The Hidden Cost of Ignoring Emotional Intelligence with Samantha Woo

I mean, we don't want managers to become therapists. That's not what we're saying. That's not what I'm saying, right? But can we, when we talk about emotional intelligence, keep in mind that just teaching it to them, like the top-down approach, which is here's the information, you go and figure it out, is that working? It really hasn't. And this is why I brought in the how. How can we come alongside? Right, and then show you how, walk alongside, nurture and mentor how emotional intelligence is shown.

Samantha, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to chat with you about your book today, and my first question has to do with a couple of stats from the beginning of your book. You said that the average person spends about 90,000 hours of their lives at work, yet I read in your book that about 70% of workers globally are not fully engaged in their work. So that means that people are unhappy for 90,000 hours of their lives. Am I reading that the right way?

I think so. I mean, I mean, you could— I think the Gallup poll that took that survey probably subdivided it. Oh, engaged some of the time, or they subdivided it. But in essence, basically only 30% are fully engaged. I mean, that is pretty astounding to think about, right? And why people are complaining about, oh, why aren't people producing and whatnot? And And I think the executive teams and people who care about the bottom line fail to realize that there's people issues that's driving all of this. So yeah, I, I really do think that that is really a big issue, and you, you got it right.

I think our audience is probably subdivided into 2 groups as well. Either the group saying, hey, I'm an employee and I am dissatisfied and disengaged at work, and so Let's solve this. And then the other, the other half of our audience is probably like, hey, I'm a, I'm a business leader, Samantha. What the heck do I do to prevent my entire employee team from leaving or whatever the case is? So we'll dive into both of those. What are some of the issues? What are the root causes that are creating dissatisfaction at work as a byproduct?

I think, yeah, I'm glad you asked causes because it's usually multifactorial, right? There are so many different issues and One of them is this statistic I think I also put in the front, which is majority of people are dealing with a lot of stuff. And they're bringing it to work. And in that 90,000 hours, most of their waking hours is at work. They're carrying all this stuff. And what used to be a community, a loyalty that went both ways, back in the day when they when the companies took care of you, gave you pension and, you know, all that stuff, that's gone. So there's this lack of community, lack of future, and also a lack of knowledge on how to deal with people and yourself. And like emotional regulation is not a thing anymore. I mean, people usually learn it when they're children from their parents, but hey, what? The 2 parents are both working now, if you're lucky enough to have 2 parents. So where are you getting all this? Right? And then you go to the school system and, you know, they're just trying to manage numbers and, you know, behavioral issues. So it really is a big issue that is not being looked at, not being addressed. And it seems like what was supposed to be like, oh, this community effort has really gone to siloed kind of a way of pushing it on somebody else. Well, it's the work of the parents. No, it's the work of the, you know, schools. It's the work of the, you know, the workplace, because that's where they spend most of the time. Oh, cute doggy.

It's what happens when you record podcast interviews virtually now. The dog walking in the background. The community piece is really interesting. I mean, I think you're right. You know, does that stem from a lot of workplaces being virtual now, or—

It was a huge one because one of the interviews that I did that is in the book was somebody who said they, you know, graduated from a top school, wanted to make this big impact on the world, and had this this hope, right, that they, you know, as a community together, they would, you know, do something. Well, of course, you get into the real world, and a lot of the, you know, stress is on the bottom line. They're grinding it out. The, you know, leaders are pushing them. But at least they had one another, right? And then the shutdown came for the pandemic, and they had to go grind in the dark by themselves without support, without being able to, you know, hang out by the cooler and just You know, great together. So that was one of the things that did come up. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm— I mean, I'm a small business owner. I have a team of 10, and I, I came from a world where I was working in a physical office and there was water cooler talk and there were birthday parties in the conference room with cheap cake. And like, all of those things were really fun memories. And then here I am, I'm a business owner and I'm trying to keep culture really healthy and get the team involved. And so We have things like a virtual daily huddle that seem to solve some of those problems, but it's tough. It's tough to replace that in-person culture, isn't it?

It really is. And I'm glad to hear that you're making effort to at least do the huddle, because in some places they don't even do that. And that's really like checking in, right? There's this thing in, in relationship where you want to check in whether you're doing well or not. And so, yeah. I appreciated you asking me how I was doing.

