Why Most Leaders Fail at Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Travis Bradberry

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Great Leadership. My guest today is Dr. Travis Bradberry. He's the Chief People Scientist at LeadX, best-selling author of several books including his most recent one called Emotional Intelligence Habits, and a lot of you might recognize him from the mega best-selling book he wrote called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Dr. Bradberry, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So this is a very, very Hot topic. It's always been a very big topic over the years. And so today I wanted to dive into a few things. We'll talk a little bit about what EQ is, why it's important. There are a lot of leaders, of course, that don't have EQ yet somehow they still get to their leadership roles. Touch on those 4 EQ skills. And just a couple days ago, I came across an article where Jack Ma talked about something called LQ, the love quotient, which I was curious to get your thoughts on. And so we'll dive into all that and a lot more. And then the last 20 minutes, we'll talk about strategies for how to develop those 4 EQ skills. Why don't we begin with a little bit of background information about you? You've obviously been studying this stuff for many, many years. Why emotional intelligence for you?

Yeah, for me, you know, it's a topic that really resonated with me for a very long time. I did my dual PhD program in clinical and industrial psychology. And I found that emotional intelligence really melded the two fields really well because it's a great way to look at the individual and also understand a skillset that's really important in the workplace. So I wasn't— my PhD program, 'cause it was dual, it was 5 years. And I wasn't 2 years into the program before people started calling me the emotional intelligence guy, because that's just something that I talked a lot about, was passionate about. I ended up going into business with a professor of mine. We— she had a consulting firm and we decided we wanted to be an emotional intelligence business. So we developed a suite of products starting with assessments. Our first assessment, the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, has been used— it's been taken more than 3 million times.

Wow.

It's been a really popular assessment. It's actually the test that comes with my book, Emotional Intelligence Habits. So when you read the book, you can actually use a passcode, a unique passcode to take the test because it's really important to know how you score when you're working on your EQ. But yeah, we developed those assessments, started writing books, which helps, you know, the assessment built a lot of notoriety, the books built a lot of notoriety, and then people really wanted to come to us for training as well. So we developed a training program that was quite popular. And yeah, that was kind of my path. I've since sold that business. And I'm still writing about emotional intelligence. I just, I'm, I can't get away from it. I really like it.

What is emotional intelligence for people who are not, I mean, we've all heard of it, but I think a lot of people assume emotional intelligence is just being in touch with your feelings and just knowing what emotions you are exhibiting and experiencing. But it's a little bit more than that, isn't it?

Yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's kind of the, the essence of it, under, you know, the core of it. You do need to understand your emotions and know what you're feeling, where it's coming from. But really the, the next step is being able to use that emotion to produce the behavior that you want. So people who are really skilled at emotional intelligence, they don't just understand their emotions, they're able to sort of I guess, retool them a little bit and use that and turn it into motivation to get behavior that they want. There's also a social side of emotional intelligence, right? And that's how you are at reading the emotions and the experience of other people and how you respond to that, what you do with it. That's the most difficult part of EQ because it requires that you're integrating what's going on with another person with what's going on with yourself. Yeah. Which is a real challenge for a lot of people.

And emotional intelligence, you know, obviously it's been a concept that's been around for a long time, but even recently post-pandemic, I feel like a lot of attention has been put on it. I mean, even I wrote a book, came out a couple of weeks ago on vulnerability and leadership. But part of me wonders, are we spending too much time focusing on the emotional intelligence side of work without focusing on the actual competence side of work? Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I come across articles in publications, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, where they keep talking about the role of emotional intelligence, and then that's followed up by employees don't wanna work in the office, and that's followed up by should we only be working at 80% of capacity? And it just feels like there's a lot talking about the soft, traditional soft skills of work, Have we forgotten about the hard skills of work, the importance of being good at your job, of competence, of doing 10% more than what is asked of you? Um, are we forgetting that, or are we spending too much time on the initial stuff?

