…Knowing your limitations I believe is equally as powerful as knowing your strengths. Ask yourself, “What activity drains me? What do I not like doing? Do I have strong starting energy, maintaining energy, or closing energy?” Your motivation and natural energy flow will help you determine your limitations and interests. Pay attention to your energy and be a part of a group/team of people where you all complement each other’s strengths and limitations.
Asa part of our series about “Emotional Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Diana Lowe.
Diana is a distinguished Executive Coach and CEO of Blue Light Leadership, with a specialization in Workplace Engagement Coaching that integrates evidence-based Positive Psychology and Emotional Intelligence techniques. Holding a Master’s in Coaching Positive Psychology, Diana has over a decade of experience in leadership development, focusing on assisting leaders and executives from Fortune 500 companies to enhance their resilience, and empathy, and find deeper purpose and meaning in their work. Her expertise in Emotional Intelligence is pivotal in helping leaders become more adaptable, emotionally aware, and empathetically connected, fostering environments that not only thrive on individual well-being but also collective success. Through her company, Blue Light Leadership, Diana’s mission is to cultivate happier, more engaged individuals, thus contributing to the creation of happier workplaces and communities that are integral to a collaborative global society. As an executive coach, she is committed to empowering leaders in Fortune 500 companies to lead with impact, leveraging evidence-based Positive Psychology strategies to drive meaningful change and promote a culture of resilience and empathy.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Thank you for having me. I grew up on the East Coast in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I had a great childhood, lots of friends, and loving parents. Like many children navigating society when I was growing up, I encountered many challenges. We were one of the only Puerto Rican families in my neighborhood. I was also Catholic and grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. Luckily, I grew up with lots of diverse and enriching friendships. I am a people-person, so when I experienced rejection, racism, exclusion, of course, this hurt my heart. Honestly, it felt confusing. But it never made me stop loving people. I especially loved meeting new people from around the globe. It was very common for me to travel around Pittsburgh, Greater Pittsburgh and surrounding States and randomly encounter a friend. This was unusual, because this is well before social media or Facebook. I just had lots of friends and met lots of people. My father was always amazed and never understood how I could know so many people. He would make a joke, that I could be on the top of a remote mountain and run into someone I know. I have always had a love of people, travel and learning new things.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
This is an interesting question because my career was inspired by the mal-treatment. And quite frankly, the abuse of my employers. When I graduated from my university I had a dream to be an expat abroad. I wanted to live around the world and travel. In my senior year of college, I found a program that allowed me to get a visa and live abroad. I was able to network internally at one of my summer internships, and they promised me a job if I could get over to London, England. So that is what I did. I found a visa and moved over there right after I graduated. I worked in Private Wealth Asset Management in the City of London and was able to roll my visa over to work in Dublin, Ireland at the same institution.
From there I stayed in the UK and changed my job a couple of times. It seemed that each employer was more abusive than the next. Every job I took, I would leave because my employers were getting worse and worse. For example, one employer would purposely excluded me from meetings and then reprimanded me for not going. Or purposely seeing me walk down the hallway and turning around and physically dodging me in the office. There were many terrible and downright abusive behaviors like berating me in front of everyone in the office. There was no accountability or culture that made it safe or caring. One day it was so bad I couldn’t take it anymore. Perhaps I thought ignoring it meant it would get better or didn’t exist, but it broke me down. I cried for 3 days straight with no logical explanation. I was then diagnosed with severe depression. But it didn’t feel real, in general, I was one of the happiest and most optimistic people. During my recovery and reflection on what I had learned and what I had to change in myself and my environment, I realized that I wasn’t listening to my emotions. I was pushing them down. I was drinking them into oblivion, and ultimately it cost me 6 months of recovery and soul-searching. It was during this time that was the best thing for me and my life.