Right.

And everybody does. And but a lot of people take that for granted, right, in the workplace. And they just go, you know, where's, where are the numbers? Where, where's, you know, where's my deliverables, blah, blah, blah. And people are like, well, I'm just coming in. I just buried my father, you know, my mother, right? And, and I'm here I am. And so it's important to see one another as humans.

I think, yeah, it's, it's that, you know, the people that work with us are not just that 8 hours, right? They're the full 24 hours. And so there's a lot that's happening outside of work, and work is just a smaller piece of that puzzle oftentimes. Now, it's a big part of your life. 90,000 hours is not a small amount.

No.

But at the same time, You know, people have families and people have hobbies and people have other extenuating circumstances and stresses. And so we need to look at the full human, right, as part of solving this problem in this, this, uh, not fully engaged 70% of workers globally.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that— I mean, it's not like we're having to take care of your you know, team when they're not with you. But when they do show up, it's just recognizing that they're dealing with this other stuff. You don't have to know the details, right? But just recognizing, okay, they're coming in and things are going to be played out. Vice versa. So if you're yelling at your, you know, team or what— I'm not saying you, but like, if like you, the general you, right? If one is yelling at their team or whatever, because they had a fight with their spouse, then guess what? When, when that team member goes home, what, what, what might be happening? So it's— we're in this like loop, right? Loop-de-loop. And, and one thing affects another. And we're in this huge web of community where most of our waking hours are doing work. And so talk about culture, where we're talking about, about everything, like sociopolitical, everything, economic, like, Why aren't we including the work culture in that conversation? Right? Because it's affecting so much. Yeah.

Yeah. You say in the book too that 41% of companies cite that talent retention is their number one issue, yet those leaders aren't making much of an effort to understand who's working with them. Right? And so what, what are some practical things that a leader in the audience can do today to improve employee or worker satisfaction?

I mean, that's a great question. And my— as a therapist and somebody who would kind of like to zoom out a little bit and see the big picture, my curiosity would be, what are they saying? Are there exit surveys that are showing what would have helped them, right? And I think that's really important to, to know, because too often I think whoever has the, the, uh, the power might assume things. Well, this may be the answer, and that it's happening all the time. They come in with a flavor of the month and they go, oh, we'll do this and it'll fix it. But what do the people say? And that's where the statistics showed a lot of people were leaving because of managers and toxic leaders that they had to work under. And, oh, Chris Rainey, he has an HR podcast. I just saw— I just listened to him on LinkedIn, and he interviewed somebody from— Kyle, I forgot his last name, but from Deloitte. And they did a survey. I think this was just last week, but they did a survey, and it turns out a lot of the workers wanted from leadership mentorship. They're wanting to be quote unquote mentored, and I'm thinking it's a little bit like why people are saying, why are Gen Z like babies and whatnot? Well, maybe because they haven't been Parented. I mean, in, in, right, in that way, in the waking hours, right? So that's something to also consider, which is what does it mean to be mentored? What does it mean to be, right, guided along a path in the workplace, the work culture, navigating all this stuff, right? Yeah.

Yes, something that the two of us talked about during our first conversation, and obviously it's, it's a through line in your book, is that, uh, oftentimes leaders are dealing with trauma, but they're not aware that they're dealing with trauma. And so can you tell everybody the difference between hypoarousal and hyperarousal? And then I have a couple of follow-up questions.

Sure, sure. And I'm, I'm glad you mentioned that because it's so easy to just blame the leadership, but we're talking about all cross-section of, right, the hierarchy and the ladder. And a lot of times you would think, like, good performers who get up to the leadership are, are perfect and their, their life is perfect. And, you know, why are they coming down hard on me or whatnot? But the whole point is Trauma is no respecter of persons. It just happens, right? And so you've got people who are future leaders, people who are future followers, and frontline workers and mid-managers all having trauma. They deal with it differently. And the survival that the system is trying to maintain is what you mentioned is hypoarousal and hyperarousal. And so—

Yeah.

