Interview with Phil Johnson of MBL on the Importance of Emotional Intelligence

Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, author of the book on Conscious Design, and today I'm excited to welcome Phil Johnson. He's an executive coach for the last 21 years all around the world, generating over $1.5 billion in revenue through his career, and now he's focused on emotional intelligence and why it's important and trying to get the rest of us to have it. So welcome to the show, good to have you here.

Uh, thanks, Ian. It's a, it's a pleasure to be on your show.

Yeah, well, I'm, I'm very excited. Emotional intelligence is something that I know about, uh, and you know, there's many books about it, but it doesn't mean we're all reading them. So it's, you know, It's nice, nice to have you out there, uh, actually sharing and, and really trying to help people toward it. So how have you been? You've been doing coaching for a long time. We talked a little bit. You, you were started way back in the semiconductor business, but how's your— how has this evolved? Right? You've gotten in, you got into coaching, you started your coaching business, and now you're focused on— emotional intelligence. So tell us a little bit about how— what your journey has been to get to this point and realizing how important it is.

Yeah, it's, um, let me give you the very short version. Um, I was born with dyslexia, and, um, I started focusing— I started on this path, uh, 54 years ago, um, in January of 1968. I about a month after my mother had died. And I just turned 68. So I've been on this path for about 54 years, with a short detour into the semiconductor industry for, for 20 years. But the development of emotional intelligence is a critical part of our own personal development and organizational development that's missing. Our education and our employment has really focused on our ability to do intellectual labor, but they really haven't helped us very much in developing our emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence— I'll tell you why that's important shortly— but the Emotional intelligence isn't something you can develop by reading a book or, or having a conversation or, or watching a video. It's a, uh, it's an experiential process. It's not a, it's not an intellectual process. Um, and why that's really important is because we're facing a tsunami of change, and we've got a 500-million-year-old brain that doesn't like change.

Right.

So there's significant both biological and sociological sources of resistance we have to change, but one of them is on the biological side, is that whenever we leave our comfort zone, there's a part of our old lizard brain called the amygdala that's been trying to keep us alive by making sure we never leave the safety of our our comfort zone or our cave. And if we do, it secretes a hormone into our bloodstream called cortisol, and that causes our— the executive center of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, to shut off. And we often react in ways that we later regret. It causes some people— we go into a fight, flight, or freeze mode. Some people lash out, some people run away. Some people freeze like a deer in the headlights, and when that happens in conflict situations, it can cause people to die, like wars. And when it happens in business or personal situations, relationships die. We burn trust. So as an analogy, if you think of your amygdala as a very frightened 4-year-old child, inside of all of us. The development of our emotional intelligence acts like a big brother or a big sister to quiet the amygdala response down and better enable us to feel the, the anxiety that change and innovation always creates in us and move through it towards our desired result, as opposed to allowing that anxiety to keep us trapped in our comfort zone. So Some scientists estimate that in this century we could experience the equivalent of— get ready for it— 20,000 years, or 200 centuries worth of change. So change has gone from being occasional to exponential, and we've still got this 500-million-year-old brain, so that we really need to be— The reason you see more and more organizations developing, hiring, and promoting based on emotional intelligence is it's because of this accelerating rate of change that we're experiencing everywhere in the world.

Right. Well, it makes sense. In 20,000 years, we're— was it— we're talking about putting people on Mars, and we're talking about, uh, giant, giant leaps just in our technology, even, even faster.

climate change and gene editing, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, and AI and other pandemics. And yeah, if these last 2 years have shown us anything, it's that we're terrible at embracing change. And the changes coming down the road are going to make this look like nothing.

Right. Yeah, and it's definitely been, uh, yeah, it's been an experience, and we— I wouldn't say that we've passed with flying colors.

Far from it.

Right, so now you're here, we have— you understand the value of emotional intelligence, and it sounds like companies are beginning to start to see emotional intelligence as not just, you know, one of those fluffy nice-to-have, you know, could be useful but not, not a focus. And, and you're starting to see a shift to say, yes, emotional intelligence—

Let me give you an example, um, of a company that's currently doing over a trillion dollars a year in sales. Uh, Apple. Apple's whole hiring process is focused on the search for people with above-average levels of emotional intelligence. They're far less interested in what you know about their products and services. They're more interested in your level of emotional intelligence. They can teach you about the products and services, um, but that's when it's— give you an example. Have you ever been in an Apple Store?

