Building Emotional Intelligence through the Power of Neurocoaching with Dr. Dan Docherty

I don't want to offend anybody listening to us, but I think as leaders and coaches we get so busy or the mask of busyness that we get lazy. We don't have a structured way of thinking about how do we navigate conversations. Our little slice of the world is help leaders have situational conversations with more consistency, more intentionality, with an approach that might add fuel to their race car in order to create a flourishing coaching climate.

Foreign welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Welcome back to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Today's guest is someone who's redefining leadership from the inside out. Dr. Dan Dougherty is the President of BrainTrust, a professor at Miami University and a PhD in Organizational Behavior. With 20 plus years spanning boardrooms and classrooms, he's on a mission to make leadership more human and more effective. In this episode, Dan shares how emotional intelligence is declining in today's hyper connected world and what to do about it. We also go into the field of neuro coaching that he's created that can help leaders create a coaching climate where performance and well being raised rise together. Finally, we discuss how successful leaders coach the plan, not the goal, especially in high stress moments. Stay till the end where Dan shares a powerful practice around shared vision that can really unlock flourishing not just at the company level, but between for every manager and every team member at that company. This one's a masterclass in turning research into real change. So let's dive right in. Hi dear Dan, it is so lovely to have you here with us on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining and sharing just the unbelievable work you've been doing in the world.

Thank you Ashish. I'm honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

So there is so many places, Dan that we could go. You know you are a neuro coach. You do a lot of work around neurobaby selling, right? You do tons around emotional intelligence. That's kind of how we initially met. So maybe we start with emotional intelligence and then like tell us around, you know, what are some things you are. You have a new book coming out so I want to delve into that topic a little bit with you, but let's start With a little bit of a story around. What. Give us a little bit of your origin story that has gotten you to the kind of work you're doing now.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you again. Thanks for having me. I'll start with this because I'll make the origin story kind of short, and I'm going to angle it on a pivot point. You know, I think anyone listening to us knows that there's these pivot points you have in. In life. Some. Some people call them tipping points. You know, I had one of those tipping points that I like to share in these types of venues. You know, at 47 years old, Ashish, you know, where, you know, I was, I was running down the C suite track and was running down the private equity track. And after, you know, some success and some failures in that domain, the reality was, is the stress of that was literally going to kill me.

Yeah.

And, you know, with chest pains and not sleeping well and all that good stuff, and I realized that I. That there was a different path for me, and so I went down. So I didn't know what that looked like, you know, and hopefully people are listening, are like, wow, you know, man, I might be at a stage where I'm not really sure what the plan is or the path, but they know something needs to be different, you know, and so I was very fortunate to be in life sciences and kind of grow up in. In neuroscience. And I want to make sure I'm always clear with this. I'm not a bench neuroscientist. There's a big difference for me. I've worked with amazing bench neuroscientists. This is about applied neuroscience for me. Similarly, when we talk about emotional intelligence, like, there's the. There's the research behind it and then there's the application behind it. And so we. We try to really focus our efforts on can we take the complex and make it. Make it digestible, but more importantly, have it activate. So going through this journey, you know, when I was under all that stress, I. I took a hard turn, you know, and decided to go back to school while I had two kids in private college. So that was against everybody's. Everybody told me, no, don't do it. You know, and so. But I did it. And here's. Here's where I think our worlds kind of collide a little bit. I was very fortunate to go to Case Western Reserve University. I was interested in going to an R1 school, and I had the chance. And I. I talk about him a lot, but I had the Chance to meet and to have as my dissertation chair. Richard Boyatsis.

Yep.

You know, who wrote Primal Leadership, wrote Helping People Change, just recently launched a book called the Science of Change. And. And I saw neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and leadership collide like. Like I had never seen before. And I'm like, that is why I'm here. You know, and that took me down this incredibly scary but also amazing path, Ashish, where I'm like, there's a way that I can make, and I hope not only myself, but the people I'm around have more impact. I know you have a similar mission and vision for what you're doing. Like, we were talking about this before the show, you know, making an impact. And if we make an impact, there's still a lot of things that people know, maybe theoretically, but yet there's certain things that aren't changing. Engagement levels aren't really changing. Turnover rates are getting. They're. They're flipping faster. We've got multiple generations in the workforce. People are still leaving because of their leader. There's a problem of practice still. And I think you and I align kind of on a path that there. There might be some ways that we can activate these amazing concepts not only more efficiently, but more continuously and intentionally.

