How to improve your EQ

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about the Purpose Club. I started the Purpose Club quite some time ago so that I could coach people of all backgrounds. Not everybody has access to coaching and certainly it can be out of people's price range. So I wanted to create a community where, where I coach my members each month and it's incredibly affordable and I do a deep dive monthly live session and deliver my best techniques, strategies and habits. And I impart great lessons on leadership, motivation, mindset, abundance, habit, installation, and you're creating a lasting legacy. There's free replays in there from all the previous live casts. There's high impact worksheets for you to take home and actually work through. Throughout the month you'll receive weekly planning emails with actual planners to fill out your week. You'll get a weekly self evaluation email where you can evaluate yourself on all different levels. Relationship, life, business, wealth, career, everything that you want. You'll get weekly journal prompts to really get your mind tuned into that higher level thinking. And also on a monthly basis you'll get 20 planning worksheets and reflections for your month. So if you would like to learn about it, please get in touch with me or someone in my team. You know, jump onto Instagram. Jameslocklanofficial drop me a DM or you can email me jamesjloughlin.com or just go to the website jjlochlund.com and check it out. Enjoy the show and I hope to see some of you guys over in the Purpose Club.

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Welcome back to the show and for those who are just new to the Life on Purpose podcast, please enjoy the show and if you could take a moment to leave me a rating and review. If you're on Apple or whatever platform you're listening to this on, I'd really appreciate it. So let's talk about how to improve your eq. And when we think about eq, we think about how you relate to others, how others relate to you, rapport, empathy, compassion, understanding. All those words come to mind. And I want to talk about one particular aspect of actually how to develop better eq. And it's a really simple one. And most of us have been gifted with two years that work really well and that's a real gift. That's a true gift. So I want you to think about your listening abilities and whether you truly listen, whether you listen to understand, whether you listen to judge, whether you listen for leverage, whether you listen to advice and really think about the power of listening. And when we Think about it. You know, the greatest leaders of all time, one great skill they had was their ability to listen. Nelson Mandela is an amazing leader that I've talked about a lot over the years. I've done quite a bit of study around him and spoke with some of his family members and interviewed them just about how he carried himself and how he developed such an incredible amount of eq. You know, he was renowned the world over for being able to relate to people, for being able to connect and help and support and help others see things like their blind spots, let them see things they never would have seen if it wasn't for him being able to help them do that. So how did he develop those skills? Well, those skills are a net to all of us. We all have the ability to listen, but we don't all listen in the same manner. So what I want you to think about is he and, you know, his family came from a line of chiefs in their tribe. And often at a, say, a village meeting, a chief would. Would have to sit and listen to everybody in the village, share their two cents, talk about issues that they want to be addressed, give some feedback, negative or positive. And the chief did not address the village till the end of everyone speaking. So that could have been hours. Chief would simply listen. And at the end, when that chief did speak, there was such power and mana because he had listened fully and intently and hadn't tried to argue or no rebuttal. True listening. And there's power in that. Nelson Mandela really exemplified that in the Western world of politics, where he was renowned for being a really astute listener. Now, recently, I've experienced this myself. So this past year, I hosted the Leaders Mastermind, where a bunch of different leaders from different backgrounds came and joined me for about four or five months, and we got together regularly. And one of those leaders that joined me was Sam Whitelock, and he's a professional rugby player in New Zealand. One of the best on the planet, I would say. And each time he showed up, he really showed up to listen first and speak last. And that's what he did. He