Yep.

That energy you feel is an example of a more emotionally intelligent environment. They're not trying to sell you anything. They're trying to understand your pain and, if possible, offer a solution that removes the pain. They want you to have a great experience. Whether or not you buy anything is secondary to trying to help you with whatever's in your way. And they— maybe you'll go and tell your friends and they'll tell their friends. Um, so more and more companies like Apple and Google and Southwest Airlines and JetBlue and Infosys and Whole Foods and FedEx and Costco and others are really focusing more and more on the development and hiring of emotional intelligence. Right.

Well, and that makes a lot of sense. Obviously, Apple is doing well, right? No one can argue that their stores are bad in some way. They're all good. They always— people enjoy them, right?

Yep.

So it's— and I've seen it too, the airlines. Like you mentioned JetBlue. I've recently flown on them and it was nice. They do have that kind of attitude and it seems to be starting to permeate into more startups too. Like, that seems to be trickling down to startups.

We have a— because of our biology, we tend to burn trust 5 to 7 times faster than we can earn trust. We're much more concerned about what might be trying to eat us than what might be trying to help us, and we carry that biology in us from generation to generation. Um, so it's very easy for us to lose the trust of the people we're trying to serve if we're raising our walls, if we're becoming more resistive, judgmental, and attached to outcome. That leads to more drama, chaos, and conflict within relationships and in organizations.

Excuse me.

So really, the development of our emotional intelligence Um, helps us to become more trusted inspirational leaders as we also raise our level of consciousness. You see, we're only conscious about 3 to 5% of the time. The rest of the time we're relying on our unconscious habits that creates our behavior and our results. So if we want better results than we're currently getting, we have to develop better habits. And that requires us— and we can do that at any age, by the way. It's called brain plasticity or neurogenesis. We can develop new neural network pathways in our brain at any age, but it requires us to, to leave our comfort zone in order to do that. And that creates anxiety in us, that triggers anxiety in us. And so that without the development of our emotional intelligence, we're much less inclined To be willing to do that.

Right. It's too scary. None of us— well, I wouldn't say none of us. Most of us like to stay comfortable. I've talked to people about this a little bit, and one of the best responses I've gotten is, well, you need to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. When you When you achieve that, then the things that you're talking about, being afraid of change doesn't become a roadblock. You're switching your perspective on it and now it becomes something you look forward to maybe.

Yeah. Let me give you an example, a metaphor for the ROI that can be created with the willingness to do the, what I call the emotional labor necessary to develop our emotional intelligence. So let's, if you take a penny, let's look at, let's look at 2 things. Would you rather have— I want to compare IQ with EQ.

Mm-hmm.

And let's, let's look at IQ and say, okay, let's say IQ is something that's largely genetic. Would you rather have $10,000 a day for 31 days or a penny doubling a day for 31 days? So at the end of 31 days on the IQ side, you've got $310,000. On the— at the end of 31 days on the emotional intelligence side, You've got $10.7 million. So if you take a penny, you double it, day 1, you've got a penny, day 2, you've got 2 pennies, day 3, you've got 4 pennies, day 31, you've got $10.7 million. Actually, day 40, you've got over $5 trillion, and day 50, you've got over $5 billion. Sorry. Day 40, you've got over $5 billion, day 50, you've got over $5 trillion. The point is that it doesn't take any more effort to go from day 30 to day 31 than it does to go from day 1 to day 2. But it's a consciousness-building process. There are executives and organizations I've been working with for over 12 years because the ROI keeps getting greater and greater and greater as they do this work. And the other good thing about emotional intelligence is that Whereas with intellectual intelligence, not everybody can have an IQ of 160. With emotional intelligence, anybody, everybody can develop their emotional intelligence. And there was a study at UC Berkeley some time ago that the development of emotional intelligence is 400% more more powerful in predicting success than intellectual intelligence. So that it's really a— it's a critical part of our, of our development as a species that's— that we didn't get. And that now, because of the accelerating rate of global change, we're going to need it more than ever.