I don't think so. I don't think we're forgetting about it. I just think it's a little boring, right? Um, you know, that's probably a good way to summarize it. You know, I did a lot of work with Goldman Sachs over the years, and they would hire all the best MBAs, right? All the Ivy League MBAs, the Stanford people. They bring them all in, and they all have a very similar level of technical competence. You know, if they're, let's say they're finance MBAs, these are all people who are highly trained. So then the question is what sets the star performers apart? And the star performers are the ones that are able to use that knowledge and also be good with people and also be good with themselves, right? Because really smart people make really bad decisions when their emotions are driving the bus. So I think that that aspect of it, you know, these days the world is, is a bit or a lot more woke than when I was first started writing about this stuff in the late '90s. Yeah. And so people are really embracing the emotional side of things, but I don't feel like businesses are forgetting the hard side. It's just, it's, it's such a given. So the question is, yeah, further.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it. It's almost like, you know, how to do the competence side. Like, there's no secret to it. You put in the time, you get the training, you, you know how to become— I think anybody out there, I doubt there is a single listener or a viewer who's sitting there thinking, well, how do I get good at my job? Chances are you know exactly what you need to do to get good at your job. You're just not doing it for whatever reason. But when it comes to the emotional side, that's probably where we get a lot of the questions of How do I become more self-aware? How do I manage my relationship better? That's something that's a lot harder to figure out. And so, I mean, would you agree with that statement? Like the competence piece is pretty straightforward. The emotional side is where we need more of the guidance and the help.

Yeah. I mean, I think of the— about 15 years ago, the healthcare industry really started shifting towards a service model, right? Where they, they started measuring patient satisfaction to a greater degree, and they realized that people have a choice. So they wanted to be the service provider that made people not just made them healthy, but made them feel good, right? To provide a good experience. And with that, when that started, all of a sudden we found that our assessment was being used in our— and my books in medical schools, right? They were using it to teach bedside manner. And that's, you know, medicine is the ultimate profession that leans completely on technical expertise, right? It's like, I want the doctor that is going to know what's going on with me and how have the solution. But the fact of the matter is there's several doctors who all have that same solution. So you, you're going to want to work with the one that also, uh, sort of leaves a good taste in your mouth.

Yeah.

Um, and, and that's sort of the movement that I see, is that understanding and bringing that in. And, and, you know, it integrates with the core competence.

It makes me wonder though, like, if you had a business where nobody was emotionally intelligent, but everybody was competent, would the business survive? And if you similarly had a business where people were not as competent, but they were very emotionally intelligent, would that business survive? And which, which business would— right, if they were competing against each other, and I know it's purely hypothetical, but to me it seems like the business where people are competent would have a better chance of survival than the business where people were not as competent, but they were more emotionally intelligent. What do you think?

I think that— so the business where people are highly competent, but let's say they're just average in emotional intelligence, I think they're going to do all right.

Okay.

Because they're not, they're not going to come off the rails. When you have individuals, you may have a business that's very high in emotional intelligence, but highly competent, but you have certain individuals that are in key positions that are very very low, then you turn into sort of an Enron kind of situation, right? Uh, where you're getting run into the ground by poor decision-making. Um, in terms of, you know, I think what you see— I mean, I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of businesses over the years, and what I see is a very decent level of competence and a very average level of emotional intelligence. So when you pair that decent level of competence with a high degree of emotional intelligence, all of a sudden you're off to the races. And again, that's the distinction. It's, it's that, you know, can we survive with an average amount of emotional intelligence? You absolutely can. But do you want to survive or do you want to thrive? I mean, that's your choice in life, right? That's, that's what it comes down to.

It's kind of treading water versus really— Excelling. Exceeding expectations. Okay. That makes sense. Do you want to hear something really crazy? 96% of the people who watch videos on this channel are not subscribed. Can you do me a favor and help me change that number by subscribing to this YouTube channel? Thank you very much. And so, you know, there are a lot of leaders out there, um, that people work with and for. Obviously, you've seen a lot of the Gallup numbers that show how disengaged a lot of employees are. Is emotional intelligence something that you're born with or something that you can develop? Because to me, it seems like we should have more emotionally intelligent leaders. Like, I mean, a lot of these leaders, right, they have kids, they have spouses, they have significant others. I would imagine when they go home at the end of the day, they're goofing off with their kids. They're telling their wives or husbands, "I love you." They're being silly. They— it's like they have emotional intelligence in them. But maybe something happens when they show up to work where they become a different person. Why don't we have more emotionally intelligent leaders even though we might be emotionally intelligent in our personal lives?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting because there are certain individuals that have this, uh, uh, Jekyll and Hyde thing between how they are at work and at home. Um, I don't think they're the norm. I think that, you know, playing with your kids is kind of like a presentation that goes well. Those are the fun parts of work and the fun part of family. The question is, what do you do with the challenging parts? Yeah. And I think that's where people's lack of emotional intelligence gets the better of them, or they run into problems, because it's in those trying circumstances where they come unraveled. And, you know, I, it's funny because I speak at a lot of businesses that are doing really well, right? They've got the budget to bring in, I'm not cheap, to bring me in to speak and they've got the budget and they always are just think they walk on water because things are going well. And that's not the time where your emotional intelligence gets tested. The emotional intelligence gets tested when your industry has a downturn or we're dealing with COVID or there's a recession. And so, I mean, these are the moments where the great really shine. Show that they're great compared to the good.