This ‘rock bottom’ was the solid foundation for my purpose and meaning in my life. I promised myself while I was in recovery that when I left I would be the solution to my depression. When I reflected it was the abusive nature of my bosses that ultimately led to my mental demise. Don’t get me wrong, I take full responsibility for my part in the employer/employee relationship. There were skills I needed to work on and one was listening to my emotions, not shoving them down, another was advocating for myself, and another was aligning my strengths and values in a place I am best suited. Ultimately, when I returned to the workplace I decided I would go into the field of leadership development, and I would make every effort to develop better work environments so no one would have to be subjected to or go through what I went through. Weirdly my life’s work and my career were inspired by all of my previous bosses who made mistreatment the norm. Today, and every day, I fight that fight! I am also not surprised that we have such high disengagement rates at work.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
There were so many people along the way who cared for me and believed in me even in toxic work situations. Starting with the obvious, I have to say my husband, sisters, and family, have always been there to support me and be the shoulder to lean on. Like I talked about earlier, I love people so even when I went through these terrible times, there was always a kind, compassionate, courageous friend who supported me.
Without my peers Paula, Ania, Greg, Andrew, and Rafael — during one position I held, which may have been the worst, they fully supported me. They gave me the space to share my insecurities and feelings and gave me the encouraging words of belief that kept me fighting, especially Rafael. During another particularly terrible boss situation, I had my friends Erika and Molly, who were steadfast in their support and have been there to help me weather the storm. I don’t think I could have moved on if it weren’t for their genuine love, care, and personal and career support.
I am a little nervous that I missed mentioning quite a few people here, but at the end of the day, all of my friends near or far helped me overcome these difficulties.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
Wow, there are so many to choose from. One thing is that I am not afraid to make a mistake. I have made alot of them. The funniest moment I would say is, that early in my career when I was asked in an interview, ‘What is your weakness?’ I answered, “Chocolate ice cream.” Up until that point me and the interviewer were getting along great, speaking Spanish and English, laughing and joking. Then when I answered that question it was like all of the air went out of the room. His jaw dropped and he looked at me and said, “Are you serious?” Regretting my answer, I said, “Of course not, I meant to say donuts, yes donuts!” Proud of my answer, I nodded my head with a definitive pride. His look of confusion was puzzling to me at that moment, I thought he had something against donuts. But I now clearly understand why he would be confused. He asked with confusion, “Is this your final answer? Really?” And with pride, I confirmed my weakness was officially donuts.
When I went home later that night my sister explained what answer he was looking for and we laughed so hard. But, I got the job then and there on the spot. What this mistake taught me was that I need to be myself. I need to be true to myself, whether I got the job or not wasn’t that important. Being authentic and showing up being open and willing to make mistakes (and fixing them when I realize I have made mistakes) has served me well with clients, and developing as a leader. Plus, who doesn’t like ice cream and donuts?
The road to success is hard and requires tremendous dedication. This question is obviously a big one, but what advice would you give to a young person who aspires to follow in your footsteps and emulate your success?
I think it’s important to value every step of the way and not to give up. I felt like it took me 15 years to find my ‘purpose’. Hopefully, it will take me just as long if not longer to realize it.
Each step I took in my career felt like I was picking up a puzzle piece and some puzzle pieces I didn’t fully understand at the moment. I often thought to myself in my early 20s, “What am I doing?” or “Where am I going with this?” With little to no confidence, it can feel defeating. But one day I woke up and it felt a little magical, like I finally had all the puzzle pieces and it all of a sudden made sense. It was like I finally knew what and why things had happened. There was context and purpose which created meaning.
Was the journey to figure it out painful? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. Was it confusing? At times. But it is all worth it. I feel like I have my work cut out for me and plenty of experiences to fall back on and to create for the future. Never give up.
Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Single handedly the book that shook me to the core for the better was Isabelle Wilkerson’s book Caste. I think every educated American should read this book and be horrified at our past and strive to do better. The book is so well written it made me think differently. I feel like it elevated my life and soul with a desire to be a better human, and to stay vigilant of hateful behaviors and mindsets and stand up for what is right.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?
There are quite a few but overall, I once heard, “Staying as you are, isn’t the same as being who you are.” This is so simple but profound. In many ways, we create identities that feel like us and at the end of the day the best way we get the most out of our lives and contribute to our greater society is through reflecting on ourselves and changing the things that may be holding us back.