Right. Now, You mentioned that it's growing. Obviously, your emotional intelligence can grow. Something people will probably be wondering is, well, IQ is easy. You go take an IQ test, right? And there you go. You get a number.

Yep.

With emotional, and you talked about this, it's not— you don't just read a book and you don't just study for a test and take it and show you have emotional intelligence. So, what are some things that people can use to identify where are you at? Like, are you at zero? Are you— where are you at?

And is there— Great question. Thanks for asking it. You can identify emotional intelligence. A, first of all, the more emotionally intelligent you are, the easier it is to identify it in other people. But you can identify it in how people handle change. Um, are they able to move through change, uh, with less drama and chaos, more focused on the present moment than people with less emotional intelligence? And the answer is yes. So that what you're going to find moving forward as the rate of change continues to accelerate is that those individuals with above-average levels of emotional intelligence are going to produce far greater results. And, um, they're going to— they're not going to feed into the drama and chaos that's often surrounding them. So simply by developing and bringing more emotionally intelligent people into your organization, It will automatically reduce the toxicity within that organization. And most organizations are extremely toxic. Um, Gallup, for instance, estimates that the current level of employee engagement worldwide is around 13%. So what does that mean? Let's, let's say— That's so bad. Let's say you've got a company with 10,000 employees and the loaded labor rate per employee when you take into account salaries and benefits and various things, let's say it's $100,000 a year. So that company is spending $1 billion a year on compensation, and if their level of employee engagement is 13%, they're wasting $870 million every year. And I can tell you for a fact that low levels of employee engagement are costing the U.S. economy over $1 trillion a year. And there's also a— there's also about a 1-to-1 correlation between the level of employee engagement and the level of customer engagement, so that if your employees aren't engaged, if they don't feel safe, then neither will your customers. So of course it's a huge problem.

I mean, how, how would you be a customer of someone who didn't care, right? That seems like, like such a, such an easy, direct 1 to 1. That makes perfect sense.

Yep, right.

Uh, wow, that's a— 13% is very low.

As a matter of fact, about 15 years ago it was about 29%. So it's, it's continued to fall over the last 15, 20 years. And so the organizations have become more and more toxic.

And, and you're, you're seeing a connection between emotional intelligence. Basically, the rate of the amount of changes that's happening keeps going up, and emotional intelligence that we have is just not enough to keep up with it. And so we're, we're basically dropping off, right?

Look around. Read a newspaper, you know, uh, you could— you can, you can see that we're not very good at embracing change and working through change. And, um, that's a direct reflection of our current level of emotional intelligence.

Right. And so I guess what would be your What would be your, your input to someone that says, okay, well, that's, that's great. I know I'm probably wasting 87% of my, my wages being paid out. My team is just not connected. What are, what are some steps that a business or an individual, maybe, you know, somebody's listening, well, I want to start a new company, or I want to be the better employee because I mean, 13% is pretty easy to beat. So, that sounds like a really, really fast way to go up the corporate ladder is just jump ahead and be more than 13% engaged.

So, the answer to your question is develop your— make the investment in tapping into the value of your emotional intelligence. Develop, raise your level of emotional intelligence.

Right.

So you can't change an organization— there's a methodology for individual change and there's a separate methodology for organizational change, but you can't change an organization without beginning with the individuals in the organization.

Right.

So the best thing somebody can do to ensure their future earning power and career success, whether you're an individual or an organization, is to develop your emotional intelligence. And it's extremely— I will tell you that it's an extremely difficult process. There's significant both biological and sociological resistance we have to change. It's like Navy SEAL training for your emotions. Um, and unless you have an urgent desire for better results than you're currently getting, You will not be willing to do the emotional labor that the development of your emotional intelligence will require.

So it sounds like a steep, a steep hill to climb. Mountain, probably more, more like it.

It is. But the thing is that it is, and I won't, I won't downplay that at all. Right.

No sugarcoating.

No sugarcoating, but what's worse is not being willing to do that work, not being willing to do the emotional labor that the development of our emotional intelligence requires. If we are unwilling to leave our comfort zones as individuals and organizations, we don't have a chance. of succeeding going forward. The, the tsunami of change we're facing is, is already creating unbelievable levels of drama, chaos, and conflict everywhere, and that's going to continue. So we really need to be working on the development of our emotional intelligence so that we can move through the fear and anxiety that that's going to create, as opposed to allowing that fear and anxiety to control us.

