of three things. They're either seeking power, you might want to write this down, power, security, or control. Okay, power security control, maybe approval, right? So you want to give them that because those are really part of the human condition, which is a whole nother talk we should do sometime.
But we ask permission, they grant it to us. Now they are put in control, which is probably why they're in your life at that moment upset. And now you ask questions. And here's the thing, when humans feel understood, and they get a little bit of airtime, They soften. I mean, I that's almost every human I've ever dealt with in my life is they start to soften and they almost start to have like, dare I say it like an affection for you.
Because it's very rare that people truly listen to us. So listening is absolutely huge. And when you do that, you can kind of put yourself in that person's shoes, right? You can, you, you can never fully understand what that person needs, but you can begin to put yourself in their shoes and you can begin to go, okay, this is what your life is like.
Right. So, , I know that probably you all are like secret serial watchers of undercover boss, right? Cause like that's our bag, us HR folk. And I love that show. And the cool thing that always happens in every episode is that the CEO has the blinders removed and they literally have put on the shoes of the people, , that work for them.
And they usually come out with, you know, ideas and significant change they're going to put into effect because of that experience. And, and really we can do that without actually doing everybody's job, we could just be a great listener. Now the other thing that you can do, As we move into kind of the social aspect of things is we can begin to have dialogue with people and this is the last thing I'm going to share with you and dialogue is so important because dialogue is a process that you can add to your meetings.
, this helps you do relationship management, okay, it gives you social awareness, it is my number one tool for social awareness and also for relationship management. Now, I don't know what your meetings are like, but sometimes I'll be invited into an organization and then I'll go to a couple meetings to kind of like see what's going on, what's the vibe and what's the culture like and all that kind of thing.
, , and here's the thing is a lot of times people get promoted to leadership roles, , you know, they're the foreman, , just like, , Phineas Gage was, or they end up being the CEO. And they don't know how to run a meeting.
Like they, they don't send you how to run a meeting 101. They don't send you to that meeting, but that meeting is so important. Okay. But so I'm going to give you a piece for your, , your relationship management and your social awareness is to do dialogue. So what I literally do, and this is a group coaching technique is that I'll introduce this to a leader and I'll say, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to think about the thing that you're most excited about for your team. So Okay, so that's one thing. Or, you could say, , what's the one thing that is driving you crazy about your department or your area that you want to, something you want to fix, okay? And you can go either way. Now, , when you do dialogue is you're going to pose a question.
And so the question might be, , we've had, , 10, , customer surveys come back that were excellent. They were five star. I am so excited. I'm wondering what it would take to get more five stars. Well, what would we do? What could we do? So then you pose the powerful question. You send this out ahead of your meeting and you tell your folks, we're going to do this exercise, it's going to be a little weird, but get used to it.
We're going to keep doing it at every meeting because I need to hear from everybody on my team. And I'm going to give you two minutes to share your ideas. about how we might get more five star ratings. So everybody gets a turn to share. When that person's sharing, there's no interrupting. It's like you get two minutes of air time and we respect comments, suspend judgment.
We share time equally and we just listen. Now, what happens when you do dialogue is that everybody becomes a very good listener. Everybody gets very good at thinking about what the other person is saying instead of interrupting being judgmental, and a hundred other bad behaviors that have to do with emotional intelligence.
, And we glean the genius out of the room. So after we go around and we get everybody's ideas, then the leader can say, what did we just learn? What did we just learn? Remember my learning curve? Okay, so people with emotional intelligence have the ability to listen to other ideas, other opinions, other things that are going on and learn from other people because they're not hijacked by, that's not a good idea, or we thought about that in 2002 and it didn't work or whatever. We were able to slow down and listen and comprehend what people are saying and, , think with our prefrontal cortex instead of with our amygdala back here and have that limbic brain, the part of our brain that controls our emotions.
We're more methodical. We're more thoughtful. So we go from, creative, right? , With our, , left side of the brain over to the right side of our brain, where we have logic and we can like tinker with people's ideas and think them through and glean the genius in the room. So emotional intelligence is about, you know, really managing ourselves first and then inviting other people to manage themselves through some EI training, some EI awareness.
, And then really looking at the behaviors that we are demonstrating on a daily basis, getting goals in place for people and, you know, doing the simple things like I talked about, like not letting people push your trigger. Listening to them well, putting yourself in other people's shoes, and getting some written down goals, and getting people up to feeling scale, excited about the work that you are doing.
And that needs to happen in every meeting along with dialogue.