I encounter this attitude sometimes when I coach people, at first they insist they don’t need to change, but, when it comes down to it, if they are open, they can and will change.
It is this quote that reminds me that I need to continue to get better and hone my interpersonal skills as well as other skills. It is a line that helps me put things in perspective.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
I recently graduated with my Master’s in Positive Psychology, so lots of exciting things are happening! I am writing a book based on my Capstone Project. For my final project, I created a program, which I am rolling out now in companies. This coaching program helps employees create internal states of engagement. Current work on employee engagement is about how the employer needs to engage the workers, or even how a leader needs to engage the workers. What we are doing is leagues ahead of what is done now. We partner with organizations and run programs that help the actual employee to create their internal states of engagement, so no matter what they are doing whether it is in the company or outside of the company we are teaching them how to be engaged people, not just employees.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. Can you briefly tell our readers a bit about why you are an authority about Emotional Intelligence?
As I talked about earlier, I identified early in my career that my lack of my own emotional intelligence (and that of my managers) led me to focus on gaining expertise in emotional intelligence. Learning about how it benefits our lives. I thought emotions were something to hide except for happiness and joy. I was never taught about emotions until I had to recover from severe depression. I also didn’t know about the direct correlation between emotions and mental health. It sounds crazy to say that because we see it everywhere in social media, as taking points in conversations, and in headline news. I see this conversation as being relatively recent. When I started in Leadership Development I had heard about emotional intelligence and haven’t stopped since. I have read almost every book about it, and I am certified in several different tools and assessments that I use every day with my clients.
For years, I have studied and read the research regularly and analyzed the benefits of the different models. I am always working to learn more about emotions in general. I have read thousands of books and articles on emotions, neuroscience, and emotional intelligence. Nowadays we have the amazing work of so many researchers who have helped us understand emotional health and wellbeing.
Through study, certification, personal application, and working with hundreds of leaders and companies helping develop their emotional intelligence I have theoretical knowledge of emotional intelligence and more importantly practical and applicable knowledge of how to develop emotional intelligence.
For the benefit of our readers, can you help to define what Emotional Intelligence is?
There are many definitions of emotional intelligence, for me the simplest one is, “The ability to understand your own emotions and the emotions of others to aid in good decision-making.” Ultimately, emotions affect our decisions, behaviors, and performance. Our emotions are unconscious as much as they are conscious, having a rich vocabulary of emotions helps develop our wellbeing. In fact, studies have even shown significant correlations between emotional vocabulary and emotional granularity and the quality of your mental health. This is something I feel like I experienced firsthand. When I had a poor vocabulary, and I didn’t understand what emotions felt like in my body, I had poor mental health. I suffered from extreme burnout, clinical depression and anxiety.
Today I have a better emotional vocabulary and with emotional granularity, I can name what I am feeling and when and that makes me feel more empowered to take the right actions.
How is Emotional Intelligence different from what we normally refer to as intelligence?
Intelligence as most of us know it or use it is how smart we are. How well we can understand, and make sense of things. Each emotional intelligence model has different (but very similar) competencies associated with emotional intelligence.
With our emotions, many of us haven’t the first clue of what they are trying to tell us. Emotions speak to us differently. They tell us when we are in alignment with our values, talents, and/or motivations. Can you feel the difference between sorrow and rage in your body? Do you know where they sit? Do you know if they have a temperature or a weight associated with each? Most people don’t even think just to observe. They judge it. I don’t like this feeling so they push it away. If you are brave enough to sit with it and explore you can learn alot. That is where the emotional granularity comes in. Emotions create patterns in our bodies. For example, fear and excitement can often feel similar in our bodies.
Knowing yourself and using the right language matters, to the decisions you make. If you feel scared about speaking in public or doing a presentation you may decide to opt out, missing a chance to be visible in your company. Whereas if you note that that feeling is unbridled excitement that you need to reign in you may just need to do a quick lap up and down steps to relieve that feeling and feel more in control, thus allowing you to use your emotions to help boost your career.