Right.

We're really kind of, uh, unfortunately, we're kind of at a tipping point as a species. Um, we're— we have a tremendous challenge before us, and the solution is emotional intelligence, but it's, it's not going to be easy to develop.

Right. Well, I mean, in, in life, very few things that are really worth doing are the easiest things to do.

And we've had a history of not being willing, you You ever, ever heard the old Stanford University experiment where they— one marshmallow now, 2 marshmallows in 30 minutes? So they offer a child, they can have one marshmallow now, or you can have 2 marshmallows in 30 minutes. And they actually tracked the kids and their responses to see how they did later on in life. Um, and the, the people that were willing to forego, uh, the pleasure of being in the moment, the dopamine, the chemical stimulant of getting something now, and were willing to put that gratification off tended to do much better. But as a society, we're a one-marshmallow culture. We want it now. If we can't get it even faster than now, if we can get it faster than now, we want it even faster than that.

We'll take half a marshmallow 30 seconds ago.

So we're really— we haven't shown much of an inclination to be willing to do the kind of strategic emotional labor that we're going to be forced to do going forward.

Right. Well, and so this is obviously very serious, right? We need to be moving towards this. We need to be taking those strides. So for someone that goes, yes, I've decided I'm willing to put the effort in, I see the benefit, I'm, you know, the pain of not doing it is finally enough that I'm willing I'm willing to make that tipping point and start moving forward. What are ways that someone can start doing that? Is there something that you should start first? And obviously, coaching and—

Yeah. So, I have a program called the Master of Business Leadership Program. It's initially a 4-month, 16-week process that is targeted at developing the habits and microskills necessary for what we're talking about. And I'll just make this a little stranger by telling you that there's an underlying energy physics to all of this that makes the results as predictable and quantifiable as any physical science. So in other words, you can't go through this process and do the work required and not get dramatically better results. You become more emotionally intelligent, you become more of an inspirational leader, and you raise your level of consciousness all at the same time. So that's what I've been— that's how I've been spending my time for the last 21 years.

And so you've developed this method, this approach, um, and I think the statement, right, $1.5 billion in Over your career, obviously you figured that out, which is great. For people that are wanting to start down that path, is there anything that you would recommend? Obviously, you can read about it all you want, but it's not the same. Is there a first step before— like to prepare yourself before you go into a 16-week—

Great question. Yes, there is. And that first step is to develop, Eddie, a strong emotional connection to some desired results you want to achieve. That's always the first step because that, that becomes your motivation. That becomes what I call the fuel for your journey. That becomes your motivation. To leave your comfort zone on a regular basis in the pursuit of that desired result. Without that emotional connection to some desired result, that burning emotional connection, you will not be willing to do the work that change requires. You may want it. You see, most, most people don't have that, that motivation, um, to change themselves. So what often happens is they try and use some type of position-based power to control and manipulate others to get them to change. And that's what we've been doing for a very, very long time. That's why the employee engagement rate is around 13%. That's not leadership. See, leadership isn't a position. It's not a title. It's a choice that each one of us needs to be making, regardless of whatever it is our job is. It's not a position. It's a choice. Um, so, so the first step is always to develop a burning desire for some result that pulls you out of your comfort zone. In the pursuit of that result on a regular basis. That's step 1.

Got it. Well, it just makes sense, right? If you don't know where you're going, then why would you go?

Well, I didn't say— yeah, yeah.

Um, you know, having—

it doesn't help you to see. You can only connect the dots in hindsight after you've taken the leap of faith. That motivation just gets you to take the jump. To take the leap. And that's the difference between intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence. You can only develop your emotional intelligence after you've taken the leap of faith. You can only connect the dots in hindsight after you've taken the leap of faith. You can't read about it or talk about it, or— those are, those are intellectual things. Um, that won't—

All right.

That approaching emotional intelligence from an intellectual perspective will not develop emotional intelligence. And as you said at the outset, there's, there's lots of people talking about the concepts of emotional intelligence, but you see, they're, they're trying to understand something intellectually that you can't understand intellectually. It's an— you can only understand it if you're— it's an experiential process. It's an only— it's— you can only understand it and really appreciate it if you're practicing it. Right, right.