When a person is responding to trauma by trying to survive and fight, they're hyper-aroused. Their fists are clenched, they're focused, their energy is high, and they might be overworking. And they might be the intense ones that are producing, and they're just like they're on their phone 24/7, and maybe they're in this C-suite now. Maybe that's how they got there. I don't know. But like, sometimes you see that and you might misinterpret it as something else, but it might also be— I'm not saying just because they are, it's trauma, but you know, when it's trauma and when there's hyperarousal, you can see it that way. And other times you see them just yelling because they're, you know, they're triggered and they did have trauma and it Right? So that's the hyperarousal, is when there's high energy, they're about to fight. Hypoarousal is when you shut down, right? When you're, um, like, get almost given up. And so this is where I feel a lot of times Gen Z are misunderstood, because when they're bed rotting and whatnot and gaming and just in the, in the cyberspace, we think that, um, They're lazy. But I remember hearing from an old psychiatrist way, like way long ago when I was little, that there's no such thing as lazy, that it's something else that's going on. And so I wonder if that hypoarousal that looks like bed rotting or in the workplace, like just staring into the screen when you have to send out those emails. that you were supposed to be doing could be that hypoarousal. They're just overwhelmed, um, and undersupported. I think that's what it could be. Yeah, the hypoarousal. It really shows up differently with different—

I know, I know, it's like, well, no, it seems, it seems like in a lot of workplaces, and, and I'll, I'll make a statement that's probably overly general, but it seems like in a lot of workplaces there are probably hyper-aroused management and leadership who are— their trauma is manifesting in work output. And so they're hitting numbers and they're extremely productive people, but they're always stressed out and therefore don't have enough time to mentor the hypo-aroused workforce that is bed rotting and defaulting to video games and social media because they're also— stressed out and overwhelmed, except they're not productive because they're shutting down instead of overworking. And so there's probably this like bigger gap that's forming, and that's why they say, hey, everybody's lazy and nobody's working. But meanwhile, everybody's just overwhelmed at the same time.

Exactly. Everybody's overwhelmed and undersupported, right? And there's more of a divide because of that, because As you say, both sides are overgeneralizing the other and not really understanding they're actually dealing with the same thing, with overwhelm and burnout, right? Because these guys, the ones who are in the leadership, might be like hitting the numbers, but for how long and at what cost, right? Because people drop, right? Health reasons, or they just drop out of sight. They leave, they leave the big, big companies, or, or sometimes even medium companies and small companies, and they just like, okay, I just need time out. I've heard that too.

Yeah. So here you are observing this data and working with a lot of those kind of high-functioning but trauma-ridden leaders, right? And why'd you decide to write a book about it?

I felt because I was doing only half the work as a therapist, like they were coming to me and I was seeing this pattern, right, about workplace stress and burnout. And they weren't coming to me because of work, but a lot of the things that they were talking about was work-related and it was relational. But it was manifesting. And then we started seeing patterns that were, wait, wait a minute, what you're saying affects you, what parts of you are affected with your boss. It sounds similar to what you said about your mom. And so, right, there were like patterns that were like arising that were very apparent. And they were doing well. My clients, clinical clients were doing well, but when they walked back into a system, I was hearing about the way the system of the workplace were trying to deal with this kind of stuff was not hitting the mark. It was like totally missing, right? And so when I wrote my first book about parenting and I was presenting it, I was doing the research, and that's where I found out that Most of the workers are traumatized. I'm like, wait a minute, then why are we having these executive coaches come in who are told and trained not to go there? Like, is something like not aligning right here? So it just got me thinking. And so I did more research, and that's where I interviewed a lot of people who weren't my clients and just, you know, Did a lot of research, and that's where I wanted to really start that conversation of what are we going to do? What can we do, right?

So who's the target reader for the book? Who did you have in mind when you decided to write it?

I mean, decision makers, because people who actually can— because I think you, like you said, a lot of people feel it. They see it, they feel it. But they are not feeling very— they're not prioritizing this because they see it as, oh, well, it's relationship stuff. But they're not tying the cause and effect of the relationship to their bottom line and to their quarterly statements and to their revenue. And I'm saying, wait a minute, it looks like there really is a a tie here. Um, there, there's definitely a direct through line. And because business is relationships, right? So when we don't know where people are and how to do relationships with where they are, which is mostly trauma, you know, um, then what are we doing?