Emotions are information. They allow us to know that something is important and that we need to pay attention. For example, we may have anxiety over losing our job. Maybe a person has a sick child and needs to pay the bills. The anxiety serves to remind us that we need to keep in mind the health of that child and can even spark us to think of alternative ideas to pay the bills.
So in short the typical intelligence we talk about is how smart you are, and can you retain, recall and comprehend. Emotional Intelligence is about understanding your (and others) humanity.
Can you help explain a few reasons why Emotional Intelligence is such an important characteristic? Can you share a story or give some examples?
There are so many reasons emotional intelligence is important. When a person lacks the “emotional” information to make a decision it often harms themselves or other people. For example, I have worked in plenty of companies where the management made decisions and did not take into account the emotional climate of the workers, which made it miserable to work, employees quit, and then they don’t have enough resources to complete work. That company might overpay just to get people in, only to have them leave a few months later.
When we disregard people and how they feel we (intentionally or unintentionally) create ill will, the feeling of them not being cared for or valued, so they are more prone to “hurt” the company namely quiet or loud quitting, taking more time off well at least as much as they can, take more sick days, take up a second full-time job on the company’s dime (this happens all the time) thus giving little to no energy to their current role, or even going as far as stealing, embezzling or breaching security in the company.
A cyber security safety training I took, it said the number one reason for data breaches in companies is disgruntled employees (past and current employees). All of these issues are about the state of the heart and emotions. The best leaders work to harness the best emotional states.
Would you feel comfortable sharing a story or anecdote about how Emotional Intelligence has helped you in your life? We would love to hear about it.
Yes. Absolutely. I would say the lack of emotional intelligence led me to a deep dark place in my career and my life. I wasn’t listening to myself, I was drowning deeper and deeper in an abyss of unpleasant emotions and letting other people’s emotions take me down as well and I didn’t know it. It was because I wasn’t listening to myself, I was following someone’s dream that was planted in me. It wasn’t my dream. I wasn’t great at finance, I was great at people. My emotions came up but I shoved them down, with nights out, laughter and friends, and worst of all alcohol. It was a cultural part of living abroad and being in finance. I wasn’t even much of a drinker but somehow I managed to shove my feelings down, so deep until like a buoy they popped up one day and it was bad. It was then I was diagnosed with a deep depression. I was ignoring how I felt. When I found emotional intelligence it was like a lightbulb switched on. Why did no one ever explain how important your emotions are? Why are they not teaching this now? Once I deepened my understanding of my emotions and what they are trying to tell me I understand myself better, my decisions, and why I am making them, and more crucially others.
Earlier in my career if someone criticized me or said something I didn’t like that hurt me I would write them off, ignore them, and keep making the same mistakes, which meant I made no progress in my credibility with the other person. I didn’t create better relationships it made the working relationship worse. I see that now. And that is a hard thing to admit to myself. Now when I am criticized, yes it still hurts, but I acknowledge the hurt, and the unjustness of the situation, I listen for what could be true for me and them and then ask questions. The key in my mind now is not to ignore the feeling but to sit with it, understand what it is trying to say, and then show the other person that they are heard and I will try my very best to do something different if something needs to change. We need to have the wisdom to know when to take the right action and decision to make our relationships better. If I can I will, and if we can’t I will sit with that and learn something from it. Our emotions are a very personal way to get information about ourselves and what is important to us.
Can you share some specific examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help a person become more successful in the business world?
Self-awareness can make a difference. The more self-aware we are, the better decisions we make, and the clearer we can see perspective in the situation. Three behaviors are measurable in the competency of self-awareness; 1. Understand the impact their behavior has on others. 2. Is aware of their strengths and limitations. 3. Ask others for feedback on their leadership.
If any leader can embrace these three behaviors, they will see a transformation in their relationships. Some people may do one or two, but all three can increase your credibility, enhance your brand, and increase your influence.
