EP #16 | EQ Over IQ: Why Emotional Intelligence Makes or Breaks Leaders

Leading with Impact | The Power of Emotional Intelligence

This episode delves into the critical aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as part of Quadrant Four of the Thriving Business Wheel, focusing on leadership and leading with impact. Building on the previous discussion about self-awareness, this episode explores how understanding and managing emotions – both our own and others' – is fundamental to business success.

Key Discussion Points & Takeaways:

Self-Awareness vs. Emotional Intelligence

While self-awareness is the bedrock, emotional intelligence encompasses self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. A significant disconnect often exists between how individuals perceive themselves and how others perceive them, highlighting the need for external feedback.

Daniel Goleman's EQ Framework

The discussion outlines Goleman's four core components of emotional intelligence.

  1. Self-Awareness: Understanding your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and impact.

  2. Self-Management: The ability to manage your emotions and behaviors effectively, especially under pressure. This involves creating space between a trigger and a response, allowing for rational decision-making.

  3. Social Awareness: The capacity to understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, demonstrating empathy and sensing group dynamics.

  4. Relationship Management: Using your awareness of your own and others' emotions to positively influence, coach, manage conflict, and lead collaboratively.

The Importance of EQ in Leadership

Research consistently shows that leaders with high EQ are more effective, foster stronger workplace cultures, build higher levels of trust, and are often promoted faster. They create environments of psychological safety, which is now a crucial, legally recognized aspect of a healthy workplace.

Developing EQ is a Journey

EQ is not a fixed trait but a skill that can be developed through effort, focus, and a willingness to become uncomfortable and vulnerable.

Challenges and Nuances

• Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset:
  An unwillingness to develop EQ is often linked to a fixed mindset, hindering personal and professional growth.
• Employer Responsibility: 
  The evolving legal landscape places a greater onus on employers to ensure psychological safety, presenting challenges for business owners who may not be trained psychologists. The consensus is that while employers have a duty of care, employees also share responsibility for their own mental well-being and development.
•   The "Mate" Mentality:
  Confusing being a "mate" with providing genuine leadership and psychological safety can be detrimental, blurring boundaries and hindering necessary feedback. True leadership requires balancing empathy with assertiveness and clear boundaries.
•   "Cutting the Noise" vs. Tact: 
  While directness can be valuable, delivering it without consideration for the recipient's feelings or context (low EQ) can be damaging, as illustrated by anecdotal examples.

Key Qualities for Developing EQ

The discussion emphasises embracing curiosity, vulnerability, and comfort with uncertainty as crucial drivers for improving EQ, and discusses the upcoming launch of her new book collaboration: The WisDumb Way | A Practical Guide to Developing EQ Through the Power of Paradox

Connect with Your Hosts:

Kate De Jong, PhD | Inspired Business 🌐 Website: https://katedejong.com/ 📱 Instagram: @katedejong.inspiredbusiness ✉️ Email: kate@katedejong.com

Sam Morris | The O8 🌐 Website: https://www.theo8.com/ 📱 Instagram: @the_o8crew ✉️ Email: sam@theo8.com

Thriving Business Podcast 🌐Website:   https://www.thrivingbusinesspodcast.com/ 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Thriving Business, the podcast for ambitious business owners who want systematic growth without the burnout. Hosted by Kate De Yong and Sam Morris, these business powerhouses bring you proven frameworks and real strategies to help you build a business that actually thrives.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Good afternoon, everyone. And we are back in the podcast chairs. I'm here with my co-host Sam Morris in Melbourne. Hello, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Hi, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

It is chilly and cold in both Melbourne and Perth at the moment. We're both dressed and rugged up. I'm struggling with the back end of a virus, so we'll hopefully not have too many coughing fits this recording. But we are very excited, as always, to tackle this exciting topic. So we're now in quadrant four of the Thriving Business Wheel, which is all about leadership and leading with impact. And a large part of that is self-awareness and emotional intelligence, which is the topic of today: emotional intelligence. Sam, how are you feeling about this topic?