That's interesting. So it's more during times of stress and difficulty than it is during times of growth and optimism and positivity where, where you, where you can really see that difference.

Yeah, I think they both matter, but I think that the easy times are easy for everyone and there's less distinction. It's how you deal with the difficulty, right? A toxic coworker or toxic boss or difficult client. Or you make a big mistake, right? What do you do in response? How do you handle all the negative emotion that comes with that? I think that's the thing that sets people apart, and especially for leaders, right? Because they're setting an emotional tone for the organization. So if the organization is going through challenging times and you have a leader that sets a tone that is very proactive and productive and balanced, it's like everyone responds in kind. And, you know, I, I, it's funny because I speak at a lot of businesses that are doing really well, right? They've got the budget to bring in— I'm not cheap— to bring me in to speak, and, and they've got the budget, and they always are just think they walk on water because things are going well. And that's not the time where your emotional intelligence gets tested. The emotional intelligence gets tested when your industry has a downturn. Or we're dealing with COVID or there's a recession. It's— I mean, these are the moments where the great really show that they're great compared to the good.

That's interesting. So it's more during times of stress and difficulty than it is during times of growth and optimism and positivity where you can really see that difference.

Yeah, I think they both matter, but I think that the easy times are easy for everyone. And there's less distinction. It's how you deal with the difficulty, right? A toxic coworker or a toxic boss or difficult client, or you make a big mistake, right? What do you do in response? How do you handle all the negative emotion that comes with that? I think that's the thing that sets people apart, and especially for leaders, right? Because they're setting an emotional tone for the organization. So if the organization is going through challenging times and you have a leader that sets a tone that is very proactive and productive and balanced, it's like everyone responds in kind. Hmm. You know, some folks just have a bit more to start with, but it's something that you can absolutely change with effort. And then of course you have this factor in the workplace where it's, it's some people just were better trained by their parents to develop their emotional intelligence. And others were told to rub dirt on it, right, and stuff it. And it's not super effective. So, you know, I think that feeds into your other question, which is why do we still need this? You know, if we've— it's a— if it's out there, I mean, the first book, big book on the topic in '95 was on the COVID of Time magazine, right? And had two trips on Oprah. I mean, these were like big things, but We're still getting challenged by it every single day. And there's frankly a lot of people that have little interest in self-improvement. They don't really— they're very dismissive of this stuff. And I've worked with a lot of those folks and I've seen them make really profound changes once they embrace it.

But I think it's more than that, right? Maybe it's we don't— you're not rewarded based on your emotional intelligence in a company, right? I mean, at the end of the day, what your leaders care about is that you're able to deliver results. However those results actually get done. I mean, are you aware of any companies out there that measure and quantify and reward emotionally intelligent leaders that kind of give their employees or leaders a score the way that they would do for performance? I mean, I'm personally not.

Yeah, no, it's— it exists. It certainly exists. I was actually involved with studies as well where I worked with Fortune Brands for a number of years and a division there actually, so they had everyone go through emotional intelligence training.

Is that with Nicholas Fink? No, I think he's the CEO of Fortune Brands now.

Oh yeah, I didn't work with— he was a different— I was working with a, with a division called ThermaTru Doors.

Okay. Okay.

But what they found— so they had everyone go through this emotional intelligence training and then they had follow-on options like that were optional. So you could work with a coach, you could do e-learning. Things like that. And what they found is that the people that worked on their emotional intelligence actually had bottom-line performance improvements that moved them up in their succession planning matrix. So that was sort of an experimental approach to it. Other companies are actually looking at, you know, how you're rated by your coworkers in emotional intelligence and factoring that into promotion decisions because they want an emotionally intelligent leader.