I coach leaders all the time, and I think this is the number one reason people hire me because they have a leader in their company who has no idea about the impact their behavior has on others. I think they get the feedback and dismiss it for several reasons. The first reason is, like myself, they don’t like it and they don’t think it is true or that it has value.
Second, they don’t have a good relationship or value the relationship with the person who gave it to them. Three, they are too stressed and anxiety-induced to be present and hear the information. Four, again like my younger self, they don’t have emotional intelligence. They don’t see value in emotions or other people’s emotions. And for this reason alone I think they reeks havoc on the quality of most people’s relationships. When we truly listen and care about other people’s feelings we don’t act recklessly with our words and behaviors.
I almost have too many examples of leaders I work with who start to embrace these top three behaviors and start to see instant changes. I worked with an executive of a medium-sized consulting company, and he was great at what he did. The company was growing and thriving but he was at a standstill with his staff. No one was listening to him, he felt like he was at a stalemate every time there was a meeting, more conflict, and disgruntled grumbles throughout the grapevine. He was doing his best and yet he felt so hopeless. He also showed up with a lack of understanding of how his words and actions weren’t congruent, causing much distrust and stress to his employees. He knew what his strengths were but had no idea of his limitations, so instead of working to his strengths and hiring the right people for his limitations, he tried to do everything himself. Again, this causes so much distress and undermines people’s roles. When we did a 360 feedback to ask about his leadership he had no idea about any of this. He was driving with a blindfold on. Once he got quality feedback he was able to take more informed actions, he was able to create higher levels of trust, and most importantly say to his employees ‘I hear you and this is my plan to address these issues.’ He followed through and took the actions and created an even more profitable business, with higher levels of productivity and trust. That is what business is about profitability, and when people work well together and can trust each other it naturally leads to higher levels of safety, trust, productivity, and profitability.
Can you share a few examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help people have better relationships?
The leaders I coach deeply care for the people within their organizations and teams. When they lack the awareness of how their behaviors come across, it can sometimes be devastating to hear, and truly learn how people perceive their behaviors.
One example of this is with a woman who was a senior leader. She spent every waking moment at her job, helping guide the team and making sure that all the projects were moving forward in her fast-paced chaos work environment. She constantly struggled with guilt from not being there for her children and giving everything to her work. When she was pulled into her manager’s office and made aware of how her stressful behaviors were affecting the team, and how her “guiding” was seen as micromanaging, she was devastated. She loved the company, loved the work, and gave it her everything and for her team members to complain about her she felt so betrayed. When we worked together we were able to get high-quality feedback for her. This is something I think most leaders lack, high-quality feedback that she can do something about.
Through our emotional intelligence tool, we were able to pinpoint each exact behavior that was a point of contention with her team.
She was able to go back and ask them quality questions and learn from the feedback. Being able to take that feedback and make it actionable instantly changed her relationship with her team, peers, and senior leadership. She got feedback, asked questions, and took action on what she believed would give her the greatest impact on her environment. An example of one behavior she took action on was, “Notices inappropriate behavior in others and responds effectively.” Some inappropriate incidents happened on her team and she was not holding people accountable, and this action happening more than once broke trust with the team. When a leader is given high-quality feedback, and an opportunity to work towards making a better environment and support, amazing transformations can happen. It can bring distant team members together!
Can you share a few examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help people have more optimal mental health?
What I find is that many of us need to work on our emotional vocabulary and identify what we experience emotionally. It would be developing our emotional health. This is a skill that can quite frankly save your life! A multitude of studies have revealed a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and mental health disorders, the most dominant being anxiety and depression. Research shows that there is a correlation between having a rich emotional vocabulary emotional granularity and fewer mental health issues. Specifically, good emotional intelligence was found to protect against these diagnosed conditions.