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Oh, Kate. I feel like this is like I'm excited to once again hear from you because this quadrant is like really where you shine. But I I'm going to be very interested in what we reveal throughout this episode because isn't it true that everyone thinks, oh, I I know what's going on, I can read the room. And it's surprising how much of us how many of us really cannot.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yes. And that was the topic of our previous episode. Um, so today's episode 16 of the new season Roadmap to Business Success. Um, following off the back of episode 15 last time, which was on the topic of self-awareness, where we talked a lot about how 95% of all people think they are self-aware, but only 10 to 15% of people actually are when you come to measure it. And the way they measure self-awareness is by how you perceive, so you do a test of how you perceive yourself and how you show up in the world, and then you get peers and colleagues, friends, family, um, people above and below you in the workspace to do a similar review of your behavior. And astonishingly enough, in the vast majority of cases, 85% of cases, how other people perceive you is not how you think you are showing up. And we all have blind spots, and they're called blind because we don't see them. And so I shared in the previous episode about my um 360-degree assessment that I did probably 50 or 20 years ago when I was working as a leader in engineering, and I had the two very stark images, the the one on the left of how I saw myself in in red, blue, and green behaviours. And yeah, if you haven't listened, go back to that episode. But then there was the picture of how other people perceived me, and there was a big mismatch, and we see that a lot when in the work that I do on um, you know, um personality profiling in the workplace, particularly with my colleague James Bryden, we he's got his own version of my story. He showed me his example of the mismatch between his self-perception and external perception, and it's quite a shock when you see it because you suddenly realize, wow, I I just did not realize that's how people are perceiving me. And bridging that gap between internal self-awareness and what they call external awareness of you is is where true emotional intelligence comes into play, as well as so that's emotional intelligence that we're going to dive into now. Um, sort of the grandfather of this topic is Dan Daniel Goldman, that might be a familiar name to many of you, but he's the one that wrote the book about EQ, emotional intelligence that sort of um became the go-to book. But he describes four types of emotional intelligence. Um the first two are about understanding yourself, so that's self-awareness and self-management. And then the second two are social awareness and relationship management, so that's the external facing and your interrelationships with other people. And it's a fascinating topic. Um, yeah, and I had to laugh because one of my colleagues, I was telling him that I'm writing a book on the topic of emotional intelligence with James Bryan, and he laughed and said, Oh, is emotional intelligence even a thing? All I know is the more emotional I get emotional I get, the less intelligent I become. So some people um have a perception that EQ um is not important, uh, it's just a thing that woo-woo people talk about. But I think the research is now showing quite um convincingly that emotional intelligence is a thing. Um, you have the ability to develop it, but it requires work and focus. Um, it's not something that you're either born with or born without, it's something you develop and through effort and and it's uncomfortable. Yeah, it can be uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yeah, I hate it while while you were talking through that, and I'm glad you explained those four aspects of um emotional intelligence, because I was sitting here and I was thinking to myself, I wonder if people are fully aware of the difference between like EQ and self-awareness. So of course I had to I had to do a bit of uh bit of looking that up. And what I'm fascinated by, because I have seen this many, many, many times, is where the self-awareness level and the EQ are like the emotional intelligence, you know, the internal versus the external are very mismatched. Yes. So where we see this very evidently is when someone can, you know, very off-handedly say, Oh, yes, I know I'm like this. Um but where that's mismatched with their with EQ is that they're not willing to do anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, or recognize the impact that thing has on other people.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yes. Or yeah. Yeah, so I think today, aren't we, going to be talking more about the fact that people aren't aware of the impact and how this falls.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah, that's right. Because when we did the deep dive into self-awareness, which is all about how you perceive yourself and whether you're aware of your own blind spots, your strengths, your weaknesses, your behavioral patterns, how you react under pressure, what you do when you're triggered, you know, and creating that space between um um trigger event and responding. That's the space of where you have the opportunity to manage your own emotions. And that's what Goleman refers to as self-management. Yeah. And that's being mindful in the moment. And when you feel the temperature rising, taking a breath instead of responding or saying something you might regret, it's just about breathing, creating that space and trying to bring the emotional level back down so that you can respond rationally rather than emotionally. Um, but yes, what you're saying is self-awareness is the foundational pillar of emotional intelligence. It's the first layer, so to speak. And then on top of that, once you have the awareness of yourself, it's about managing. So self-management is the second layer, which is as I was saying, when you're in hot situations, how do you manage yourself and your emotions? And I've always really admired my dad, for example, is someone who never gets ruffled. And my mum was the opposite, so I could always see, I always had this very stark demonstration when there'd be a difficult situation, my dad would just stay so calm and wouldn't respond until he'd really sort of taken a few breaths and thought about. He's just a very naturally calm person. My mum, on the other hand, would get triggered and respond and get angry or emotional. And it yeah, that always maybe that's part of I've never actually thought of that. Maybe that's part of why I'm so fascinated by this because I've seen the two extreme polar opposites of how you can be. And to me, it's about cultivating that zen space, spaciousness when stuff happens and you feel the emotion rising, it's being able to distance yourself from that. Yeah, so that's the next layer is that self-management. And then what you're referring to, uh the next layer on top of that is social awareness, as according to the Goleman model, which is widely accepted. It's a very useful model. And that's where you're reading other people's emotions, you're showing empathy, you're understanding what's going on around you, you're sensing the dynamics intuitively, and you're seeing and feeling the undercurrents in a room or in a workplace. Um, and then on top of that, so that's you've got that social awareness, and then on top of that, it's about relationship management. So you're using that awareness to influence positively, to coach, to manage conflict and lead and collaborate effectively. So yeah, it is all that interpersonal stuff. And I know it's we don't like to bring politics into this arena, but the two, if I'm thinking of my mum and dad as extreme polar opposite examples, I often think of Barack Obama and Trump, Donald Trump as polar opposites. So Barack Obama is well known to have extremely high EQ. Yes. Stays incredibly calm under pressure, doesn't get ruffled easily, he's able to distance himself from the emotion of whatever's going on, able to self-regulate his emotions for the he's able to read the room, um, he's able to manage those really complex international dynamics, and um, because he's got the EQ to sense what's going on in the room, and then you've got, and and this is my opinion, by the way. I'm not saying this is factual, this is how I observe it, because I know we all have different opinions about things, but Trump, on the other hand, very volatile, very much it's all about him. Not, I don't sense a lot of empathy from him towards um other types of people or anything, and so he's very dogmatic, very sort of authoritarian, you could say, which um yeah, the professionals say low EQ.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