would always listen the most and he'd be the last to speak. But when he did speak, myself and everyone included really listened to, because we knew that he had taken everything that everybody had said in, had processed and applied his view of the world to the situation, and that was really valuable. And it's a skill, obviously, as a leader that he has developed over the years. So how do you do that? Right. That's why you're tuning in Today, how do you do that in your life? To be a better partner, to be a better parent, to be a better business owner, to be a better teacher, to be better whatever you want. When it involves other people, listening is so important. So first of all, you know, ask yourself, how do you normally listen? So when that person that's close to you, that you spend a lot of time with, you know, when they're speaking, how do you actually listen to them? Is it you listen so that you can answer back and tell them what's on your mind or what your thoughts are about what they're speaking about? Or do you listen with curiosity? Do you listen with a sense of understanding and you're just letting it flow? There's no judgment because often when we're listening, we're judging, we are really thinking about what they're saying and weighing it up against our view of the world, right? So that in itself is not truly listening at a deep level that's just waiting your turn to speak. How many of us are guilty of that? Right? For sure. I've caught myself jumping in to finish off people's sentences or, hey, that's cool. But hey, this is my story. And I actually, there was a lady recently that I noticed was doing it quite a bit. I was like, wow, that's really frustrating to be around, right? So when you see other people exemplifying these traits that you don't like to see in yourself, often it can really magnify them to the point where you're like, oh, yeah, I do that, right? So let's think about why it's important to do it. Because a lot of us want to jump straight to the hey, just tell me how to do it. But unless you have an actual deep reason why you want to do it, there's no point. So here's why I think it's really important to develop better listening skills, to improve your EQ and your relationships, your level of joy in life. Well, the first one is you're going to develop more influence, right? And influence is not persuasion. You aren't, you know, persuading someone to go and do this or do that because you want them to do it. Influence is leading from the front. It's walking the walk. And when you listen, you really get that person's ear. You really get their buy in. When you're a good listener, people want to be around you. People feel safe. You create this incredible space where people feel safe. So developing influence starts with listening. Next, you're going to have more compassion, right? The better the listener you become, the more compassionate you're going to be, right? Really thinking about the other person's feelings, really going the extra mile to be there when they really need you to be there. You're going to have more awareness, right? You're going to be able to understand the world outside of your own head by listening to people around you. Your friends, your family, your colleagues, you know, your politicians, your athletes, all these different people. You want to be able to listen to them without judgment, without the need to come back with an answer or response of any kind. Your awareness of the world will be so much more holistic, and there'll be better outcomes. You know, as you listen better, there's going to be better outcomes, better relationships, less arguments, you know, less combative engagements, more harmonious interactions. Listening is a superpower and one that if you develop, it's going to really level up the quality of the relationships that you have with yourself, with the people around you, with your clients. If you run a business, it's just a really great skill to develop. Now, how are we going to do that? Right? Here's the fun part. You're going to get to actually go and try this today. You know, you could try this right after the podcast. First things first. I always think that there's power in the pause. Write that one down somewhere or scratch it into, like, a brain tattoo. There. There's power in the pause. This took me a long time to discover, and it's still something I consciously work at. When someone says something, hey, so I was thinking about this, and I'm going to do this automatically. You want to go back with I don't think so, or, hey, this is what I think, or, no, someone's tried that, and here's what happened. You don't let there be space. Why? Well, it's awkward. If I was to do this.