Last year I worked with a leader who either felt good or bad. His ability to distinguish between emotions was limited. Needless to say, he experienced high anxiety, lots of fear, frustration, and anger. His lack of awareness of his feelings was causing him to make poor decisions at work, and be quick to anger when challenges or problems came up and this was causing a big morale problem within his organization. Also, his lack of awareness of his own emotions was not hidden from those around him. They wondered why he was so angry all the time. He didn’t see that in himself, he just thought other people weren’t as smart as him and couldn’t keep up. His perpetual anger and frustration caused him to miss out on promotions, caused him to not get a good night’s rest, took a toll on his physical health, and worse caused problems at home with his wife and family. He realized he had a problem but he didn’t know what it was and how to fix it. Together we started with high-quality feedback and started to increase his emotional vocabulary naturally. We worked on self-awareness, naming what exactly was happening and it turned out it was a skill gap. He needed to learn how to speak up in a way that others would understand what he needed. The anger got in the way of his communication. Once he became more mindful of his emotional world he realized that the anger he was experiencing was telling him to ask for something he needed. Being curious and having insights into his emotional world allowed him to ask questions to others in a way that they may have their insights. He transformed from that point on. He slept better at night, he decided that he needed to have a gym routine to move out any additional stress he was experiencing, so he lost weight in the process, which was a bonus benefit. He built better relationships with those around him, they stopped avoiding him. He even created a better relationship with his wife and kids, which made him happier. Simply, by becoming aware of what he was experiencing and how it was affecting his environment he was able to make the appropriate changes to his environment.
Ok. Wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. Can you recommend five things that anyone can do to develop a greater degree of Emotional Intelligence? Please share a story or example for each.
- Name it and tame it — Identify your emotions at different point throughout the day. If you are stressed out, don’t make an excuse like, ‘Oh I didn’t have coffee yet.’ Say wow, I feel stressed. Like my client above, start working on your emotional vocabulary. Get to know the nuance of the plethora of emotions that you have. How does ‘annoyance’ feel different from ‘frustration? How does ‘joy’ feel different from ‘surprise’? Understanding your emotions and developing your emotional help can help you work through your challenges with greater clarity allowing you to make better decisions, preserve relationships, and have more options.
- I would suggest instead of ‘I am [insert emotion]’ say ‘I am experiencing [insert emotion].’ Words matter. Identity matters and the more identity you put in your feelings, in many cases it could be damaging to your mental health. I have had clients who say, “I am anxious. I have always been this way and it won’t ever change”. I reply, “You’re right, it won’t change if you keep saying it that way. But aren’t you here to working with a coach to change?” In most cases, I don’t know many people who want to stay anxious with everything they do. I invite them to reflect on how they say what they are feeling. If they can change it to, “I am experiencing anxiety because I am unsure if I will have a job at the end of the month right now, but it will pass once I start networking again with old colleagues.” Then the anxiety can’t stick, it has no hold over your day, week month, year or life. Please note this is one simple way you can relieve anxiety. For someone who may have an anxiety disorder they can use Mental and Emotional Release and other forms of therapy, this is just an example.
- Ask for feedback: Make safe ways for people to give you feedback so they don’t feel like there can be retribution. If they do not give you feedback, that is also very telling. When receiving feedback from others, be thankful, ask questions about it even if you don’t agree, and show them how you are taking action to change whatever needs to be addressed. There is nothing worse than someone asking for feedback and nothing changing. What is the point? Ask your company if you do 360 feedback or if you have the trust of your team, in 1:1s ask, “What can I do differently, more of or less of as your manager.” 100% of my clients always get 1 gem of insight when they have an Emotional Intelligence 360 review. For one client they realized the problem wasn’t with their manager or team it was with their peers. This person felt like they were on an island in the company and didn’t feel connected to others. Their peers also noticed that they mentioned that this person never asked for their peer’s opinions, never notices when someone needs support responds effectively with peers, and never, Acknowledges the views and opinions of other peers. These three simple actions changed his relationship with them once he started actively asking for their input. The leadership was noticing, they were impressed with his commitment to his projects and hearing other opinions on it. It was so simple for him to do but without feedback, he would have never known.