So very, you know, um the highway.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah. Yeah. So he doesn't put a lot of um focus on the social awareness side, which is reading others' emotions, showing empathy, sensing dynamics, understanding currents in a root undercurrents, or the relationship management, which is positively using that information to influence coach, manage conflict. It's more authoritarian, as we said. And so, yeah, that's kind of an example of the two, and whatever your opinions are on that, the research shows um very, very clearly that leaders with a high EQ are, and this is this is you know, studies across thousands of um workplaces and so on. Leaders with high EQ are more effective, um, have stronger workplace cultures, um, have high levels of trust within their teams. Um mid-management people with high EQ get promoted faster. Um, people enjoy working under leaders with a high EQ, obviously, because they create psychological safety, which is now a really important buzzword in corporate culture and so on.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yes, I was gonna say for anybody who's writing this off, this is this is so relevant to anybody who is who does or is going to employ anybody because gone are the days of of the style of boss who was like this is what I want done, go and do it, figure it out. And just barking orders and you know, and and sitting from up on up high, you know, telling everyone what to do. We can't have leaders like that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

No.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

So we need to have leaders who are understanding the relationships and are understanding their place and the impact of their behavior and not just sitting there going, oh well, that's just me, get used to it.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

That's what I am.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

I think that excuse that excuse from people, honestly, it really rubs me the wrong way.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Which one? The one that that's I know.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

People just go, Oh, well, that's just how that's just how I am.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, deal with it.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Um, so obviously we're looking at, you know, let I'm gonna put those people in a box and say, fixed mindset, off you go. Yes. You're not gonna get anywhere if you think that that's acceptable.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah, and we talked about that in the previous episode 14 growth versus fixed mindset. Yeah, and fixed mindset doesn't get you anywhere these days. No. Uh, I mean, there are people that seem to survive out there in leadership positions, but I don't know how. But yeah, interestingly, the new laws around psychological safety in the workplace, it's no longer a nice to have. Um, it's actually a legal requirement now that you provide psychologically safe workplaces, which means um staff feel safe to bring up issues as they experience them. They they feel that they'll be heard, they'll be seen, that there's no bullying. And if there is bullying, it'll be tackled appropriately. People need to feel psychologically safe, and that's yeah, it's now the law. So um, one of my clients is now helping, she's an EQ specialist, and she goes around helping companies understand where they sit relative to the psychological safety laws, and she surveys the staff and figures out um, you know, compliance-wise, um, where they are compliant with the law and where they're not, and then how they then um fill the gaps. And usually it's through coaching, training people around self-awareness and emotional intelligence. So yes. Yeah, so you can no longer if if there are bullying complaints in your workplace and um and you haven't been seen to be dealing with them, you can you can um get into legal trouble and you know be sued and so on. So it's important. And that's sort of the very low basic level why you should be doing it. The more aspirational level of why you should be focusing on this is because once again, the research shows companies with a high level of psychological safety and and high trust are more profitable, retain staff longer, are much more innovative, are much more um, you know, um advance faster, all those good things. So why would you not want to make this a priority and a focus, you know, because it there's only positive positive benefits to cultivating high um psychological safety and emotional intelligence in the workplace?