Yeah. So look, absolutely. You know, when I, after my 17 years at McKinsey, then started Happiness Squad, right. It was all around the concept of democratizing flourishing. Flourishing. I define as, you know, I use it a little bit synonymous, much to some disdain of researchers around well being. They'll say, I use it synonymous with well being. I use it synonymous with happiness. Right. And not as an emotion, but as a state. And yes, there are different constructs, but I always say, listen, when it comes to practice, they share so much of the same things. Does it really matter? Given, you know, most of us are, you know, 70% of people are not engaged. You know, meaning is such a big part of it. 40, 60% experience stress. There's so many people who are lonely. I'm like, it doesn't matter. Like, to me, I focus on the practice. And when I started Happiness Squad, really, it was all about, like, you bridging the gap between knowing and doing, you know, most of the things we know that can help us flourish individually and help get the most out of our organizations. You know, we have. We know. We know what that is. Right? It's. And most of them, by the way, have common sense. Right. They're completely uncommon practice.

That's it.

Right.

Yeah. And that's exactly. That's exactly. I talk about this a lot. That was one of the things that Dr. Boyatzis and I had a conversation when my kind of defending my dissertate that stage of the journey. And I said, you know, a lot of this is common sense. And that was, I think it was actually in my final dissertation deck. And he, you know, and he, because he very adamantly said to me that we need to carry this message forward. You've chosen to be around this environment, including Chris Laszlo's work at Case Western on sustainability and flourishing. You know, you've been, you know, and you got David Cooper Ryder that came out of that tree relative to appreciative inquiry and all these amazing things. He's like, we have to be the carriers of that. Because he said exactly what you said, Ash. What is common sense isn't common practice. And so I think we align on that platform for sure.

Yeah. So that's what we do. That's what I'm excited. So, so let's delve into that realm of it and let's start with emotional intelligence and break it down for me, like what from your perspective, you know, does. What are we. What are the comp. What is emotional intelligence and what does the research say are the ingredients? Let's start from there and then let's talk about how do we get it into practice.

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, in the, I've been doing this type of work for almost seven years now and I'll, I'll have leader after leader and I bet you've seen this both at McKinsey and beyond. If I, if I, if I stand up a hundred people and just say, hey, define emotional intelligence. Talk to me through the four major domains and then the 12 competencies and how those competencies actually lead linked to the competencies that are important for your job. Can you do that? And I'll get crickets. But yet back in 1995, 96, you know, it was all over the, it was all over the press was all over time that this may be the most important skill the World economic forum in 20, you know, in the late, you know, around 2020. So this is like one of the top. I remember that you have to have, right?

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. And so if, so if you, if you, if you, if you look from Daniel Goleman's perspective, and I'm big fans of obviously Daniel Goldman's work. He's worked, you know, he and Richard Boyas have worked to work together for decades as well as Travis Bradbury has some amazing work and they talk about like emotional intelligence being this capacity. And I love the word capacity because you have to have room for it, for the, you know, like you talked about happiness, for the recognition of like not only our own feelings and emotions, but of those of others. So like, how does that intrinsically motivate us? How do we manage those emotions effectively, not only in ourselves? And that's kind of like the first side of it, you know, you have. That's why I love self awareness and also, you know, love self management of emotion because the, the heartbeat, the heartbeat. And again, people will call them different things, but you and I both know that on the sell side, if we don't have awareness of those things that impact our performance, the way we communicate, the way we show up, then we have, you know, basically might as well be like a horse in the stall, you know, we've got the blinders on and we don't see it. And we can only be fortunate enough to have other people say, you know, you might not be aware of how anger or frustration or that emotion is showing up and you're very fortunate if you have those people in your corner. But the higher, the more you increase your self awareness, then we can get into the self management before we start talking about how it impacts others, you know, So I always tell people, just think self first, you know, we're biologically wired anyway, so. But self awareness, self management and then cross over to social awareness. Because when I say to people, talk to me about emotional intelligence, the word that'll come out of their mouth is empathy. I'm like, okay, cool. Empathy is actually a competency of emotional intelligence. But where does it fit? Well, it fits in the impact of others relative to being able to feel what others feel and having empathy. And then ultimately, as you and I know, the next level of that is compassion, you know, in order to inform what. And it's kind of like if you're drawing a line down, I want everybody to think about this. If you think about the impact of others, what does it solve at the bottom quadrant? Well, it's all about relationship management, you know, and that might be at times where you, you know, you might say, well, there's so much in relationship management, you know, but if we could just, I believe Ashish, if we could say, wow, you know what you want practical tips? Journal your emotions. Our Apple Watch set up that you can log your emotions at any, at any different intervals of the day. They build it into the health app. It has to mean something, you know, and so how are we Feeling in those moments. If it, like, to your point on happiness, happiness is awesome, but not just happiness, but what's the intensity of happiness and how is that intensity aligned to the situation? The more we get our arms around that, the better we are. And I'll, I'll. And I'll kind of end this part before we get into competencies and things. There's a lot of research that supports. And all you gotta do is walk through an airport nowadays or be in your car and they'll be like, hmm, is IQ going up? Generally speaking, IQ has been going up over the years. That's great. But we kind of. We kind of got what we got, you know, but when it comes to emotional intelligence, a lot of experts, and you know this, you're one, you've seen it, that we believe that emotional intelligence is not actually improving, but actually going the other direction. Which means we've got a lot of work. We got a lot of work to do for the sages that did all the work in this space for decades and decades. And my last thing I'll say is I really believe it's time to put kind of like a flag in the ground and stop calling these things the soft skills. I don't get it. I don't like it. You know, we're. We, we are built as humans and we are complex systems. And because we're complex systems, the reality is they're the real skills. They're going to keep you at the table at oftentimes. Well, it will derail other leaders and, and you know what, And I'll say this, and for myself, I've had those moments. I had one where I couldn't control my emotions very well just this past week. So it's never done either. We're all a constant work in motion.