You read a lot about— you read a lot about how leadership, the demands of a leader have changed. I mean, we live today in a society where that kind of strict top-down style, you know, it's not accepted anymore. And there it's been replaced by more of a call to be a servant leader and to be more empathetic and a little bit more patient. Yet it feels like there's more trauma in the workplace than ever before. Do you think that it wasn't talked about or diagnosed back then and that it's actually better today than it used to be with that stricter top-down leadership style? Or do you think that today's leadership style just gives— I don't know. I don't really know what I'm trying to ask there, but it feels like the workplace is suffering more than ever, yet it's supposed to be a kinder, more empathetic leadership style. What's, what's the disconnect?

We're asking me a contrarian question, which is good because it's, it's like, well, we're talking more about it, but we're seeing more of it. Like, what's going on, right?

Yeah, yeah, what's going on?

I know, like, right, back in the day when it was top-down, things seemed to be aligned and nobody complained and blah blah blah. I get it, I see that. And Back in the day, the whole structure was different, right? And also there was this, um, stability of, I'm going to be top-down. It was a very, um, structured hierarchical, uh, structure. But there was also this loyalty. Do you remember back when People's retirements were like pensions and not like, right, all rolled up into—

Yeah, it used to be, hey, I'm deciding on the company I'm going to work with for the rest of my life, and now everybody changes every couple of years.

Exactly, exactly. So I think there is this, um, more transactional aspect to relationships in general, right? And so that's a big, I think, um, cultural shift both at work and outside of work. Again, like, affecting the other. And that's really a big one. I feel like the top-down and what you've seen, the military, you know, leadership that a lot of corporations had taken on, like I said in the book, um, could work if it was complemented by some relational aspects. So if you want to go to that, you know, here's an overgeneralization too, but like the masculine and the feminine, right? They're supposed to work together, right? When you lean on one or the other too much, it might not work so well. I mean, so I think that I've heard from somebody Um, that, uh, workplace, there was this nice balance and one of them left and now it's pretty chaotic. So I think, yeah.

Interesting. So, and we could cut this if you don't think it's appropriately phrased, but my interpretation of what you're saying is that maybe The traditional, more masculine, more ordered and structured version of leadership didn't work. And so maybe we've overcompensated as a society and swung to the other end of the spectrum, which is more of a feminine servant leadership, high empathy relationship, like, but maybe a little bit too far into that end of the spectrum. And so there's probably some middle ground where both styles would complement each other a little bit better.

I, I'm not sure if that's what I'm saying, but I'm definitely liking what you're saying about the pendulum swinging and we, us needing that, right? Because I, I, right, right. Because if one, if it has swung this way, I think inevitably gravity will bring it this way. So I'm understanding both sides. Right? And then hopefully that will have some, some, um, common sense, right? Um, effectiveness.

Sure.

Uh, right? Because, I mean, we don't want managers to become therapists. That's not what we're saying. That's not what I'm saying, right? But can we, when we talk about emotional intelligence, keep in mind That just teaching it to them, like the top-down approach, which is, here's the information, you go and figure it out. Is that working? It really hasn't. And this is why I brought in the how. How can we come alongside, right? And then show you how, walk alongside, nurture and mentor how emotional intelligence is shown. I think that's probably what I'm— Trying to get it. Does that—

that's a better— yeah, that's a better explanation. You, you say in the book too there was a Harvard Business Review leadership boot camp, and there was a poll done with thousands of participants that showed that 85% of them said that EQ was more important than IQ and technical knowledge, which was interesting.

Which was interesting, right? I mean, it's funny because she started out with asking other things. Then she moved into the EQ. But there was this disconnect I felt as a therapist watching this survey happen because they were saying how important technical knowledge was and all this other stuff. And then finally, when she mentioned EQ, it's almost like a buzzword. Everybody said, yes, that's important. So I was like, wait a minute, I'm sensing some dissonance here. Like, so this is one of the things I'm talking about. People All know it's important, but they don't know how to get there. Right? And they're, they're just given a lot of information, um, how— what they look like. What, uh, what does a high EQ leader look like? And that's just the way it's taught. And it— I'm like, wait a minute, is that really helping?

Yeah. So I know we don't want to get too, too deep into your framework, but tell everybody at a high level How do you solve these problems for individual leaders and for companies?