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah. So so I'm gonna maybe I'm gonna play devil's advocate here a little bit and sit in sit in the corner with my employer's hat on. Um, you know, having spent months going through the hiring process and you know, trying to grasp all of these new things that we are now responsible for. Yeah. And I'd like your take on this, Kate, because from where I sit, I do struggle with this in that, you know, and maybe this is this is low EQ on my behalf, but where I struggle with it is that the law states that we cannot ask a plethora of questions during the hiring process. You can't ask people about you know specific mental health disorders or anything like that, but you are responsible for their mental health as an employee. Yeah, and we are not qualified psychologists as employers, yeah. So there's a part of me that feels like this is a very big stretch for the average business owner to have to bring themselves up to speed and then and and themselves have high enough EQ to then be able to translate that to understanding their staff and and their staff's needs. And because you know, you and I could sit here and say the same sentence in front of a hundred different people, and there will be a hundred different interpretations, emotional and literal, yeah, on that sentence.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

That's right. Yeah, we all have filters, we all hear things differently, depending on our experience.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

This is where I struggle with I'm now responsible for how every single person in my employee individually responds to things. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Yeah, I definitely think there's way too much onus on the employer to um be responsible for all this when the employees should at least be showing that they are also putting in an effort to maintain their mental health or to develop their EQ or to contribute positively to the workplace, right? It should be a two-pronged thing. It's we're we talk about this, um, we've talked about it in other realms where we're making we're taking accountability away from people as staff, right? Where they're not accountable for anything and puts a lot of onus on the business owners and employers unfairly, in my view.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yeah, and that that's the part that I struggle with. And it's not it's not about oh, we should never employ people that might suffer from anxiety or anything like that. Absolutely, they have a have a place. But the fact that I cannot ask somebody about it, I'm expect it to protect them.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

That's where there's a massive disconnect for people like me, I think. And, you know, maybe somebody who's listening to this who isn't an expert and knows more than me, is going to contact us and say, no, you're wrong. You can ask about mental health and, you know, if they have ADHD and or if they have anxiety or depression or any of those mental health disorders. Um, because people with those things should not be excluded from the workplace. And and they do need protections, but the fact that we're not allowed to ask if they suffer from anything. Yeah, makes it up to the employee to share that. If they don't, it's really difficult to manage something you don't know about. I mean, you you can observe and you can suspect by behaviors, but again, we're not we're not trained psychiatrists or psychologists or counsellors. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

It's it's interesting because it's almost like the um the role of a counselor, psychologist, mental health worker versus the role of a coach. And I think that's where we kind of need to head in the workspace is rather than um, you know, our role as employers is yeah, we're not counselor psychologists, we can't be, but we can be the coach that is forward-looking and help people in the workplace, develop some very basic EQ skills, and some of it can be really fun. Like we talk, I talk about the bank code personality profiling thing all the time, but that's a very light-hearted, non-judgmental way of getting people to dip their toe into the world of self-awareness and how they're different to other people. Um, and those little reflective practices. I've I've done lots of um half-day sessions with companies where I'll go in and work with their team and we all just do the bank code and then we'll do perhaps the Myers Briggs. But it's just fun and lighthearted, and it gets a lot of banter happening amongst the team members about how they're different to each other. Oh, and that's why you always do that thing, and that's why you always have to be in charge, and as you know, that's why you always have your list on your desk because people are so different. And that's sort of the very first layer of interpersonal awareness. And so there's um, and then if you want to do a deeper dive, there's the Harrison assessment that I do with James Bryden, and that's a lot much more in-depth um psychometric test, and that's brilliant as well. And that's where it starts to get a little bit uncomfortable because that's when you start some of the shadow behaviors start coming in that you need to look at, and um, yeah, so it can start off lighthearted and fun, and I think employers can have fun with um with their employees about just getting copies of those four coloured cards and say, hey, how if you had to order these, how would you order them in in you know, in importance to you? And that's a very non-threatening thing um to do. And then for when when it gets more serious where there are bullying complaints or toxic behavior complaints, then you can get into harrison assessment, but or or other similar psychometric methods, but that's where people do have to be prepared to look at their shadow stuff, and that's where it gets uncomfortable. And um, my colleague was telling me just the other week about a client that he'd had very um highly skilled and um in a profession, you know, a very highly regarded profession, had been flagged by peers and colleagues as having certain, let's say, unhealthy behaviour. patterns in the workplace. And so he was invited in that my colleague was invited in to to do the cultural assessment and have these discussions. It turned out that yes, this person displayed some negative behaviors. And in having the conversation with this person, he does the full, you know, for us to get, he does the full disclosure around this may be uncomfortable and for us to get progress, you know, make progress together, you there is a will there needs to be a willingness to get uncomfortable and and and look at things you might perhaps not have looked at before. And and this person had the walls up apparently um and so he said okay let's let's just look at your profile and and here's your um here's your um what what what they call potential flip behaviors. So they're there where you have a potential to if you're too extreme on one spectrum you have the potential to flip. And this this person said oh no that's wrong I'm I'm there and I'm there and I'm there and um and my colleague was saying well this is you know this this um assessment has been backed it's it's evidence based and no the assessment's not wrong it's it's about how we work together to interpret the results and he just the guy said this is astrology and I'm not having any of it and got up and walked out and um and so not willing to uh take a look at themselves from a different perspective. No and it happens a lot because people's egos are so um strong and entrenched yeah they can't possibly open themselves to the idea that there might be something that they should look at and that's what caused the defensiveness and the rigidity and and all the people in the workplace experience the negative consequences of that but they're not prepared to look at it themselves.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Yeah I'm even thinking now about um a particular situation that I I I knew of some time ago where there was one person that worked in an organization who who did I won't say they had ADHD everyone thought they were classic ADHD. Right and they were often partnered to go and work with somebody who is quite open or was quite open about the fact that he suffered from anxiety and there and and I looked back on that and saw that there was a pattern of when they were working in a group everything was okay but when the two of them were sent to work together the person with anxiety would often call in sick the next day to me if that organization had been doing some personality profiling and some deeper understanding they would have seen that pattern and known to never send those two people alone because in a group there's other people to buffer behaviors but the nature of somebody who has ADHD and is flipping around all over the place and you know emotionally up and down constantly all day the uncertainty of that was triggering massive anxiety in the other person.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