Yeah. You know, there's so much to unpack there. But I love, love the, you know, starting with your horse story of the blinders. I'm reminded of this story, right? It's a. It's kind of this ancient Zen Buddhist monk story. So these concepts go back thousands of years, right? And there's a story of this man who is just tearing down this road on a horse, right? And there's like. I mean, there's. The road is crowded. It's in India, right? The road is crowded. There's always people on the road. And like, people are like ducking left and right to kind of escape this galloping horse. And this one man, as he kind of ducks out of the way of the horse, says, hey, where Are you going? And the person says, don't ask me, ask the horse. Right, yeah. And our emotions are like that, you know, because they originate from the limbic part of the brain. Right in that moment we lose our cognitive ability significantly. And so anger is like that. Frustration, sadness. Instead of becoming the rider that can guide the horse to get where we need to or even use that powerful emotion for impact, we are the one who get carried and end up doing things that we will regret later. And so this notion of notice, and I think that's why in our nine part framework, I put awareness at the heart of the sunflower. Because you can't master your emotions unless you are aware of first noticing that this thing is coming on over time, exploring where does the source of this lie rather than the external world that you might think is to blame for your emotion and then being able to work with it. Right. So I love that you started as well, right. From the research on, it's first about knowing, then about yourself regulating, then it's about from that place recognizing the other. What's the social awareness, what's happening, how are you perceived by the others. And then through that obviously, you know, activating many of the other pieces again, something we've known for thousands of years, something that has been researched quite extensively and now forgotten, we move on to other things. You know, we know these things work.

Yeah. Real quick, there's an amazing quote to your point about we've known this for thousands of years, you know, and Aristotle was talking about that, you know, being angry, it's just, that's easy, you know, but, but to be angry with the right person at the right degree, at the right time for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not easy. So they, you know, we were talking about, to your point, Ashish, we were talking about this is, this has been around forever. And it's interesting still with leaders I'd be like, emotional intelligence, a new concept. And they'd be like, wow, I don't really have my hands around it.

Yeah.

And still kind of new. I'm like, no, what you're talking about self regulation and self management of your emotions. It's been forever in the history of time and it's never going away. Yeah. The other part I just want to build upon for our, for people listening to us. Is that like what you talked about in the limbic, the Olympic Center? I don't know that most leaders fully appreciate the power of what you just said there. Because if you really think about it, that is where that is what activates decision making. And then we'll, we'll rationalize it or we'll justify it based on either the neocortex or wherever you want to, you know, wherever you want to. Kind of talk about our computer processor, but emotions sit at the center. Our whole fight or flight mechanism, our whole processing of emotions. When I, you know, when you really dig into the practicality of this and I know people will probably not like this word and you and I know it's still important. The word trigger sometimes is one that's a little sensitive to people. But if we really don't think about not only what is it inside that situation in order for us to be so fluent and fluency means movement, you know, and that movement of our emotions relative to like, ooh, I, I can either predict that it's going to come or I know myself so well that when it starts to come, I'm gonna, I'm gonna manage it, you know, and we have, and you and I know we have so many modes of communication now. Like it's not just like Dan and Ashish having a, a conversation across a coffee table, you know, now it's, it's still, it's the way we, we display those emotions, the feelings and emotions in our emails. And AI is not going to fix it all by saying, hey, give it a tone. That's this, you know, we still have to connect and communicate. And so human beings, in the work that you and I both do, it's so paramount that we think about how are we showing up in our text messages, in our emails, in our one on one conversations, on our virtual calls, on our live calls. Information is flowing so fast that this, this is a non negotiable.