You probably thought the podcast ended there, right? Something's up. I just paused, right? And it's awkward for a lot of people, say, oh, I don't like that. I like the rhythm to keep going. But there's power in the pause because in that space between stimulus and response, that's where you can actually engage your eq. You can read the room, you can read the person's emotions. Take the time. And maybe in that space, they might add some more. They might fill the space with more content, with more context.

So by creating space, you're giving people an opportunity to open up the dialogue, to dig deeper, and it also lets them know that you are listening, because when you pause after they speak, they know automatically that you're not just jumping in to have your side of the story, you're truly listening and you're giving them more space to speak. So try that in your next conversation. Try that once a day for the next five days, just consciously when you're listening to someone say, I'm going to pause at the end of this. And even if you're forcing it to start with who cares? You're consciously shifting things in the way that you listen. And that pause, during that pause, you don't just need to, you know, count to 10. What you can do is go, okay, what did I just hear there? What value can I add? Or what support can I show? Right? Those are great questions to ask, what did I hear? What value can I add? What support can I show? Right? If you do that, it means that you're going to be listening to understand the other person's situation. You're going to be listening to add value and love and compassion. You're not listening to think, where can I throw my two cents in? Where can I show my significance of knowing the answer to this challenge? Most people don't want us to fix them because they're not broken. Most people want us to listen though. And by pausing you are giving the opportunity to come back in a response in a thoughtful way that serves the person that's speaking right and also gives them an opportunity to step in and add more content or context. So power on the pause, that's the first way. Second way is through curiosity. So one of my favorite ever interviewers was Larry King, right? Larry was amazing at interviewing, jump on YouTube and check out the master at work. And he would always come at it from a real point of curiosity. Charles Darwin was another very curious person, constantly asked questions. But Larry King would talk about, hey, I don't care if the, you know, President of the United States or a street sweeper, like, hey, what's it like the sweep the streets of New York at 4am when it's quiet and hey, what's it like to be sitting in the Oval Office with that big button that you can push that could end it all? He would always ask questions that were curious and that way he would always have an audience, he would always have people wanting to be around him. And the key here, this is the one key, is the word what. When you start to ask what based questions, you start to get a much different response. You get a deeper conversation that's not surface level. Those are open ended questions rather than Closed questions. Did you have a good day? Yes or no? Closed question. Would you like to go for dinner now? Yes or no? Closed question versus what was the greatest moment of your day? They can't say yes or no to that. They've got to elaborate. Or what would you most like for dinner tonight? They've got to elaborate on that, right? So when you think about interacting after you've done your listening and you've paused, when you come back, why not try asking a curious question, a leading question, a what question? What questions are beautiful, you know, rather than, hey, are you excited for today? When you're talking to your loved one in the morning, which could be yes or no, or start with what are you most excited for today? Totally different question. It's a conversation that's happening, it's a dialogue rather than a monologue or a very short response. So when you're developing eq, develop it with listening in mind. That's the core. The foundation of developing better emotional intelligence is being able to listen. And when you talk to teachers and they talk about students like, oh, they need to work on their listening skills. For example, Finn, my boy just started school, he's a new entrant, year zero they call it here in New Zealand. He's five years of age and went in for like the 10 week meeting to see how he's tracking and he's doing brilliantly in all these areas. And teacher says, you know, he's doing great. The one thing he could continue to work on there and improve is, you know, his listening skills. I said, yep, absolutely. But I'm thinking, couldn't we all, don't we all need to continually work on that? I mean, if you're the master listener when you finish high school, well, you're one in a billion. I think it's a skill of mastery and I don't believe you can ever become the master of anything, but you can live out mastery. And mastery is the pursuit of excellence. It's the pursuit of becoming the master at that thing, whatever it may be. In this case, it's listening, but in that journey towards it, that's where you develop better EQ skills. That's where you learn to have richer relationships. That's where you see it reflect in the quality of your relationships, the size of your bank balance, the enjoyment that you have in the interactions with others and yourself. So never underestimate the power of simply listening with a curious ear, creating some space, using what based questions and think back to someone who you admire. That was a great leader for me, that's Nelson Mandela. You know, he was a great leader, a great listener. For me, in modern day, that's Sam Whitelock, professional rugby player. You know, I've seen him sit alongside me and show these traits. That's powerful. So you will have as well in your midst someone who's a great listener. It may not be your spouse, often it's not, but there'll be someone. Just think in the last six months who that someone is and go through and ask yourself, what is it that they do that makes them a great listener? So my challenge to you is to get out there and give it a go, give it a try. It's not something you're going to perfect. It's something that needs ongoing work, but the rewards are monumental and it's something we must consistently go on at. Whenever you find yourself responding to someone instantly and going, yeah, but, or I've done that, or here's what I done. Yeah, that's not a great listening skill. That's a, hey, I've got the Ram syndrome. Wr a m world revolves around me. You don't want that. Focus on listening. Focus on the person that's talking. Ask great questions, pause before you do so and add value to that conversation. So for you folks who are new here, you may not know about the Purpose Club. So the Purpose Club is my private membership where I coach on a monthly basis. So if you want to come check it out, please head over to my website. It's jjlochlund.com for.

I look forward to welcoming you guys over there. And here's to an amazing week ahead. Wherever you are, guys, get out there and live life on purpose.

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