So when there was just the two of them and there was no buffer it was a very toxic combination not that they were toxic people no but it was that particular combination yeah yes didn't yeah and that's that's just uh yeah as you say low low level of awareness in in the workplace about each other and um yeah those basic patterns and things which can be addressed quite quite easily and they call you know they used to call emotional intelligence and self-awareness and interpersonal skills soft skills and they're thankfully banning that term because there's nothing soft about these skills they're actually very hard to develop and they're very challenging to develop because you have to get vulnerable and and some people are just as we said not capable of getting vulnerable they just their ego won't allow them but the there are sort of the rare ones but um there's a certain combination of traits that will predict that it's it's certain assertive frank direct um risking I think that's the combination if someone's very high in all of those five they're very likely to be very resistant to being coached or um and it's very hard and then you're sort of in narcissistic territory at that point you know and then this is a it gets into psychology and all of that. But yeah I think what we're there's pathological behaviors but then there's there's I get I see it like a like a spectrum a sliding scale from unhealthy all the way through to really healthy and anything below half you know on the unhealthy side that's where you have mental health issues where you get you know excuse me anxiety depression and and that's where you probably do need counseling and psychology and and good people in your corner to help you work with those things um or work through. I've suffered from chronic um anxiety myself um in my twenties that was sort of the the cause of my burnout eventually and I had to do a lot of therapy and a lot of deep digging to get to the underlying root cause of that anxiety was actually that I was trying to live up to everyone else's expectations and I wasn't being true to myself and it was a whole I had to you know shift my whole life around to and now I don't struggle with anxiety um not to nearly the same extent that I used to I still it still creeps in but it's not debilitating like it used to be and so yeah that's in therapy territory if that's the case if you're dealing with depression anxiety that's therapy territory but I think what we're talking about the EQ we're talking about the healthy scale from mid-range up to really really healthy that's the path of learning about emotional intelligence and having fun with it. And um yeah so the book that we're writing which I think we've touched on called Wisdom which is around you can be both wise and dumb at the same time and life is a paradox we can be both frank and diplomatic at the same time and it's about walking the middle road don't be too frank don't be too diplomatic but be you know be both frank and diplomatic yes and that's the path of EQ is learning to balance seemingly opposite qualities and walk the middle road and the way to get there is through adopting um an attitude of curiosity so the three qualities we talk about are curiosity vulnerability and comfort with uncertainty and if you can really embrace if you really make those three qualities your compass or your your approach to life it dissolves so many of the problems associated with low EQ does that make sense it does it does yes because yeah low people with low EQ tend to not be curious they tend to not want to get vulnerable and they don't like uncertainty yeah and so those are typically the telltale signs of someone um less emotionally intelligent they they don't want to get curious um they don't want to get vulnerable and they do not like uncertainty yeah and so I've noticed even in my own conversations or in relationships where I have conflict and I notice my tendency to want to get defensive or to defend my position and I'm really really trying to walk the way of the wisdom way as we call it which is get curious. Don't get defensive get curious so what is it about what's happening here that's making the other person react that way what's going on for them and I start asking questions about that and that makes them become less defensive and then you can actually have a proper conversation rather than you both putting the walls up and getting defensive and get vulnerable you know so with the other person rather than attacking them saying look what when this is happening I feel really afraid or alone or whatever the feeling is and that opens the doorway for them to say oh well me too or whatever it is and yeah and being comfortable that you don't know how that person's going to react but if you know that if you are curious and get vulnerable it's going to have a much more positive outcome than if you get defensive and and um dogmatic.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

So yeah it's a it's a fascinating I'm constantly trying to walk that path myself it's not easy but um it's worth it yeah Kate I don't think we can we can get through this episode without mentioning who I would like to call the master of EQ. Okay my I think you're supposed to be my husband in another life but okay Mr Simon Sinek we have uh yes of course we can't have an episode without mentioning Simon Sinek but no look let's be real because I I was I've been doing a little bit of research on IQ and I'm like well and I was curious about the the people that I admire I was like who's really high in IQ in my work and of course straight away Simon Sinek hit the top of the list and let's start with his golden circle his framework is also a framework for EQ yes and because it's about getting curious why do you do what you do?