It's a non negotiable. It's timeless and it is ever more needed. You know, that was the other thing you mentioned. If you're going in the airport, in the car, you hear about this notion that we are actually losing our ability here. And I just wanted to highlight and want to get your perspective because I completely agree with you. I think we are more emotionally dysregulated and every generation is actually more. But in particular all of us over the last 20 years, we are more emotionally dysregulated. And I think I pointed to two big things than in the research that I was doing when I was at McKinsey in all of my kind of readings. Right. I think the first is even in the last three months, friends, the level of volatility, uncertainty and complexity has just gone not 10x but exponentially. Right. In three days, many people's 401ks became 301ks with Liberation Day, right. Constant change. You know, whether you look at what's the impact, are there going to be tariffs? Are there not going to be tariffs? We launched a whole offering around this actually in a week because we knew how much of a shock this is to the system for people. So externally when volatility changes, we experience that in psychological threats and our bodies and brains respond in the same way. So number one, I think we have people running on adrenaline and cortisol, which means our limbic regions have never been on fire. More than ever this was the research where you know, when we looked at leaders, given the amount of information and given the amount of complexity, right that is out there, most of them, right. 70 to 80% of the time we are running on our sympathetic and in that moment our less ability to regulate our emotions because you know, we just don't even recognize back to back to back meetings, exhausted, drained. And then to further compound it, we are sleeping less, less and less. And the quality of sleep is worse because along the way we are numbing ourselves with alcohol, with tv. You know, we've built all these habits and sleep which is kind of one of the big circuit breakers towards getting more regulated. You know, the parasympathetic fight, you know that rests recovery digest system. So we looked at this research and I was like I can look at the level of in organizations, right? If you see more bad behavior, more toxic behavior, more reactive behavior, you can look at sleep patterns and how many hours are people sleeping and you can very clearly see the less the sleep, the more reactivity you see. And so I think it's almost like we've created this perfect storm. Like we run all day because of external environment on limbic and then we don't recover enough. So like it's just this never ending cycle. Which I think is my hypothesis for why we are actually getting more dysregulated. And as a result it's even more important to actually lean into this because if you don't do this, all the decisions we make are suboptimal. So I would love your perspectives on that.

Well, first of all I think you're right and it's not. And just. So anyway, listening to us is not just our opinion, but if you go to the National Institutes of Health you're going to find this cascade. Exactly what you just described Ashish beautifully actually is like when that, what is that situation when we're kind of running on this treadmill or hamster wheel continuously. And it's almost like a car that we're running the RPM so hot. And we're like. And eventually you're going to burn the engine out. And so. And there's no difference in the workforce with burnout as well, especially in Western culture, you know. And so one of the things is when you think about what is the situation actually, does that situation actually evoke hope, care, wellbeing? Does that situation evoke stress? Well, then you nailed it. It's like, and, And I really encourage everyone go. Not that anyone will do this, but you can go to the NIH and you'll see right inside there exactly what you just described. That sympathetic nervous system, that pathway, especially with adrenaline and cortisol, that is actually gonna drive your heart rate up, your blood pressure up, your sleep patterns are gonna get worse. You. When you stay on that. And, and I think the misnomer is that we think we fooled ourselves in the essence of I'm so busy that this stuff only impacts it at us at work. And then we can shut it down. And then when we go home, we're like magically able to turn the other way. And it's. And it's. And it's a myth. It's a lie, you know, and so when I. And just watch people when they go on vacation, when they start to slow down, their body's like high alert, like, whoa, whoa, what's going on? And they. And they get sick, you know, and so, and then, but the, but the cascading of that is we're saying as leaders all the time, well, we want people to be open, more creative, more innovative. We want all these things. Well, when you trigger the sympathetic nervous system and you overdrive that system, you're actually shutting all those mechanisms down. And you nailed it. It's a cycle. It's a, It's a vicious cycle. Now you flip it the other way and. And you kind of lean into like, the. What you call the parasympathetic nervous system. Then you're right. Then our friends, our friends, like oxytocin, our friends, like dopamine kind of come into the game. And then when they come into the game, what's interesting is that actually triggers more care, hope, and, well, being, happiness, I would say, as well. And creativity, innovation, and all that goes the other way. And those, that. That's another cycle. And what I always tell leaders, it's. It's not that the one cycle is so bad that you never Trick. You never have it. No, as a matter of fact, cortisol helps us focus. So it's not the enemy, but it's the enemy when it puts us into distress and overdrives the system, and then we can't control it. That impacts sleep habits, then it impacts our performance. All those things.

It's about.