Interesting. But besides that, there's not like an objective score inside of a company, right? Because like when you're doing your performance review, you have very clear metrics that you can be evaluated by in terms of performance and sales and projects and things like that. We don't have sort of a standard like that for emotionally— for emotional intelligence inside of companies, do we?

You know, the closest thing— there isn't like a an emotional intelligence test that I think you would use with that degree of accuracy assessing an individual. But 360 ratings are powerful. Yeah. So if you're considering 3 internal candidates for a position that have a similar level of technical expertise and they each get 360, so they get rated by the people that report to them, they get rated by their peers, and they get rated by the people that they report to, the picture becomes really clear. You can tell who's setting a positive emotional tone and who isn't. So that becomes really rich and that becomes a distinguishing factor. It's just a little hard to do that with someone, let's say, outside of your company. It's hard to 360 a candidate.

Yeah. And I've also heard very mixed feedback on 360 reviews. Obviously, it sounds like you're a fan of them. I can't remember off the top of my head who it was, but over the years I've had a few guests come on the show and they were trashing 360 reviews and saying that they're garbage and you can identify who the people are and so that's why they're not honest on them, but it sounds like you're a fan of the 360.

Well, here's the thing, a straight 360 performance review is easily gamed. So what happens is if you do, if you only measure performance based on coworker ratings, everyone scratches each other's back and the whole thing unravels. So that's a huge problem with it. Any assessment that's poorly designed is not going to work well. So if you can identify raters, that person did not— I mean, because here's the thing, I have a dual PhD in this stuff. I was trained to write really good assessments. There's a lot of people with college, just college degrees that are writing assessments. They have no training and the assessments catch on like a book and they're highly flawed, but people still like taking them and they wreak havoc. So that's another factor, but for me, you know, in my own company as it grew, we would not use 360 evaluations by themselves, but certainly it would be a factor. You know, you have sort of the traditional measures and then you have this ancillary information that comes from the 360s.

You mentioned something earlier that I also thought was interesting, and when it came to IQ, and you said that over time you're— and I can't remember exactly what you said, but basically your IQ score doesn't change over —your cognitive ability, you said, does not change over time, right? Yes. Is that what I was— okay. So the IQ part, and I think a lot of people are familiar with that, IQ basically a test that measures your intelligence. So you're saying that you cannot become more intelligent over time, but you can become more emotionally intelligent over time. Yeah.

So, you know, intelligence is not what you know, but it's the speed through which you assimilate information. That's basically what intelligence comes down to. Ah, okay. Smart people are able to evaluate whatever data is coming in and assimilate it quickly. That's what makes them smart.

Ah, okay. So somebody like an Elon Musk then.

Yeah, that's the photographic memory. That's right. The guy that can run, you know, SpaceX and Tesla and Twitter all at the same time. You know, these are people that work quickly mentally. Now there's something similar that happens with emotional intelligence, right? It's how readily are you able to assimilate and understand what's going on with you emotionally. The difference is there's a very distinct brain pathway. So in the— if your brain is shaped, let's say something like this, right here in the middle is your limbic system, and that generates emotions. So you have this emotional reaction to events before you're able to think rationally about them.. And then those signals have to travel all the way over here to the front of the brain before you're able to have a rational thought about them. So that pathway is, as it becomes developed, your awareness of your emotions increases and your ability to get them to produce the behavior that you want increases.

Interesting. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about— well, so two things. One that you mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people out there who work for leaders where if you would ask them, do you work for an emotionally intelligent leader? A lot of them would say no. Yet somehow these leaders still got into their position of leadership. So people might be wondering, well, why do I need to focus on emotionally— emotional intelligence if my leader's not emotionally intelligent and somehow they got into a leadership role? Can't I just do whatever they did? So how are these people getting into their leadership roles? I'm really curious about that. And second of all, how do you respond to people who might make that argument of, my leader's not emotionally intelligent, why do I need to be?