SPEAKER_01 32:14

What how do you do what you do?

SPEAKER_02 32:16

What is vulnerability that's then and because the what is very transactional and that's that's not high in emotional intelligence at all. Yeah no that's functional it's not emotional.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

It operates at the logical level of the brain and as he talks about the why is at the limbic level which is the deep intuitive primal it's it's the part of our brain that responded to things before we had language it's it's an emotional response. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

And then of course he wrote the book Leaders Eat Last about leadership moving from the focus being to them about them to the focus being on everybody else. Interesting and the way in which we care for people you know and and that's demonstrated by making sure everybody else eats before you do. And do you know what this is where I think women are probably leading the charge because as mothers don't we do that instinctively absolutely and that's my pet peeve with my ex-husband was that he would feed himself first and it drove me I'd say can you please feed the boys first you know and yeah but it's not in their nature um it's not in their natural nature yeah yeah yeah I can't speak for all men but it was definitely the case for the no no not everybody but um but you know if we were to generalize and stereotype that that's where that fits in you know interesting yeah and then of course Simon Sinek like he he's been very very strong on social media with encouraging people to you know people in leadership to just ask a very simple question are you okay? Open up a dialogue yeah which again is the curiosity piece isn't it getting curious about um what's going on for other people yes yeah and I think too that by asking that one simple question it's a good way to measure how safe people actually do feel yeah because if they are not willing to open up and you can clearly see by their external behaviors that something's going on they're not willing to open up and communicate with you for some reason that would suggest that there isn't that feeling of safety there.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah because vulnerability which is the you know as we said the quality one of the qualities to develop EQ requires psychological safety. You can't get vulnerable if you don't feel safe.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Correct yeah interesting yeah well and who else did you come up with because Simon Sinek that yeah makes total sense that he's up there yes but with IQ I do even want to say some of the other people that were suggested because I don't even like most of okay well I will say I will say because and I won't say which ones I like and which ones I don't uh number one well these aren't in a priority order this is but this is re this is um internet research you've done is that right yeah so the first the first this first little list is politicians okay and politicians so the first one that came up was Penny Wong oh as high EQ yes because she is seen as being the most emotionally disciplined uh and because she has to navigate all of these international and domestic tensions she can't let her personal emotions derail things so uh that's her perception Anthony Albanese comes up with high EQ apparently so um yeah who's I'd love to know who's rank rating these I mean I I I quite like both of them but as you say this is um political you know getting into political territory that we don't it is it is Jackie Lamby okay uh and I I do not know allegress bender or Monique Ryan but apparently those two came up as well okay uh on on a grander scale we do have Melanie Perkins yeah that would make sense the founder of Canva yes yes so uh you know her her philosophy is be a force for good which is quite higher EQ uh Alan Joyce was another one uh and apparently he is the masterclass in high stakes emotional regulation and boundary setting right and um obviously he had to deal with quite a lot during his tenure as the CEO of Qantas so yes yes yeah and and even now you see him pop up every now and then to um you know they bring him in to comment on things and he does come across as as quite reasonable most of the time uh Mike Smith who's the co-founder of Zero Code I have no idea but apparently he's known for the power of vulnerability and of a shared mission in their marketing so um not a person but as a corporation the ANZ Bank initiative which was to employ systemic IQ EQ into their financial products so good on the ANZ for doing that. But here's something interesting that I discovered well maybe not interesting because may maybe it it's evident but what EQ looks like in the good old Aussie landscape because you know culturally we we like to be a little bit unique. Yeah so the first thing that we have in bucket loads here is tall poppy syndrome. Yes uh which is not good not good I don't you know we've got to cut down those those people that are doing well attitude that we have to do that I think is a really sad one. Yeah it is yeah because it's definitely coming from a place that is not good. Yeah uh the second one is being mates with people so people get being a mate confused with providing psychological safety. Yeah and I think when when you sit on the outside and look at somebody who adopts that that approach of like I'll just be everybody's mate it it it doesn't work between employer and employee.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

No, no and that's because you've got to have that balance between um yeah that that's that's you know back to those sort of sliding scales of um empathy versus assertiveness and frankness versus diplomacy you've got to be able to be um have boundaries with someone while still maintaining a friendship whereas if you're just someone's mate you can't pull them up on bad behaviors necessarily or I mean really good friends can like um we always say in EQ there are three different types of people in your life there are the the loving uncritical people so they just love you no matter what you do you know and they're not going to give you feedback on your negative behaviors and that's the kind of people you'd say are your mates oh he's my mate he loves me and he's not critical of me and then you've got the unloving critical people so they're the ones that are going to criticize everything you do and you can't do anything right um so you're damned if you do damned if you don't and you can't get feedback of those people because it's always going to be negative and not helpful. But your loving critics that's where the gold is they are true friends if you want to say that because they will say to you hey did you see when you did that what the other guy did and and you know you might say no or didn't oh well when you said this they did that and I think it's because you you were too um hard or whatever it is the feedback you're giving your friend and you feel safe enough with that friend to actually say oh wow I didn't realize you know and and that's a loving critic we call it and they're they're the ones that can help you develop emotional intelligence. So if you've got those people in your life they're the ones you would ask for feedback like get them to do um a 360 degree assessment for you because they're going to be loving but they're going to give you the feedback that you need as well yeah so mates I think you're referring to the loving uncritical ones right where it's just oh he's a good bloke and yeah you can't really be critical of someone if you're trying to be a a a mate at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

No and yeah and it I think that sees employers from an employer perspective if you're trying if you're if you see the relationship you have with your staff as being mates it's very dangerous territory because that often leads to you being blindsided. Yep and it often leads to you feeling like um emotionally torn down because you know like when they resign and move on to another job or whatever happens you you take that on board so personally because you've you've gone from being in a leadership role to being a mate which and and mates should be an equal playing field. Yeah yeah that's not what they need they need leadership in in a working environment that's right and leadership is not about being friends with everyone but it's about showing the vision demonstrating the um it's demonstrating all the values you expect everyone else to embody yes um and it's um articulating the vision of where you're all going and empowering everyone below you on that same path um but that doesn't mean you have to be their mate and and and so empowering them means pulling them up when they need to be pulled up or giving them guidance where needed or feedback or you know yeah so interesting what else is on that list and number three and I I I had to I had to split with one eye when I read this one because I'm like this is kind of my favorite thing but you know I know personally I have to temper it and that's cutting through the noise you know and and the old saying let let's cut the bullshit so uh people who do that without consideration low EQ. Yeah low EQ yes yeah so uh you know straight shooting straight talk like I I do enjoy that but that's just me it has to be delivered in the right way with regard to the other person how the other person's going to receive consider whether the person on the receiving end is going to be open to that kind of communication or not. And so it you know if if you're a straight shooter and that's just who you are not going to work. No not going to work.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

And one of the guys we co wrote um our wisdom book with is Melro and And he's Davidi is an Italian relationship counsellor. And he tells the story of when he was a um a radio DJ back in the when he was in his 20s. And there was a political thing going on in Italy at the time about a new cancer treatment for children that was being withheld because of certain it was a complex situation, but they invited the politician on who was blocking the release of this treatment to sick kids. And he had very good reasons for it at the time, and it turned out to be the right decision in the end. But at the time it was very heated in Italy and it was a very, very passionate, you know, um, what's the word? Um yeah, a topic with a lot of um emotion around it. And uh because there were sick parents of six children, you know, who did not have access to this thing that they thought could have helped. And anyway, they invited this politician onto his radio show, and he Mao always prided himself on being a straight shooter, you know, don't let's cut the bullshit, that kind of person that you just mentioned. So he gave it straight to the politician. He said, So let's cut the bullshit. In Italian, obviously, this was better. Um, and just full on attacked him about his stance, and um he said, you know, everybody knows the truth, so why are you trying to hide the truth? And sort of went on this it's this sort of um brutal truth-telling, as he calls it, but it was truth-telling from his perspective, and the politician just took his mic off, put it down the table, and and just walked out. Oh, I like it. Yeah, and and Mauro said that was a and he got fired because that was live on air. Um, and yeah, lots of people listening, and he uh basically ruined the the that the and the politician wanted to sue the radio channel. It was a big mess. And wow, yeah, so he describes that as a turning point for him where he realized that brutal honesty is not always the firstly, honesty is not the same as truth. Like you can be honest about your feelings, but that doesn't mean it's true for everyone and everything. That's right. And yeah, that's where curiosity would have helped him if he'd gotten curious about the politicians' viewpoints, they might have been able to have a conversation about it. But I think Mauro said at the time, he didn't have enough self-awareness or social awareness or interpersonal awareness that if they did get onto that topic in the discussion, he wouldn't have been able to manage it without his own emotions rising too high. So that was actually a turning point for him to go on his long journey of emotional intelligence. That's why we're writing the book together now because he's very passionate about it too. Like he's seen himself and is ashamed of how he was.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Yeah, now he applies EQ in relationships mostly for marriage counselling. And yeah, so in his world, he spends all day, every day with couples that are having relationship troubles, usually because they don't have enough self-awareness, emotional intelligence between them to resolve the conflict healthily.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Goodness me, yes, because you look at you look at really brilliant journalists and uh, you know, in this in the context of his experience, and what they do very well is ask a line of questioning that force the person they're interviewed to reveal themselves. That's right. And they do not want it to be the one that, you know, went to dart. And and that's that wasn't his role. He should have let the other person do that to themselves.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Yeah, and I love journalists that can like some of the ones in the press room in the Trump House, you know, where that they can stay, even when they're getting attacked, stay so calm. Yes, and don't get ruffled. And that's extreme self-management in the heat of the moment, you know, to even though you're being personally attacked, to keep coming back with rational thought and keep asking the hard questions, even though, you know, yeah. So journalism is definitely one of those careers, I think, that requires massive self-management and self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Yeah. For sure. So is there any anything we've missed, Sam, um, in talking about this topic? Yes. I had a quote um that which I quite like, which is emotional intelligence is not about being nice or suppressing emotion, it's understanding it, managing it, and using it to get better results in every area of business and life. That's good. Yeah. Have you got something?

SPEAKER_02 48:47

Um, I think I've dived into all the parts that I wanted to dive into. So yeah. Um look, I will I will finish on one thing. That the three areas where working on developing a higher EQ is going to have the most impact on your business is in using EQ to hire.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Using EQ in how you operate to drive efficiency and in how you market and sell your products and services.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Did you want to say more about that?

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Which which one? The marketing, yeah. Well, because everybody focuses so much on trends. And if you peel back the layer of what a trend is, it is leadership in the marketplace. And where trends are successful is if I this is this is totally off the cuff. Where trends are successful is that they're high in EQ because they're reaching people at the level they need to reach people in a way that they need to reach people.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

So it's less about the trend itself and it's more about what's sitting behind it and what's driving it.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

In which case, if um, if you haven't downloaded our um AI setup workbook, just as an off note, um Sam's AI prompts help you do the deep excavating below your business that help you market really effectively. It helps you get clear on your why, your brand voice, your business context, your ideal customer profile at a really deep level. I've been going through it myself recently. And that is the gut the gold that drives effective marketing. And so, yeah, and we used to have to work through that with clients through a process, you know, to extract that information, but now you can get Claude to interview you using the prompts that Sam has developed, and it's very, very effective. And it actually helps you get even clearer perspective than it did. It has, I've got even more clear perspective this time around using those prompts. So good work, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

Yeah, I I I love the feedback, it's making me feel so happy inside that people are getting some real value from it. Like value beyond what they expect from something that they're gonna do on AI.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is using AI to help extract your own thoughts and feelings about the work you do and how you're how you're different and what what the why, how, what is behind everything. And yeah, and if you have staff and they are using AI, get them to upload all these foundational documents into their own AI engine so that the it's consistent across the whole business. Yes, definitely. Yeah. So good job, Sam. Um, and I think that brings us to the end of this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. This was our second last episode. Next um, next one is on leading from your values, and that wraps up quadrant four and the entire roadmap to business success.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

So we've already had I I checked our emails before we started recording today, Kate, and we already have inquiries about the next workshop.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

We do, yes, yes, yes, and um that is in July, and I need to look up the date because I've forgotten. Um July 24th. It is 29th, Wednesday. 29th. I would have been nice and early. That's right, yeah. 24th was the last one, and the 29th will be so bring all your questions on EQ leadership, um, leading from values, anything related to personal growth and mindset, and we'll have a good chat.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Even if you're in business on your own, because the you know, EQ is not a one and done, it's a lifelong work. So even if you're on your own, there is still value in coming to the workshop to do a bit of deep dive into yourself, you know. And start with self, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 53:11

Absolutely. And as a solopreneur who you're referring to, you have to lead your clients. So you are a leader by default, being a business owner. You have to lead in the market, you have to lead your clients. Um, so it's important. Yeah, we hope you enjoyed today. We will be back next week with our final episode, and and after that, we'll be back to our regular sessions inviting guests on the show, which we're excited to get back to as well. And if you have not yet signed up for the retreat, you must do it now. 27th to 31st of August, we will be spending four days implementing all this wonderful stuff in our businesses. So I think there's only a couple of spots left. I think yeah, we've got two early birds left expiring on the 15th of July. So get in quick if you want to take advantage of that. And then we do actually only have two more spots after that. So, yes, get in. Then we're full. Then we're full.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Hi, Mo.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Come on. Yes, all right, everyone, have a wonderful week. We will be back next week. Until then, bye for now. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

You've got the strategies. Now let's build the systems. Whether you're joining our workshops or transforming at our barley business retreat, we're here to help you scale without the burnout. Visit Thriving Business Podcast.com to join our community. Until next time, keep building a business that thrives.