It requires— it requires that— I think that's a great way we put it, is hindsight. It's only— it's, it's only something you can see in the rearview mirror. Which means you can't— you have to have already been there.

Yeah, and it's scary because you're kind of leaping into the unknown. You're leaping into the void, right? And you're willing to do that because you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you want— you have an urgent desire for better results than you're currently getting. So you're willing to take the risk of leaping into the unknown. And that's really the only way you can develop emotional intelligence.

That's a great analogy. Yeah, for, for an intellectual conversation about it, I think it's a great, great way.

You're, you know, it's, uh, you, you're alluding to a great point, and that's that, uh, if people knew how important the development of their emotional intelligence is to their success, to their life, to their organization, everyone would be working to develop it. But the, but the biggest challenge is you can't know ahead of time. You can't appreciate the value and importance of emotional intelligence unless you're practicing the development of your emotional intelligence. So that's kind of like the catch-22. Um, boy, I, I wish there were a pill. I wish there were some kind of magic potion, right, that people could take that so that they could understand how important emotional intelligence is. Um, but there isn't.

Yeah, I feel like the closest thing that we could, we could all maybe relate to is Is, you know, by the time you're like 30, maybe even 20, 20, 30, 40, you finally realize that the advice your parents were giving you was based on reality because they were looking in the rearview mirror and they had been a teenager before. They had been 21 before. They've done all the things that you thought you were doing that they never did. They already did it before you. And you just didn't listen, right?

Yep. Here's the thing in that story. That's a great story, by the way. So what they do is they say, okay, they've got to learn for themselves. We'll have this conversation after they've got some more life experience under their belt.

Exactly, another 20 years.

Well, so here's the thing, and here's how that relates to emotional intelligence. Change is increasing at an exponential rate. And before we know it, we're going to be in over our head. But the thing about the development of emotional intelligence, because we're not machines, we're biology, it takes time to develop this new awareness, these new habits.

Mm-hmm.

There's no magic pill. So that, getting back to that penny doubling analogy, um, in the beginning— day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4— it looks like you're doing a lot of work for little in the way of results. And you are, because you don't know what you don't know. But day 30, day 31, You're doing the same amount of work that you were doing at day 1, day 2, but it's, it's a progression. So later on, it looks like you're doing a little work for a lot, and you are, but it's because you are willing to put in the work initially that you, you can't get to day 30, day 31, day 40, day 50 without starting at day 1. And getting back to that one marshmallow, now 2 marshmallows later, everybody wants to be at day 31, but nobody wants to start at day 1.

Right. We like, we like day 31.

We like day 31. That's what the movies show us, day 31, but they rarely show us day 1.

Right, right. The, uh, The true beginning is never— it's the 10-year overnight success.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. Good analogy. There's a lot of work that goes on before it becomes visible to others.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I've been there. Well, this is great. This is definitely something that I'm fully with you. Emotional intelligence, we need more of it. I've spent time with coaches and working on it, and yeah, my experiences, it's definitely one of those you have to see it to believe it, and you can't see it till you did it. And then it clicks, and then you attempt to have an intellectual conversation Like this and, and explain it and, and know that you're still, you're still falling short of being able to describe it. Um, so for, you know, for people that are, are wanting to start and they're wanting to go down this journey and, and, you know, work with you and, and be serious about this, where can people find you? What's the best way to, to get a hold of you and start?

Yeah. Thanks. The best way to reach me is through my LinkedIn profile. On my profile, I've got— there's a link to my calendar, so they can jump on and I'd be happy to have a Zoom chat with them whenever they'd like. Perfect.

We'll make sure that link is in the description, so anybody that wants to go check that out, please do check out His Phil Johnson's LinkedIn link, and yeah, it's been it's been a pleasure talking to you and and hearing some of your stories, and and hopefully more people will will hear this and listen to it and and see the value of it. I mean, I see it's I see its value as a designer is and and there's a lot of other people that could use it. As well.

Yeah.

So, perfect.

Thank you, uh, uh, Ian. Uh, I appreciate the opportunity to be on your podcast.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Phil.