Yeah, I mean, for an individual that— an organization that's, that's touting emotional intelligence is culturally important is usually hiring and promoting emotionally intelligent leaders. So they're usually walking their talk. Now let's say you're an individual at an organization that doesn't doesn't seem to show any interest in it. And you're asking yourself that question. Well, the answer is the reason you want to focus on your EQ is because it's going to improve your individual performance. So, you know, there's scores of studies that just show that bottom line job performance improves with emotional intelligence. So you're going to give yourself an edge whether they are able to promote it as an organization or not. You're giving yourself an edge. Now, when I give talks, I show a graph that shows average EQ score by job title. Okay. And if you start with someone with no supervisory responsibility, it's kind of in the middle and it works its way up to middle management and EQ scores peak for middle management. From there, it's a ski slope all the way down to the CEO. Lowest EQ scores in the workplace on average are held by CEOs. So it begs the same question that you're asking. Why is that the case if emotional intelligence is so important? Well, people are promoted into middle management because they're good with people, and as you move to director, VP level, the C-suite, it's all bottom line performance. All of a sudden, organizations take a very narrow view of the individual. Then it goes back to, again, I'm trying to say emotional intelligence is important. You probably look at that graph and you go, "No, it isn't." Well, within each of those job titles, so you go to CEOs, those with the highest level of EQ are the top performers. So they may have the lowest EQ in the workforce on average, but the highest EQ CEOs are the top performers. So an organization may not recognize it, but they still succeed, those that have it.

Interesting. It's, it's fascinating because in my book on vulnerability, I did something similar where we looked at vulnerability based on seniority levels and we found something similar where the more— between you become an individual contributor, then manager and mid-level leader drops a little bit, but between mid-level leader or in senior-level executive, your willingness to be vulnerable inside of an organization plummets. Like, it's ridiculous. Mm-hmm. And so you made an interesting point. So it sounds like when you're an individual employee, you're focused on the task. When you're a mid-level leader, you're focused on the people who are responsible behind the task. And then when you get to become a top executive, you're now once again going back to focusing on the numbers. So it's really the people in the middle of the company who are focused on their people, whereas if you're at the bottom, you're focusing on the task, and if you're at the very top, you're just focusing on the numbers and not focusing on the people anymore. Is that, is that kind of a fair way to summarize what you're saying?

Yeah, you're back focused on the task again. You're just no longer the one doing it. You're, you're focused on the tasks that are being executed inside the organization by everyone underneath you.

That's interesting. Well, I guess that also speaks to the value that mid-level leaders have inside their company. Oh yeah, there's also been— this was a few months ago, I don't know if you remember seeing it. I think it was the Wall Street Journal that came out with an article basically talking about why mid-level leaders are so in trouble and AI is going to take away their jobs. And I wrote an article on my Substack basically defending and saying that mid-level leaders are the most important employees that you have because they're the change agents, they are the coaches, they're the people who unlock the potential of those around them. It's interesting that there's such a big correlation between the emotional intelligence and the vulnerability drop-off when you become a senior executive inside of a company.

Yeah, well, and there's another aspect of that, right? I got to get that graph from you. Yeah, yeah, I'll send it to you. People in these leadership roles, they assume that the people stuff doesn't matter anymore. They say, well, I only have— let's say I'm the CEO of an enterprise and there's 7 people that report to me in the C-suite. It's like, these are accomplished individuals, they don't need me. To manage them. Yes, they do, because they're human. That never goes away. And I think the vulnerability is, is, is by itself this leadership fallacy that by not showing vulnerability, you're, you're, you're being a good leader. But you can show vulnerability and strength at the same time, right? Yeah. I'm vulnerable to this threat. We all are vulnerable to this threat. But here's how we're going to approach it. We're going to tackle this head on, and this is what we're going to do. And I have confidence in our approach, right? So, yes. That's the emotionally intelligent response.

Yeah, and that to me is the big difference. And you actually kind of summarize the argument that I have in my book is not to focus on being vulnerable, but to focus on leading with vulnerability, which is to say, don't just talk about the gaps, talk about the gaps and what you're trying to do to close those gaps. So in your case, you just alluded to the example of here's what we're gonna do, here's how we're gonna do it. So it's okay to acknowledge that there's a mistake or a challenge or a struggle, But you can't just leave that gap there, especially if you're a leader. You have to talk about what you're trying to do to close that gap too, which I think a lot of people forget.

Absolutely. And that's— I mean, the leadership section of Emotional Intelligence Habits is entirely focused on that. Yeah, it's getting people to understand that and actually do it, uh, because it's something a lot of people just don't understand and don't do well.

Well, let's talk about these 4 EQ skills, uh, and then again, last 15-20 minutes or so, we'll talk about some exercises, activities, anything you recommend for how to develop them. You have self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. So let's start off with self-awareness and what exactly it is and why it's important.

Well, self-awareness is how well you understand the emotions that you're experiencing in the moment and how well you understand your tendencies and preferences. So knowing the type of people and situations that push your buttons before they push them. Okay. Um, understanding sort of, you know, what your weaknesses are. One person might be a yeller, another person might retreat in the same situation and, and, and be a stonewaller. That's, uh, you know, it's, it's that understanding is the essence of self-awareness. So you're doing it on the fly, but you're also across time able to have a really sort of, as they say, 30,000-foot view of yourself.

The time has finally come. My brand new book, Leading with Vulnerability, is officially out. If you want to know the difference between being vulnerable at work and why it can hurt you versus leading with vulnerability and why that can be your greatest superpower, then head over to leadwithvulnerability.com to learn more and grab a copy of the book. Sneak peek: vulnerability is about exposing a gap, and leading with vulnerability is about exposing a gap and demonstrating what you are trying to do to close it. So how do you actually do that? Again, head over to leadwithvulnerability.com to learn more and find out. And so let's say you, you know that. I mean, so what? Like, if I know I know what pushes my buttons. I know what my strengths are. Who cares?

Yeah, well, who cares is the person that says something stupid in a meeting and I don't shove it down their throat because I'm emotionally hijacked by the behavior. Instead, I recognize that they're a challenging person for me, that they say things that I don't like, and I instead approach it constructively and I set a good example as a leader. Or if they're my customer, they'll still want to buy from me instead of— I mean, you know, the customer that you treat like an idiot is the customer that doesn't come back. And that literally happens. It's like the last person you would think a salesperson would do. They do it all the time.

I remember a couple years ago I did an exercise for a big CPG brand, and we did a self-awareness exercise with them, and it was a lot of their top executives in a room. And I had them pair up with one of their team members inside the conference room. And at first I had this executive write down their strengths, their weaknesses, what they thought motivated them and zapped their energy. And they wrote this about themselves and then they swapped with somebody else and that somebody else had to answer those same questions about that leader. And their responses were so off. You could just see and hear people laughing because one executive thinks that he's such a great communicator and a project manager, and the person that they're paired up with says, "You're not good at those things at all. You're actually a great delegator. You're a great, you know, maybe you're a great speaker." Oftentimes the perception that we have of ourselves is not aligned with the perception that other people have. Of us. It's not.

And, you know, that was one of the things for, uh, in writing Emotional Intelligence Habits is I looked at the millions of people who have taken the emotional intelligence appraisal, and just 36% of people are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. I mean, basically a third of us are self-aware and the rest are not. It's crazy.

Yeah, I did a, um, What's her name? Gloria Wilcox. You know, she has this feelings wheel. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. So I, I tried to do that as well because when people would ask me how I'm doing and how I'm feeling, my default would always be, I'm good. Yeah, I'm all right. I'm doing great. Yeah. And then over time, I realized that I am not— I really struggle with this over the past few years. I had a series of panic attacks years ago and I went to a therapist and she had me do these check-ins with myself a couple times a day and to just ask myself, how are you doing? And each time as we went over these prompts, she would say, you have not answered, you've not identified a single feeling or emotion of how you're feeling in the past like 2 weeks. Yeah. I was like, what are you talking about? I said I felt great. I felt good. And she's like, those are not feelings. Those are not emotions. And she gave me this feelings wheel where it said, you know, stressed, disappointed, frustrated, betrayed. And I'm like, what the hell? It was like fascinating to me that I was not capable of identifying how I'm feeling and even talking about that. And I suspect that's a big problem for a lot of people.

Yeah, well, the folks that suffer from panic attacks are typically not aware of their emotions. So you would think, oh, this person's having a panic attack because they're perseverating on what makes them anxious. No. They're suddenly hijacked by this panic attack and they don't know where it's coming from because they're not in touch with these emotions and they're basically just taking over. It's that limbic system says, "Look, I'm going to drive because you're not paying attention to the road, so I'm going to drive." And it's not a good driver. It is a terrible driver.

It was the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. Thankfully, it's been a few years, but yeah, I learned. Now my wife and I, every night when we check in with each other, we always ask, "How was your day? How are you feeling?" And when one of us says good or great, we jump in and say, that's, that's not a feeling. Like, tell me exactly. And it's been such a huge help for us to just talk about what's going on. Okay, so that's the self-awareness piece. Next is self-management. And the way that I understand self-management is when you are feeling a certain way, how do you take care of yourself? So if you are feeling anxious or stressed, How are you managing that anxiety or stress? I guess the same thing could be if you're going through a positive experience. Let's say you close a big deal, you make a lot of money. How are you managing your excitement? Are you going out of control and spending all of your money, or are you able to kind of temper your emotions in that moment? Is that a fair assessment of self-management? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it.

You know, it's really getting that— when you have the self-awareness, it's getting that awareness to produce the behavior that you want. So Sometimes it is how you soothe yourself and how you manage stress. And other times it's understanding that, you know, when the, when the good times roll, self-awareness tells you that you can make some really poor decisions because you think everything's going great. Yeah. And that's an important aspect of self-management. I think that the trickiest thing when I say getting the emotion to produce the behavior that you want. So I start the— I start emotional intelligence habits with how to beat stress and stay calm. That's the first chapter. That's what everybody wants to read. It's my favorite chapter. And it goes right into this graph that shows that without any sort of stress, we are bored and inactive. And as stress increases, our performance increases. But once it gets too high, you go down the other side of the slope and you basically go into meltdown territory. So self-management is when you're— all that stress is hitting you, it's being able to channel that and keep yourself at the peak of the curve. And as you said, being able to soothe yourself, have the perspective to keep yourself sort of in that flow state as opposed to, you know, going off the rails.

Some stress is good then? Absolutely. Okay. It's when it gets too high that that's when the problems happen.

Stress is what gets us out of bed in the morning. I mean, it's, it's, it's— people don't necessarily perceive that as stress. So if I want to get up and get my kids ready for school, I might not perceive that as stress, but it is because that your inaction means they don't get to school on time. That stresses you out a little bit, so you get up and get them ready for school. It's low or moderate levels of stress are very healthy. It's how our brain— our brains are wired to rely on it.

It's survival. Yeah. And you mentioned self-soothing. This is something I'm trying to work on with my recently turned 7-year-old daughter. And it's sort of an example of when people can't self-soothe, what happens because if she, for example, can't see one of her friends or something like that, and we tell her she can't go, she's getting much better at this now. But there was a period of time where she would have meltdowns, where she would be so disappointed, where she wouldn't be able to stop crying. And she would be just literally, you would look at her and it looks like she's heartbroken. And it's just because we would say, oh, you can't see your friends this week. And again, she's getting much better at trying to figure out self-soothing. But if you apply this in the corporate world and somebody is disappointed or somebody has a tough meeting or, you know, whatever the situation is, if you can't control yourself, you can easily just go off the rails, right? I mean, and it's not a very good thing for anybody who's working with or for you at that time.

Well, and a lot of parents fail in teaching their kids to self-soothe because they, they, when the emotion doesn't, uh, isn't appropriate to the situation. So you had to leave a friend's house early and you, and you have a meltdown as a 7-year-old. It's like, wow, that's that's— the emotion is higher than the situation warrants. Yeah, exactly. So what a lot of parents do is they want to just turn the emotion off. But that's not how you learn to regulate and self-soothe. It's understanding, wow, I feel really strongly about this and it's probably more than the situation warrants. That understanding is self-soothing. That's once kids understand that they can self-soothe and sort of bring themselves back. And we do it as adults too, right? It's— we absolutely overreact to situations. So it's, it's a lifelong struggle.

Huh. Okay. I'm going to work on that with my daughter. And then last two, we have social awareness and relationship management. And I think they're very much related, right? Social awareness. Would you— I guess the party test, right? You go into a social setting like a cocktail party and you're just kind of aware of what's going on. If you're talking too much, not talking enough. Reading the room is kind of how I simply interpret social awareness. Would you say that?

Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's knowing what's going on emotionally with other people, but also just going on in general. You know, there's a lot of nonverbal communication that happens, particularly if you're in a leadership role. There's this deference to authority, so people aren't always— they're afraid to tell you things. And people that are very socially aware are an astute read of other people. We also have information that comes into our brain that we have to learn to focus on. We're not even aware of. This is another thing that I say for a lot of my talks, but they did a study at the University of the Netherlands where they took people who had cortical lesions. So their eyes work perfectly. They send the signal to the back of the brain and the visual cortex is— has lesions. It doesn't work. So the brain can't process the information. They put these people in front of computer screens and they show them images of strong emotions. And they react the same way as people who have sight. So if I put you in front of a screen and someone who's beaming, you crack a little smile. You can't help it. It's just mirror neurons do that. So, I mean, if someone without physical sight can react emotionally to what their eyes are seeing, they're not even aware that they're seeing it. The same thing happens to you when you walk into a room. I know you've walked into a room full of people and say, whoa, something's going on. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it, right? That sense is, is really important to human survival, and it's a big part of social awareness.

And then let's quickly jump into the last one before we dive into how to practice these things. Relationship management, which to me I just took as, do you know how to maintain and keep and build healthy relationships with people?

It is. And the way you do that is by integrating those other 3 emotional intelligence skills. Ah, okay. So, let's go back to challenging moments. Relationships are filled with them. In those moments, you're having strong emotions that are trying to hijack your behavior. The person you're dealing with is having strong emotions that are trying to hijack their behavior. So, you have awareness of those 2 things. How do you manage it? How do you respond to them? How do you handle yourself? How do you— do you understand where they're coming from? Are you able to respond in a way that you don't think logically is correct for you, but you're doing it for them?

That's relationship management. Okay. And then last one for you. What do you think of this concept of LQ from Jack Ma, the creator of Alibaba, who really believes in this concept of the love quotient, of genuinely having a heart and loving people that you work with and caring about them so intently and deeply. Is that a thing?

I mean, probably not as an intellectual capacity, right? So, so the idea that— I mean, and people debate this with emotional intelligence too, even though there's a pretty distinct brain pathway. A lot of academics don't feel that it's a true intelligence. And for me, I don't really care whether or not it's a true intelligence. There's a brain pathway. There's very specific behavior that results from it, and I can train people to improve that. So that's what I'm after. Not, not a name. Yeah. And so let's look at love quotient, regardless of whether or not it's an actual intellectual capacity. What is he— what is Ma proposing? He's proposing that unconditional positive regard is good for people. Yeah. And it absolutely is, right? You have to be able to balance that with delivering tough feedback. In the workplace, right? You can't just— it's, it's not all roses all the time. Um, but I think showing people— there's a graphic that I post on— I have a lot of followers on LinkedIn, and oh, I know, I follow your stuff on there.

You have millions of people who are seeing all your stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And I post this graphic from time to time and says, go to where you're celebrated, not tolerated.

Yeah, that was from a few days ago, you put it up.

Yeah, I did post it a few days ago, and it's—

that's how you I'm following your stuff.

Yeah, yeah. But it's so true. It's so true. I want to be at a workplace where my contributions are recognized and that, you know, that positive regard is important. So I think that's what he's tapping into and I don't think people do enough of it.

All right, let's jump into what I call the leader's toolkit section where we basically take something and do a little bit of a deeper dive into it, give some action items and how-tos. And I thought the best place to do that for would be these 4 core EQ skills, and maybe you can give some exercises or tips or strategies for how people can practice these, starting off with self-awareness. Where do you begin to, to develop this? All right everybody, you're not going to want to miss the rest of this conversation with Dr. Travis Bradberry because we are going to dive deeper into into the 4 elements of EQ and how to actually practice all of them. And those were self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. We talked a little bit about what those are, but in the leader's toolkit section, Dr. Bradberry is going to give more insights on how do you actually develop and practice these things. If you want to get access to that episode, head over to greatleadership.com/ep membership.substack.com. Hit that subscribe button over there and you will get access to all of these episodes, one of them every single week, as well as the full archive of all of these episodes. And do me a favor, let me know, what did you think of this episode? Send me an email, jacob@thefutureorganization.com. We're always trying to improve the podcast, add more value for you. I'd love it if you share it with friends and coworkers and colleagues. And again, send me a note. Let me know what you think of these episodes. Who else should we bring onto the show? What topics should we be covering? Again, that's jacob@thefutureorganization.com. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next time.