Yeah. And if— I'm glad that you mentioned both because that's how it should be done. I think my framework was meant to be done both at the company or organizational level as well as individual work. So I feel like the way people are trained In EQ may benefit from a shift. So we talk, like I said, giving people a standard and saying, this is what it is, often without show— been showing the map how to get there, or even a guide how to get there, creates shame. That's what shame is, like knowing where you should be, knowing where you are. And feeling really bad about it, about yourself, right? That's a very simplified definition of shame, right? And so what, what can we do? My, my, my, you know, purported hypothesis and a let's go, you know, mantra is let's get to the how, because a lot of people haven't been shown how, how to do relationship. How to, you know, know what you're feeling, how to communicate that, how to, you know, show people what you need, how to, you know, motivate somebody else. Do you know what I mean? All these things that I learned in graduate school becoming a therapist. I'm like, wait a minute. What makes this special? I was like, why am I paying? Right? Why, why, why aren't we just taught all of this in school or, you know, or at home or both?

Yeah.

Or at the work onboarding, right?

Well, there are a lot of those subjects, everything from basic financial literacy to— I mean, emotional intelligence is obviously a very good example of that. Yeah, yeah, emotional literacy, right?

Yeah, there you go. Yes, yes, that's right.

Yeah, we should be teaching those subjects. Um, What, what are your thoughts on how artificial intelligence is going to play into this? Is it going to make the problem worse, or does it have the potential to solve some of these problems for us?

I've seen— I think it's happening. So the argument, um, for adopting AI so fast, I think, is to, you know, Oh, so that we could give all of the busywork to AI so that we could do more human things. But my question would be, is that happening? Right? I mean, Sam Altman in a recent interview was saying, like, one of his fears— I think he listed 3, but one of the last ones is that he was concerned that people are relying On AI for, like, decisions, like completely giving over the executive functioning to AI. Like, tell me who to be friends with, right? And that is kind of a scary aspect, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, it hallucinates.

Oh yeah, and it's not even— and then the other thing is that it's not there. It's not there yet. I mean, it's like, it's really not reliable right now.

Yeah.

So I say, if we want AI to be a tool, then all the more, right? And they're being trained on humans and our behaviors, then all the more we need to get our emotional literacy, right? Up there before AI can, because what, what they're, what they're copying now is kind of sad. You know, some of the— I don't know if you've seen, they have those virtual, what do you call those, avatars, you know, supposedly to save time. But what are they talking about? They're they're talking about like a lot of these social media things that are just, you know, superficial and whatnot, right? So, so, right, even before we figured out the mental health crisis and stuff, they have these avatars doing superficial stuff. So I feel like, yeah, I think there's a rate issue. Yeah, I'm not— I mean, no matter how you feel about AI, it's here.

It's here, but it's not ready to, uh, it's not ready to solve your emotional problems. So you need to do that work outside of the computer.

Absolutely. That's what I'm saying. And also, we need to do it, um, at the front end, right? We don't want to be relying on the computers to do that. We need to figure it out amongst ourselves, among human beings, to, to figure this out, this relationship stuff out. And so that, you know, computers can learn from us, but we're, we're, we're the ones. And yeah.

Yeah. So it's kind of like we're feeding it imperfect information on, on how our experiences are. And then other people are relying on that imperfect information to make decisions. And it's just Probably spiraling in the wrong direction. For somebody who's in the audience that says, hey, Samantha, okay, I'm a leader and I need to improve my emotional intelligence. Where do I start? How do I do that?

Well, I would give them that first, what do you call it, step. And it's E for exhale, which is take a step back. Because whatever you're doing, right, it's probably all engrossing. The fact that you're wanting to do this and get improve your emotional intelligence probably came at something, came came through a cost of something or an awareness of something. And it's when you when there's an issue like a crisis, it's it's very tempting to berate yourself and say, oh gee, or if you get a bad, um, you know, uh, evaluation at work, or you got a PIP or whatever, oh yeah, I need to improve my EI. The first thing might be to go to shame. But if you want to just take a step back and kind of look at the big picture, just physically exhale, maybe just, you know, take that moment and Whether it's a day or PTO or whatever it is. I probably shouldn't say PTO because then people will be like, oh no, she's going to increase the uptick in PTO.

Nationwide, everybody, the day after this podcast goes live, nobody goes to work.

But just zooming out, I think, is the number one. And the self-awareness. I'll give you the second one. It's just moving into your body and becoming aware of what's going That's huge. Those 2 big things will be the beginning of the whole, you know, Embrace Method, which will really, really do a little more, um, deeper emotional intelligence work.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. Um, as we start to wrap up the show today, I'm curious, who are some good examples of leaders? Any names come to mind? I mean, who is Who is nailing this framework in their behavior today? Public figures.

Public figures?

Not like, you know, some individual people.

And that's a hard one to say because they're public. I don't know what they're— right? Because one of the issues with real leadership, and this happens often with any kind of public figures, is They have a good image preservation mechanism, but they go home and they're terrible with their families. I don't think that's a good leader, do you? I mean—

No, no, I don't either.

Yeah, so it's really hard. It's a hard one to, to, um, to really name. I would say anybody who has At this level of chaos in the world, people who are growth mindset, in a growth mindset where they're not afraid to share their own growth still going on with a transparency. And I can think of some spiritual leaders, but then even, you know, because They also share a lot of their struggles. So whoever, you know, I don't want to name names because then, you know, like looking back, this, this will be on record and we find a scandal or something, right? Anybody, because this goes back to my whole point of, um, this parts work that's, that I'm such a proponent of, which is When we are living, we're living moment by moment, right? Nothing is guaranteed anymore. Well, it never was, right? But like, moment by moment, one decision is that moment's decision. So we don't know what the next moment will bring. And so when we look at life that way, and when we look at growth that way and have a growth mindset, It really helps us to deal with these people who are coming into work with stuff that when they react in a way we don't like, we don't have to say, that's a bad person that, you know, needs to be fired right now. But you can kind of say they made that decision in that moment of time. It was probably a part of them. Right? That was having some kind of trauma response. I'm not saying that means that they get a free pass, but it will give you more wisdom on how to deal with it in a more productive way, right? Whether it is through some kind of PIP or, you know, whatnot. But do you know what I'm saying? But we're so quick to take one action, one little thing, and just paint a broad brush and then make a whole life-altering, work-altering decision around it. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, does that make sense at all?

It does. Yeah, yeah. No, I do understand what you're saying. Yeah, it's an invitation to, to slow down and be a little bit more compassionate with other people and, and yourself. Yeah.

I think because what we have is what we're giving. So a lot of the leaders who are hard on their coworkers, they were probably hard on themselves. And that's probably how they got up to where they were, right? Like going back to that whole trauma response of hyperarousal. But if you can give yourself a little more compassion, then you can give a little more compassion to your coworkers.

Yeah, we had— I was having a conversation with a member of my team recently, and he brought up a Ram Dass quote speaking of spiritual leaders, and it was something like, the greatest thing that I can do for you is work on myself, and the greatest thing you can do for me is work on yourself. And once we establish that that's how we need to move forward, everybody is, is working on themselves in service of others.

Love that. I love that. It's a great way to, you know, close out our conversation, right? Because that's Pretty much what, what, what is at the foundation of all—

The essence of your work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, Samantha, for those that are interested in learning more about you, where can they go? What can they do? How do they get a copy of the book? Tell us.

Sure. Um, the copy of the book is on Amazon. It's What Other Leadership Books Don't Tell You. If you want to go on to the landing page of my website, the website is Uh, swnconsultingllc.com. Okay, backslash what other leadership books don't tell you. Yeah.

Yeah, so we'll, we'll get the link, the link to that in the show notes. Um, and then we just summarized the book in, in one format, but I'd love to hear what you say if your book was deleted but you could leave the world with just one message from it, what would that message be?

It would be, we're all in this together. Nobody asked for the things that happened to us. How about we treat one another with this knowledge, right? As we work on ourselves to be in service of you, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that, that, that would be— I really love the quote that you just mentioned. I think that would really be an underlying part of that message.

Well, thank you for the wonderful conversation today and for giving me a chance to learn from you.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, you quoting that, you know, reassures me that, that, that you really got it. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much, Nick. Okay.