In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick defines emotional intelligence (EI) as the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively use one’s own emotions and those of others. He outlines EI’s five core components—self‑awareness, self‑regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills—referencing Daniel Goleman’s work and a graphic from Goleman’s quadrant system. Brian then shares the personal practices he uses to develop his EI: regular self‑reflection (meditation or journaling), seeking feedback from peers and family, active listening, deliberate empathy exercises (putting himself in others’ shoes), and intentionally building diverse relationships. He concludes with three reflective questions from a Harvard Business Review article by Goleman that can boost EI: (1) How does your self‑view differ from how others see you? (2) What matters to you—your goals and values? (3) What concrete changes will you make to close the gap? Throughout, Brian emphasizes that EI is essential for leaders and that continual improvement has no ceiling.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today I want to talk about emotional intelligence. What is emotional intelligence, and, and how do we go about improving? In this particular area. We hear this term emotional intelligence. I'm sure most all of our listeners have read about it or, or seen it somewhere, but I think, uh, we're not quite clear on what it entails. And so let's, let's first discuss, you know, what is EI? Okay. So emotional intelligence, EI, refers to your ability to recognize, to understand, to manage and to effectively use your own emotions as well as the emotions of others. So EI involves a set of skills and qualities that enable you to, to navigate social scenarios, build relationships, maintain relationships, and make better decisions, more empathetic decisions. There's a handful of components of EI and let's run through them real quick. Okay. First is self-awareness, self-awareness. So I recognize my own emotions. I recognize the impact of my thoughts and my behavior. I pay attention to these things. That's what self-awareness is about. Next of course is self-regulation. I manage and control my emotions. Next, we have motivation. Motivation is about setting meaningful goals. So EI involves motivation. Motivation includes setting meaningful goals, something that gives us purpose and, and prompts us to remain resilient in the face of failure or setbacks or challenges. It's about that growth mindset. Next is empathy. Empathy is a core component of EI. What is empathy? Understanding the emotions, the opinions, the perspectives of others, showing compassion and validating the feelings of others. Lastly, social skills. What are social skills? Building, maintaining positive relationships, with people through solid communication, through conflict resolution, through collaboration, through working well in teams. I think we know about social skills. So EI includes these core components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. As a matter of fact, in the show notes, we'll throw a link to a graphic that Daniel Goleman put out. Uh, Daniel Goleman from— at least I know about him through the Harvard Business Review. Uh, he is kind of, in my opinion, the father of all of this, this EI discussion. Uh, well, Goldman has a great quadrant system he and a partner had put together around EI. We'll share it in the show notes so you can take a look, but that, that, that graphic will summarize what I just shared. So how do we go about improving our EI, right? So this is important. Now that we've defined what EI entails, the core components of EI, how do we go about improving? Here's what I think about when I think about improving my own personal EI. And this has been a hell of a journey for me, right? Because I like to think, uh, well, I, I wish I was a bit more emotionally mature earlier in my career and earlier in my life. But you know, I had to develop this. I had to become more self-aware. I had to become more empathetic. I had to do a better job regulating emotion. I work every day. To better regulate emotion. So I've really had to develop in this area. So how do you go about improving EI? I'll share some things that I did. Okay. So first, uh, I had to do a lot more self-reflection. I had to really take a minute to understand what was driving my emotion. You know, what were the underlying causes? What prompted me or what prompts me to behave or think the way that I do? For me, that is more of a meditative process. In other words, I sit and reflect. I like, you know, we've discussed many a time on this podcast, thinking time. That's where I get to self-reflect. But for others, maybe it's journaling, you know, maybe it's something of that nature that's more specific. But for me, it's simply thinking about it. So for me, how do I improve EI? Self-reflection. In addition, I've gotten better at this, but I found it to be arguably the number one thing to improving EI, seeking feedback, like asking for feedback from, from my business partners and my closest friends, even my family members about where I may be lacking or where there's opportunity for improvement or how they perceive certain things. With respect to how I'm handling or behaving a scenario, seeking feedback, which kind of leads to the next one. I've had to really get better at active listening. If I want to, if you, if I want to improve my EI, if you want to improve your EI, I think active listening, focusing on what others are saying, truly understanding what others are saying without interrupting them, without thinking about formulating a response. But if you're going to ask for feedback, you got to practice active listening. Next couple of things for me, uh, I've had to work to develop empathy. Uh, wasn't a, it's not as natural for me. So if I want to improve my EI, I've got to develop my empathy. And for me, that's more again of a self-reflecting, self-reflection sort of activity in that I've got to put myself in the shoes of others and try to understand their perspectives and their emotions. For me, the greatest thing I can do there is create time, create space. In other words, take space or time to remove the emotion from the equation and allow myself to more objectively analyze the situation from the vantage point of someone else, right? Try to understand their perspective and their emotion. Lastly, for me, uh, in terms of improving EI, I think that being purposeful in building relationships, investing time and effort in building and maintaining relationships with people that have different experience than me, have different backgrounds than me. I think building relationships with a more diverse group in my world has improved my emotional intelligence? These things all kind of tie together. Self-reflection, seeking feedback, practicing active listening, developing empathy, and building relationships. They're all interlinked. Now, as we pivot a slight bit and start to close out today's episode, uh, I want to mention that, you know, recently I was reading an article by Daniel Goleman in, in Harvard Business Review. It's an old one. It's from 2018. Uh, side note, I don't know why I do this, but I have, uh, dozens and dozens of Harvard Business Review magazines, the actual hard copies, uh, on my bookshelf. I subscribe. And for some reason I don't throw these things out, even though I can get them all electronically. I like the physical copy. Well, I was flipping through, uh, one that's about 5 years old and came across a Goldman article on EI. And I really liked it. And I thought I'd, I'd close out today's episode, giving you some things that he talked about in this article. What he discussed was using 3 specific questions to boost your emotional intelligence. And here are the 3 questions for you to think about, maybe the focusing questions for the day. Okay. Number 1, what are the differences between how you see yourself and how others see you? Goldman says that the first step in improving your EI is to get a sense of how your self-perception, how you see yourself, differs from your reputation, how others see you. This gap, this difference, is your opportunity for true development and improvement. The next question he asks, he points out in this article, he said 3 questions to boost your emotional intelligence. Question 2. What matters to you? What matters to you? In other words, what are your goals? What are the areas that you choose to actively work on? The areas that you choose to actively work on should lie at the intersection of the feedback you're getting from, from the previous question, right? The feedback that you're getting and the areas that are most important to your own aspirations. So that's where you get to do the work, right? So what matters to you? And then number 3, the final question that Goldman gives you in this article about ways to boost your emotional intelligence: what changes will you make to achieve these goals? So once you've determined which EI skills you want to focus on, what are the specific action steps that you're going to take right, to improve? What changes will you make to achieve, achieve these goals? So the 3 questions one more time: what are the differences between how you see yourself and how others see you? Number 1. Number 2, what matters to you? And number 3, what changes will you make to achieve these goals? These are the 3 questions Daniel Goleman outlines for you that in, in addressing them, you could boost your emotional intelligence. So hopefully you gained some knowledge today around EI. Again, this term has been thrown around for a long time. I'm not sure if everyone had a clear definition. Hopefully you do now. Not only can you define it in terms of what it entails and its core components, you can also think around or define how you can improve your emotional intelligence. For our listeners, you're all leaders or aspire to be leaders. As a leader, you've got to have emotional intelligence. If you want to improve your leadership, you've got to become even more emotionally intelligent. I don't think there's ever a ceiling to this, to this concept, to this, to this, you know, this behavioral or leadership quality. On that note, that's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