It's about you gotta navigate these. We kind of call it the emotion coaster for fun. But you've gotta be able to navigate these pathways. And what I say to leaders when I'm speaking is some of them know that intuitively. They just. They're just really good at it. And. And I. And I mean this sincerely, but I'm. I'm in a. I'm an addict. It comes to this, and I teach this stuff, you know, so I'm an addict to busyness. You and I are doing this on a Saturday, you know, But I'm so. I'm a little bit of my own enemy. But because of that, it. It's increased my awareness to the fact that there's other people like me. And so even if you think it's an intuitive thing, can we make it more intentional? And the only way you do that is that it. It moves our awareness. To your point, what you just said on that heartbeat, again, our awareness has to go up. So I tell people, I'm like, you want a really practical tip? I'll say it one more time. I said it a minute ago. Journal emotions over a consistent period of time. My MBA students, if there are any of them, are listening, they don't like it when I have them do it. But it's always the thing that come. Not always. Mostly the thing that comes back says, wow, that was really insightful. I've noticed certain kind of behaviors, certain habits, as you said, at certain times of the day, and how I. How I schedule meetings, how I show up, how I take productivity breaks. Another thing in Western culture, be like, oh, that's. Can't do that. I'm like, well, you better, because it doesn't take your neural networks that long to reset. You can respond right. Exactly right. And I think people don't know it. And it's like, it doesn't take, like, hours, but it's like, oh, I'm so busy, Dan. I can't. I can't put in two to three kind of micro breaks in during the day. And I'm like, yes, you can.

We hope you're enjoying this episode and would love your help in spreading awareness and furthering our mission to help a billion People Rewire for Happiness, please consider leaving us a review and sharing this podcast with others in your personal and professional life who you feel could benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend and spread positivity. Also, check out Rewire, our proprietary offering to move you from knowing to doing. On the Happiness Squad website, www.happinesssquad.com. rewire uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to help you build happier habits in five minutes or less daily. Now back to the episode. Yeah, in fact, you know, that's, that's usually the third practice as part of the Rewire program we've designed, which is all around habit formation for high performance, I ask people, take one 5 minute break between 8 to 12. You can choose somewhere 10 to 11 to do that. Take one 5 minute break between 1 to 5 and take a 10 minute break between 12 to 1. Have lunch, go for a walk, be outside in the sun and just Notice how those 20 minutes leave you at the end of the day. Start your energy, look at where you are, baseline, end of day energy, and then do this and see what shifts for you. Right? Just do that and see what shifts for you and you'll notice you have more energy for when you go home to be with your kids, with your family. Right? Things that everybody would say, I prioritize over work, but yet we show up, we actually don't. Right? And that's so sad for me because we say almost everybody I talk to prioritize family over work, but we give the best part of us from the morning 9 till 5 to work. So yeah, you prioritize family, but you're not leaving the best off you for them. You're leaving the best off you for work. And actually showing up emotionally dysregulated, stressed, anxious, frustrated, because, you know, our workplaces have become places of suffering, not places of flourishing. We want to create workplaces where people leave more energized, more excited, talk about the impact they had, the relationships they've built, the work they did to be proud. But our kids don't hear that. They hear about, oh, this guy did this and I'm so tired. And that's what our kids hear, right? So I think it's a big part of. And that's the reason we do the work I do and the reason you do the work you do, Dan. So talk to me a little bit about you've been doing this work for a while. Bring it to life for me in terms of a Story of a Client. It could be a company or it could be an individual who you really helped not just teach this, but helped them practice it so they became more emotionally intelligent. What was that process like and what became possible through that effort?

Yeah, let me, I'll back up a little bit and kind of get there. So I'll do it from a client's perspective. We had a client that called us a couple years ago, Ashish. And you know, if you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be consulting and teaching at a university, I'd be like, you're crazy. I'm a C suite person and that's what I do. But as you, as you and I both know, when you find a passion for something and mine kind of sits at the higher umbrella, not just me, but our team at Braintrust, it sits at the higher level of, of impacting communication. So this company calls us and they said we have a little bit of a turnover issue with our managers. Our managers and also the turnover downstream with their directs and we just don't feel like they're having conversations that are having the impact day in and day out and running this relatively large organization. And ironically they were in actually the, the CNS field so they were in the psychiatry field. So I'm like, well if anybody's going to call BS on the science, it's going to be this place. But as we, but the what the journey we took them on was we will take teams through journeys a little bit like you do on the neuroscience, behavioral psychology. Really it's the why if somebody looked at that and says ooh, that's, that's informative as to why emotional intelligence, why the way I communicate, the order of how I communicate matters, then it becomes a communication issue. And I was, I was amazed recently reading both from Grammarly and Harris poll put a, put a some research out. I don't know if it's any good. I found it fascinating though but that they, they dollarized the impact of pervasive communication problems at like $1.2 trillion and that like 8, 8 out of 10 leaders want better tools to communicate. So, so this company was really what they were saying to us is we've got an engagement issue, we have a productivity issue. We may have leaders that aren't as emotionally intelligent as we want, but at the higher level it's coming through the lens of communication which is really what we do. We're not a strategic consulting house, we're a skill based consulting firm. You know, and so we took them on this journey and here's the kind of the three big building blocks which is also the foundation of what we call neuro coaching and it's an approach to communication. I was really interested in the, in the dyadic level so the leader team member level which then as you and I both know also then impacts the team level. But we really leaned in on what I've learned through my journey on the power of shared vision and that that relative to the relational climate was critical in not only my doctoral research but in 20 plus years of research. Not the world isn't shared vision isn't new to the world but its impact on relational climate through values and vision both at the and we try to let our client look at it through the lens of not just the organization vision of values. Nobody will fight us on that Ashish. Right. Like you go to the website, you'll see vision, you'll see mission, you'll see values. Then they're like well if you say those do you live on? That's, that's a different conversation for a different day. But then when you go to the leader level, to the team member level, we want to, we equip them with them having more of an understanding of their own vision and their own value. So then they could go get that from every team member. That was our foundation and inside there and I'll get to EI in a second. Then we move them to like well then if you've got that vision piece you have to be aligned on the mission of where you're going. You can't ignore strategy and standards because people want it. They want standards with accountability. They really want it. That's not new. And then also you know, I'm a huge strength based person coaching from a strengths based lens. I'm certified in strengths from Gallup, I love it. And then, but strengths relative to the skills we call those kind of the three S's and then we move them to the third leg of the journey if you will which is really the heart of our work which is situational conversations of impact and they're built on the foundation of emotional intelligence and we use six Ps because maybe we're not all that creative. Ashish. I don't know. But your point earlier about we, we're really good at remembering threes and so if I help people, you know, purpose and perspective that drives the plan path like those first three P's perspective is about social awareness honestly. And I believe fundamentally the reason we put that kind of as the second box is that if if you really, if we could train ourselves to think of somebody else's perspective before our own, I think the world would be a better place. Now, all of that, all of that, and then you can measure it. That's the progress and identify problems and knock down those barriers in order to drive performance. And so I get them out of goal coaching and I get them into plan coaching because if you coach the plan, especially when you get under stress, which is an emotion, you can, when you have a plan, you can, you can focus on the plan rather than just focusing on the person or allowing the emotion to take over. And I saw like, stop coaching goals. Like, just stop. Actually the goals and outcome. Coach the plan relative to the perspective, relative to the purpose, aligned to the vision. It's like, it's not rocket science. Those aren't words that the world hasn't seen. And then what happens on the outside. And this is where I know you and I, where our world's collided. We share in this passion. If that were a formula, shared vision aligned mission, situational conversations of impact, what does it equal? A coaching climate where people can flourish and they can grow. And I want everybody to understand this because I'm really adamant about this. People will be like, oh, you come from a relational coaching tree, so you're soft. And I'm like, no, first of all, you're wrong, number one. That sounds a little harsh, but they're wrong. Relational coaching allows you. It's like an aperture, allows you to open up the lens so that I can coach you as transactionally as you need to, because I'm doing that in a structured way without the relationship. Good luck. And that's. And in the current generations, you'll lose them because they'll leave you. And you and I both know they'll leave you in less than three years, depending upon what generation you look at. Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they're not saying 40 years anymore. So everybody listening be like, well, is any of this relevant to us? As she and I were like, yeah, it is because they're not going to stay. They're going to go, yeah, no, the outcome of that real quick. I'm sorry, the outcome. I should probably give you the outcome. The outcome of that. They were with us two, three years and sorry, I interrupted there. They two to three years, their turnover rate from. Went from 25% to 4.

Amazing.

And it wasn't because we were brilliant. It was because they became brilliant, you know, and it's now the only way. That's. That's a Moment in time. And I'd love to tell you that. Yeah, well, that's now sustained years later. I, I don't know, it takes, you know, you and I both know, especially your great work when you, when you think about habits, you know, you have to have that awareness to understand the behaviors that form the habits. And they're really, really hard to break. But thank goodness for neuroplasticity, right?

I love that story for a couple of reasons, right. Usually when you have an attrition problem, people go to the classic, oh, maybe we're not paying them enough. Or maybe, you know, we need to think about, you know, we'll do all of the classics, right? Maybe, maybe there is an environment issue, et cetera, et cetera, or it's a skills issue. Let's just teach them how to like, you know, we need to help them have better goals. And, you know, maybe the goal setting is not. But I think where you went with, which I really, really love is let's start with the mission, vision, values. Right? Let's start with personally, what you. What are your values? Not just as an organization, but also as an individual for you, as a leader, and how do you authentically lead with that and how do you connect that with your team? Right. I think that alignment is so important. And then you also then went into it is about what I loved was, you know, conversations. We want to be able to improve the ability for conversations. I just had this podcast with Julian Miravel, whose all of his work is around positive communications. Right. He defines these six Rs, six different behaviors that can help us. But you're absolutely right that conversations of impact not had in the right emotional relational field are not conversations of impact. They're more like feedback that is met with a wall. It is not received reflected back. And if you do enough of it, you get frustrated and they leave. You don't actually get to impact. So I loved that fact that you actually took them on that journey from awareness and kind of really, you know, leading from that place, but then really building the skills and really investing in them around it. And yes, it took time. Right. It was not one workshop. That's the other thing so many companies do. Hey, Dan, why don't you come do a one hour workshop on emotional intelligence? Because that's what our people need right now.

Yeah. You and I both know this in both of our work. I think that's an important point. I would say that to anyone listening these things to get behavioral change, you know, there's what, 50 depending on the source. You look at over $50 billion a year spent in, in North America relative to leadership development. And you and I are both in the worlds that we come out of, we've watched and we've spent millions and millions of dollars in leadership development. But the reality is with behavioral change and things that we do in our company, and we're kind of mandate this for clients of ours is we do minimum of 3 to 6 month reinforcement coaching because we need to then get at the one on one level where they are and that's how. Because otherwise they're like, ooh, that's, that's interesting in a program. And I would tell learning and development leaders or C suite executives, whoever's listening to this is like you're wasting a lot of money when you look at programs. Not always. I mean it's interesting. You might get some immediate, immediate, immediate benefit. But if you want sustained change and growth, you got to really stick with it. The other thing you said that's brilliant that I want to make sure people pick up on is when you talked about positivity. You know what I love about when you get outside the four domains of emotional intelligence is, is depending upon again what tool you're using. You know, I'm a fan of the Emotional Social Competency Inventory. It's now owned and under the banner of Korn Ferry. That's the only way you can, you can get it. But it was developed by Dr. Boyatzis and Dr. Goldman. And positive outlook is one of the 12 major competencies inside self management. You know, and so that, so when people say so that, that how you internally visualize a situation relative to the outlook, you have triggers in a very interesting phenomenon called emotional contagion. And emotional contagion is so powerful, Ashish. And you know this because you see it every day in the work you do. Yeah, it's so powerful. You can bring a team up or you can bring them down. If you know what you're doing, you can do it like really fast. And it's not to manipulate people, but it's actually you're modulating neurochemistry in every conversation. And positivity is not something that again is warm and play. It's about outlook and the caring of emotional contagion before you move over to social awareness and relationship management. So you said that word positivity in there. And I want people to lose it because that's a critical self management competency. And competencies can be learned.

Yeah, it can be learned. And it's the foundation on which Anything else gets built and it's not toxic and it's not about ignoring what's the hard conversation we need to have. But if we create the foundation of what's good, right, we are actually basing it on something that can hold. Right? You can't build a house on a weak foundational structure. You just cannot. And anyway, so talk to me a little bit, you know, I want to switch a little bit from emotional intelligence to neurocoaching, right? And your new book that's coming out, talk to me a little bit, you talked a little bit about this with this client case study around neuro coaching. Anyway, but break it down for me and say, how is that different than regular coaching that many people do? And. Yeah, what are some of the key underlying tenets in there?

Well, you said, you said something that's really key early on. And again, it's another thing where you told me five years ago that I would be writing a book. And I co authored the book and co created Neuro Coaching with Jeff Bloomfield Field, my partner here at Brain Trust. And we realized again, I'm trained in my doctoral work. Is there a problem of practice? And if there's a problem of practice, what's the research questions around that? And then go into the stream and understand what's already there and can you add anything to the journey? So what we realized in that whole approach was at the foundation, you just called it the house. At the foundation is that power of shared vision. And I was just like, I want the world to understand that. And so I've had thousands of leaders now over the past seven years that when I would talk about values, and I was like, hey, just out of curiosity, if I lined up your eight or ten direct reports and asked you if you know their top five values and the story behind those values, could you tell me? And again, I get crickets. And I was like, well, listen. I said, and I look right at them with as much authenticity as I can and say, prior to me going down this path, I didn't know the values of my team members either. And I'm embarrassed about that. And so doing kind of walking through that journey, if we left them with nothing else, it's like, go understand the values in the story. And that's not new to me, it's not new to you, it's not new to the world. It just, it's. It's the practical tip, it's the intentionality of go do it. There's a lot of books, including mine, that have a list of values. Go do it, go do it, go do it. You know, go get it. First of all, self awareness, understand your own and then go get theirs and watch the amazing conversations that are going to happen that now becomes non negotiable. So that's kind of in the front piece, the aligned mission piece. You'll know this more at McKinsey than I ever did. I never thought of sheesh in a million years. And we added this aligned mission as the second building block almost two and a half years after we layered in the shared vision and the situational conversation piece because I thought nobody in the world is ever going to want me to workshop the, the impact of standards with accountability. And then all of a sudden one of our other clients grabbed me by the arm after training. He's like, I run a $2 billion business unit and our standards are not very clear. And I said, well, what's a standard? And I'm like, you know, if you're a Mike Tomlin fan, I'm, I grew up in Cleveland, live in Cincinnati. So I, I, I hate to say this but the, the dude wins and he's hasn't had a losing season, but he says the standard is the standard. Mike Shasheski from, you know, prior coach at Duke, an Olympic gold winning coach, you know, he says standards are non negotiable and they have to be lived lived. And so I never thought that standards so aligned mission actually came out of thing. I thought nobody's ever going to want me to like talk about strategy, standards or strengths. I'm like, nobody's going to want that. Of course they know that. So I don't always train that piece. But when they say it's like, can you imagine a world if we said Ashish and I are working together and we're in the happiness squad and we're partners together and we understand each other's values. We come from different cultures, different places, we understand the story. And then we align ourselves to the standards of excellence for what we're trying to do to make an impact in the world. And then we layer that in to the fluency of having situational conversations of impact. And one of the things that I'm pretty again now through my training and life experience, even more than my training is been drilled into my head is that I don't think a lot of leaders have an intentional way of having a conversation. But yet we say to them, go have great one on ones. Just go do it. I'm like, how do you navigate those one on ones? Because here's what I'm, you know, at my age now, I'm like, listen, if you have a framework that you use intentionally, go use it. You don't need mine. I don't care. Honestly, I care that you use something. I care that you think proactively ahead of time about. Think of the clarity of purpose into values. The purpose of, like, what are we talking about for 45 minutes on this podcast, into perspective, into great planning to make sure we're on or off the path. Measure the fire out of it, progress, align to the problems and performance. If you can do that quick. It's like a great quarterback that says, I know the playbook. I get to the line of scrimmage, I have to audible because I see the defense is different. Situational fluency. And I can adjust because it's backup in. I've run that play so many times, so many times. And I think honestly, and I don't want to offend anybody listening to us, but I think as leaders and coaches, we get so busy or the mask of busyness that we get lazy and we don't. We don't have a structured way of thinking about how do we navigate conversations. But in athletics or in the arts, I direct children's theater. So, you know, in the art, like my. To get little people to be able to do amazing things, you have to have the right vision, you have to have great conversations. You have to create a climate where they feel like they can flourish because they're. They're scared to death at 8 to 18 to get on a stage. And I just. So that is really neuro coaching, you know, and we didn't want to boil the ocean. What we did want to do is say, you know what, our little slice of the world, to get into the stream of other people that do amazing work in this field is help leaders have situational conversations with more consistency, more intentionality, with an approach that might add fuel to their race car in order to create a flourishing coaching climate. And that's the game, you know, And EI is an amazing amplifier, dampener of that whole continuum.

It's an key ingredient to be able to do right. So it's beautiful that you came from that. You built it on. You know, you said many people don't have. Yeah, they don't have the intentionality, or even if they do, they might lack the skills. I would actually add one level, one more element within that. And I'm sure you, you know, you see it all the time, even if you have the intentionality and if you have the skills, do you have the space and the time? Right? Are you creating the space and time with skills and with an intention to help the other person become the best version of themselves. Not as a way to like be frustrated and lay a frustration on them about you didn't do X and you didn't do Y, but really around and the intentionality of being able to help them maybe see something they didn't see before, be able to with intention understand from their perspective what's missing. Right. You might not actually get it and do it from a place where you set a healthy environment of positive regard and care for magic to happen. Right. If you can do that consistently time over time, over time where it becomes just that's how you operate, then I think magic happens. Performance arises because people flourish. Right. I love this. How can people learn more about neuro coaching? Dan, when is your book releasing?

Yeah, so our book is releasing on in May, so just a few weeks. So we should have it up in production around the middle of May. And if they want to learn more about us, they can go to braintrustgrowth.com and you can learn more about the work that we do. You can also find neuro coaching there. And you know, for speaking and things like that, I do a lot of that. It's, you know, dandy.com you can find that as well. And jeffbloomfield.com is also my partner. Like you, we're trying to get this message out to more people for impact. And you said something so insightful. I think a great way maybe even to close this is man, if the work that we jointly believe in and are doing, if we can take what's common sense and make it more common practice, I think for however a long war left on the planet, we can help leaders make a difference. And leadership is, and coaching is hard. It's hard work. But I don't know that there's anything more rewarding than that of watching to what you described, watching somebody go from where they are to where they dream to be. And there's just nothing more powerful than that. It's otherwise. If you don't like that, you might want to take off the armor of coaching and go back and do something else now.

Thank you my friend. I so appreciate you. I appreciate the work that you are trying to do. You know, business has gotten a bad rap of late, but really, you know, and as Clay Christiansen said in his book, how will you measure your life? You know, business and leadership can be the most noblest profession because if you lead the right way. You impact so many lives, just not with the products and services you put out there, but with the environments you create for people to grow and develop and activate their fullest potential. But you can only do it if through conscious consciously. You can only do it with intentionality. Thank you for what you're doing. I think it's making the world a better place and it is such a pleasure to collaborate with you, to have you here and do what we can to support and amplify your message in the world. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for what you're doing as well.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.