- Analyze your strengths and limitations — Many people I work with identify as people pleasers or high achievers, which means they want to win, and want people to like them. Those are excellent qualities but not to the detriment of the leader. Knowing what you are not good at saves yourself and others lots of frustration. Working with a leader she realized she was not good at the execution, yet somehow she was always involved in the execution of the projects. She was micromanaging and doing it badly. When we realized that was not her strength and that she needed to have someone on her team who did that, a huge sigh of relief came from her. Not only did she not like doing it causing her to be stressed, but it drained her energy and it took her team more time to fix things than if she had trusted them to do it. Knowing your limitations I believe is equally as powerful as knowing your strengths. Ask yourself, “What activity drains me? What do I not like doing? Do I have strong starting energy, maintaining energy, or closing energy?” Your motivation and natural energy flow will help you determine your limitations and interests. Pay attention to your energy and be a part of a group/team of people where you all complement each other’s strengths and limitations.
- Learn about your explanatory style — I work with plenty of leaders who believe they are optimists but have negative explanatory styles. Your explanatory style will either detract or empower yourself and others to complete deadlines. Studies showed that sports teams with a negative explanatory style lose more often than those that have a positive explanatory style. This is a game changer to your internal self-talk and to how you approach motivating others. Your language can make someone completely shut down or go the extra mile. I worked on this with a leader and we discovered his pattern of motivation was more threatening than he thought. His team did the minimum required to not get threatened by him, but that is not the kind of team culture he wanted to cultivate so learning his explanatory style helped him realize when he needed to be more optimistic when working with his team. This was a big success for him with team morale.
Do you think our educational system can do a better job at cultivating Emotional Intelligence? What specific recommendations would you make for schools to help students cultivate Emotional Intelligence?
Yes, I think we can always have more informed social and emotional health classes in school. But more powerful than that, I believe our best educational system is ours as parents.
Parents need to work on their own emotional health. This is one reason I love working with leaders, is because most of the people I work with are parents and the insights they get from their emotions, also translate to their home lives.
We as parents need to have the courage to show our children when they are wrong and correct those mistakes at the moment. I can think of some readers who might say, “That would be making our kids too soft.” and I vehemently disagree with that. We already have a global crisis of disengagement exactly because we are not in touch with our emotional health, which directly affects our mental health. Because of working on my emotional health, and working every day with 5–10 people on their emotional health, they are happier and more fulfilled people.
As a parent, I think it is powerful to say to a child, “Mommy yelled at you to stop because I was really afraid you would get hurt. And seeing you hurt scares me. I am sorry I yelled. Let’s find a better way for the future so I don’t have to yell” Then follow up with, “How did you feel when I did that?” We can learn so much from our children and we have to be brave enough to show them that we make mistakes and share how we feel when we make mistakes. This is one of the hardest things to do as a parent. I practice this with my children, and their vocabulary and coping skills I believe are far more advanced than their peers. Keeping feelings in and bottling it up doesn’t work, I tried that already. It only leads to a mental health crisis and worse.
Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would love to start a revolution of the heart. I believe that the youth also want and need that. It is not to say that everything is mushy and gooshy and toxic positivity. It would be having the courage to learn about our emotional selves. Have the courage to care about people and show compassion. Finally, dare to take on developing our younger leaders. This would be very difficult and very doable. I feel like that is my revolution daily. I work on my own heart, I help other people and I have to remind myself when I come across a stranger who isn’t as emotionally intelligent that through my actions and responses, I can model emotional intelligence. I see this work as an act of courage for all who endeavor in it.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂
Brene Brown hands down. I think she brings something so refreshing to the 21st century. She is not only a researcher but also a practitioner. Her work is so pivotal to how we relate to each other and points to so many ways we can do better, without shaming us for not doing better. I refer to her books and work all the time and I believe that we are lucky to have such an amazing scholar in this time.
I would also love to connect with Daisaku Ikeda. Unfortunately, he passed away in late December 2023, but he is an eternal leader of world peace. His thoughts on leadership, courage, adversity, friendship, and everything in between have also been a foundational aspect of the work I do with others.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They can always reach out to me on LinkedIn or through my website. We have lots of LinkedIn Lives happening and I am currently working on a series of videos for my upcoming book.
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity.