L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Map, Match, Meaning, Move: Emotional Intelligence as a Leader's Greatest Resource

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Far too often, we classify our emotions as “soft” skills, effectively secondarizing them behind the skillsets we think of as critical to our work. Ironically, communication with others is perhaps one of the few “skills” almost all of us share across our professions, and practice every single day. This week, Dr. David Caruso joins the show to help us better understand how and why our bodies and brains experience emotions, as well as how we can best control and utilize them as managers, learning leaders, and human beings.

You're listening to L&D in action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. This week, my guest is Dr. David Caruso. David is an author, founder, and consulting psychologist. Through the Emotional Intelligence Skills Group, which he co-founded, he has conducted emotional intelligence training with organizational audiences all over the globe.

Quick note, we'll use EI interchangeably with emotional intelligence throughout this conversation starting now. David has co-authored three books, including the Leaders Guide to Solving Challenges with EI. He has given feedback to thousands of executives through a test he co-developored three books, including the Leader's Guide to Solving Challenges with EI. He has given feedback to thousands of executives through a test he co-developed as well, called the Meyer-Salavy Caruso EI test. After completing his PhD at Yale, David had a stint working in industry with roles covering executive assessment, product management, and more.

So I'm grateful for his unique ability to synthesize deep research with practical experience in the field, all while keeping space for nuanced discussion of interpersonal relationships. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to L&D in action. I'm your host Tyler Lay and today I'm joined by Dr. David Caruso. David, it's wonderful to have you on. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Tyler. I appreciate the opportunity. So David, on a scale of one to 10, how energetic and pleasant are you feeling right now? And if you don't mind me asking

after you answer that question, would you like to explain to our audience why I asked you that question? Oh, yeah, I will answer the questions. The summary is not rhetorical. So energy wise, no zero to 10, one to 10, pretty high probably about seven or eight. That's high for me. Wonderful. I'm super energized. And in terms of pleasantness, maybe about a four ish, which those two things together gives me a little bit of a performance anxiety, and a little bit of an edge. And I think you ask that because it comes, it really strikes at the heart of what we wanna talk about, which is emotional intelligence. How we feel impacts how we think,

how we decide, how we view the world. We wanna make sure that we match the right emotions to the task. So since you asked me, I have to ask you. I mean, it's the how are you question, but a real question deserving of a real answer. Yes, I am the kind of person who actually does not mask when asked how are you I stopped doing that years ago.

I'll to be totally honest with you during the pandemic actually I decided to in almost all cases stop masking and stop telling people, you know, I'm good. I usually am very candid. In this case though, in terms of energy, I'm probably also at about an eight, 10 minutes ago, I gotta be honest, I was probably at a four, but the largest coffee I've ever seen arrived at my door from an order that I made, thankfully,

just about 10 minutes before we started, 32 ounces of hazelnut black coffee. So I didn't drink the whole thing, but I'm feeling a little bit better than I was then. And in terms of pleasantness, I'm probably at a six or a seven, which is pretty good considering that it's a gloomy gray day out in New York

and it's kind of raining on and off. So yeah, I don't feel too bad. But I would also like to say that I appreciate that this is, it's how you start off the book that I read from you. I think it's emotional intelligence for leaders. And I really, I just appreciate that you point this out, that we do this thing almost every single day. We ask, you know, how are you?

And we don't expect a genuine answer. You know, it's custom, it's tradition, it's politeness, whatever it is. But ultimately you giving a framework like this, you know, a's custom, it's tradition, it's politeness, whatever it is, but ultimately you giving a framework like this, you know, a 10 point scale, not that that's something that you can practically use every time you greet somebody, but just pointing that out, giving a sort of a framework and then a series of other options as well for how to actually speak to somebody about how they're feeling in the moment as a component of, you know,

developing these skills. We're going to dive very deep into this, but I just wanna say that I appreciate you pointing that out because I'm so sick of just saying I'm good, that I don't even do it anymore. In any case, also in your writing, one thing that stuck out to me was you refer to emotional intelligence, which I think from here on,

we can refer to as EI interchangeably, as a hard skill. I'm personally kind of sick of this soft skill component, the soft skill definition that we've been using for a while for all things that seem to be, you know, social, emotional, especially in the workplace. I'm sick of it. And I think a lot of other people are too. But for, you know, the purpose of this conversation, can you describe why you see EI as valuable as just about anything else in terms of a skill? Yeah, we don't use soft skills because

in our definition and our approach to EI, it's an intelligence. Intelligence is a set of abilities or hard skills. Now, there's another world out there. Sometimes they use the terminology EQ. And, you know, in that are all the touchy, feely aspects of that idea. So it is a hard skill because it is a form of intelligence. And I think that's the key difference between our work and other stuff that's out there that people purport as a set of soft skills.

I have heard many different versions of this. Actually, the reason that I wanted to have you on this episode is because I've had conversations with probably three of my last five guests. And they have all written books as well, usually maybe a chapter of what they're writing goes over emotional intelligence in some form or fashion. Many authors who are dealing with leadership or who are dealing with company culture, they take it upon themselves to deliver some sort of a framework as to how to develop stronger relationships in the workplace. And, you know, in general, it feels a little bit superficial because quite frankly, these folks are not, you know, doctors of this field. They aren't what you are and they haven't really, you know, spent the time doing the research like you have

and they don't have an assessment named after themselves like you do. So. But, you know, what I want to say, you know, kind of in their defense. Sure. If you do a quick lit review and just you know Google this thing what it's gonna pop up are things called ecu this touchy-feely stuff about being kind

Being optimistic always being happy And that's all good stuff, right? You really have to dig a little deeper to understand that there is The the term emotional intelligence has come to it's almost like a roar shock. You know, it's what people read into it. And so you really have to dive pretty deeply into the literature to figure out, whoa, wait a minute, the stuff that I've been reading, it's a little more complex than this set of soft skills. Yeah, I think example A is that you repeatedly in your writing refer to the fact that it's, it's actually important to have and demonstrate and express your

negative emotions and your negative feelings. Um, in some cases they, you know, they get the job done and quite frankly, it's not always smart to suppress those types of feelings in the way that you feel. And I, I agree. When I see sort of the EQ literature, it tends to be sticking to positivity and it reminds me a little bit of the classic sort of, I don't know, on the borderline of like stoicism,

maintain some level of composure in the face of challenge, of failure, et cetera. And what I've gathered from your speeches, appearances and literature is that it's much more complex. And I would like to actually start by laying down a baseline for our listeners and talking about the four M's, I guess, the four-part emotional intelligence framework that you have, map, match, meaning, and move.

Would you mind trying to give a brief overview of those four? Yeah, sure. So my colleagues are academic psychologists. That's sort of my background. But we use terminology that doesn't always communicate clearly. And so in the last few years, I've changed our terminology. So maybe someone will remember some of the terms

that we're talking about more than just wait there are four skills. What are they? So I like alliteration. So we have these four M's and map you know map is about sometimes called perceiving emotions. We have something called an emotion map. What you referenced earlier was how are you feeling on those two dimensions energy and pleasantness. So how are you that that's the question, and what about the people around you? Can you map the emotions of your environment? Now once you do that, if you get that matching,

that means one of two things. Can you match your emotions to that of the other person? We call that emotional empathy, right? That's a connection. So if you come into this meeting, and we weren't recording it, it wasn't for a podcast, but it was, we're just talking as friends or colleagues. And I asked you how you were,

and let's say you were just really very anxious about what's going on. If I could match that anxiety, I'm going to have a deeper connection with that individual. The other part of matching means you match the emotion to the task. You mentioned as well that things like sadness can be helpful. If you're in a sad mood, you're more likely to find errors in a document. I mentioned at the start of this podcast, I'm a little anxious, which is great.

I want just a little bit of performance anxiety. I don't want to mail this in. And I find that's almost more respectful to you and your listeners. So mapping, how are you matching to these? Are these the right emotions at the right time? And then the meaning of emotion. Why do you feel this way? What's going on?

How might you feel in the future? Does sometimes psychologists call it affective forecasting? For this audience, I say it's an emotional what if analysis. What if I send that email without editing it? How might my staff react? And then finally is moving emotions. So look, if all is well, the emotions are matching the task, how can I just keep this frame, these emotions going? If it's not ideal, how do I move your emotions and my emotions in order to accomplish the task?

So you map emotions, how are we, you match those, do they make sense? Meaning, how might we react and why do we feel this way and how do we move emotions which are constantly changing in order to achieve our desired outcome? Among these, the ones that I'm most familiar with lately in my own personal research just for the sake of my relationships and friendships is I think matching has become much more prominent for me because of validating one's feelings and you discuss this a little bit as well you know if somebody is in distress or even if they're you

know in a moment of great happiness the the way that we should be validating their feelings is by sort of matching you know you you see how they're feeling and you kind of reflect that back to them in a sense. And a trap that I so often before in my life, and I see so many people fall into, is just kind of like solution providing immediately. You know, offering some sort of attempt to console or reassurance when in fact,

it's best to kind of start off, you know, just by acknowledging how they're feeling and reflecting that back to them. I've also read that that's the best way, or I've been told that that's the best way to console a child, a baby, who is crying or something like that, you know, you match their feelings and you reflect that back to them

and that ends up working. Ultimately, I think that this is, these each represent, each of these four represent sort of moments that we are largely unaware of both in conversation, just micro conversational moments, but also from sort of a systematic perspective as well. So within our organizations, and for the sake of most of our listeners right now who are largely learning

and development folks, I would like to go through a framework that you so graciously actually sent me that kind of puts these four skills into the frame of an L and D person. So I'm going to read off what you sent me here and then we can kind of go into each of the moments if you don't mind. So for mapping, how are you and the group? So I think here you're talking about when given some sort of a learning task or learning goal, you know How are you feeling? How is the group feeling? I spoke with Lauren Waldman the learning pirate a while back and She made a very critical point toward the end of that podcast that you just can't learn as effectively if you're not feeling good If you're not in the right headspace for learning. So what would you say about that? In terms of learning, to your knowledge,

what kind of headspace is best for learning the best for optimizing your learning? Yeah, and that goes to the second ability matching, right? So we would say, what's the agenda? What's the content? And that's really key. So in general, though, curiosity, interest, so higher pleasantness doesn't always have to be high energy though,

right? Sure. If you're in this really optimistic, excited, I'm excited to be here in this room, I'm learning all this stuff, you're actually maybe not learning, you're leaping ahead and trying to apply stuff. So I would actually, and I've done a lot of stand-up training, and I intentionally want to dial it back a little bit. I want the interest. I want the pleasantness, but not necessarily the

high level of energy. You want a more reflective emotional frame. Interesting. I've had so many sessions with speakers and folks who are meant to teach who thrive exclusively on their energy. It seems that that's what they're all about. I can think of many actually who are very, very famous like Tony Robbins is one of the most famous sort of, I don't know, business sales educators. He's so famous for getting on stage and just having like the most energetic performances. And I've also heard stories about folks who come away from things like that, especially just, you know, stage presentations and learning in those large settings. And they come away with energy, but they don't really come away with much change or much of a path forward

for change. So that's an interesting thought. In match, what you sent me is, are these emotions helpful? Which emotions would facilitate each part of your learning agenda, which is, you know, what you just kind just went over there. For meaning, how might people react when will attention wane? So are you thinking of, here is the coursework or here is what we're delivering to you? How are people going to react in terms of how much they like that thing? How much they believe they need that thing? And at what point will, along that coursework work whether it's immediately or sometime while doing it when will they sort of lose their attention and also in this case does attention reflect energy as well in some sense. Yeah to the last one attention does

reflect energy and so you know what a lot of people will do is before I begin to lose you we're going to take a break. Sure. And it's going to be five minutes. That's a really simple fix. But the other part of it is also, let's say there's content there that's not always fun, or that I think is absolutely critical to convey, but my audience doesn't necessarily agree with that. And I should recognize that.

I should recognize that what participants want is not what I'm necessarily delivering. And so if I can just project that into the future, it's going to help me with my delivery. And also to explain the importance of this, not necessarily to me, but to them, to the learner. Why is this important for you? And I think sometimes we forget to do that. It doesn't take a lot of time, by the way. None is this important for you? And I think sometimes we forget to do that. It doesn't take a lot of time, by the way. None of this is time consuming. It's just,

as you said, a framework to help you just be more effective. So that represents move then, right? So explaining why it's important. As you just said, I do think that there's a big challenge here. And I don't mean to ask you how to resolve this right now, but in many L&D contexts, you know, it takes a while to develop a course or a training. And it's something that unfortunately just isn't super flexible. I do think that the hope of a lot of L&D folks right now is that we will be creating content for the future of our organizations that is more flexible and adaptable with the help of AI

and future technology tools. But is there anything else in terms of how you converse with, how you set up the learning system? So maybe it's cohort-based learning or collaborative learning where you're actually learning with others, whether you're involving somebody like an expert who maybe has some notoriety or some renown in that field or about that specific category of mastery. Are there any other things that can kind of keep attention, keep people maybe more excited, more energetic about it, and just effectively move emotions

in the right direction to stick with course content. We have found, so I've developed a couple of courses that are asynchronous and also synchronous as well. And people are experimenting, we've experimented with a bunch of different things. And that's anywhere from, as you said, cohort learning, posting things, having a really good moderator, you know, nudging people, we've asked people to upload videos, and then have their colleagues comment on it,

you know, how am I feeling? Can you read my emotions? Unfortunately, I think probably your audience, you know, knows this better than I do. You know, we've also developed courses where the feedback has been it's too long. And so we can't sit there for an hour and a half. And there's others who are just saying we need 20 minute modules in order to sustain people's attention. Again, it's a whether it's a TikTok or YouTube effect. That's what we have to deal with. So it's kind of these micro doses, if you will, of learning, which may be the way not to sustain attention, but to avoid the burnout in the boredom

and the waning of attention. A really critical component, I think, of being a leader and becoming emotionally in tuned and developing your emotional intelligence is gathering data on those around you. We're going to spend some time talking about leaders and emotional intelligence right now. If you don't mind, I would like to give you a moment to talk about the MSCEIT. I'm not sure if this is maybe like your opus, but it's a test that you

are partially responsible for that has been utilized in many contexts for gathering data on emotional intelligence among a group within organizations. And I would love if you could just maybe give a superficial explanation of the techniques that it uses so the listeners and I can understand how it is that you assess for emotional intelligence? Do you know just on paper, that sort of thing? Yeah, so the MSCEIT, M is mayor, my colleague, Jack mayor, S is Peter Salade, my other colleague, and C is me. Curuso, emotional intelligence test, sometimes we say mesquite.

It is an ability-based or objectively scored measure. So in this field, people know, people realize there's kind of two or maybe three ways to measure stuff in this space. One is self report. How smart are you? Tyler, how empathic are you? Tyler, how good are you at reading people? That's called self report. The problem is that if you then actually give us, give people a test like the Mesquite, which is objectively scored, where we show you a face, we ask you what emotions are being expressed by this person. There's a right and wrong answer to that. If so, in the Mesquite, every answer is coded, you know, is correct or not correct. For instance, moving emotions.

Here's a vignette, here's a scenario. How effective are the following strategies in managing emotions? There's a better and worse answer to that. The huge issue here, and the reason we think mesquite or ability-based measures kind of the way to go go is the correlation between self-reported EI and objectively measured is about 0.2, which is pretty low. And to make it even more troubling is that most people overestimate their EI. And the more you overestimate, the less likely you are to want to improve it

or to understand its impact. So imagine an overconfident leader who thinks, I got this, you know, I got this nailed. I can read my team really well. I'm an incredibly empathic guy. And damn it, I'm a great manager of emotions. And who says I'm not? But they're so convinced of their own skill set and they're way overconfident in that. It's very challenging to work for someone like that. So we think the best way to measure emotional intelligence is with an ability-based measure as it would be for any

hard skill. Sure. I can think of a number of biases that would make somebody think that they are, in fact, more empathic than they are. So I'm not surprised to hear that. I do want to bring up one thing that came up a handful of times in your book, and that is cultural differences when, in your book and that is cultural differences when you know dealing with emotional intelligence in general really in any context. You mentioned that you know observing a face and describing what emotion is being felt sort of has an objective right or wrong answer. I'm not sure if this goes against that but you do say many times that you have to develop a cultural awareness and understand that we all do not come from

backgrounds that are similar enough that the way that we express and and feel emotions is just uniform across us all so I and if you don't mind I liked it if you could just kind of give a statement on that and the importance of how to maybe The importance of developing, you know sort of cultural competency in this case and just you know what to look out for and how to think about this. Yeah, it's a really important question. But what you said is important to parse the question. We go with the assumption that emotions are basic or universal.

So people are angry because something they value, they can't achieve, it's been blocked. You're sad because you lose something they value they can't achieve. It's been blocked. You're sad because you lose something of value. But what you value and what I value may differ. So the universal underlying cause is universal across people and across cultures. But there are specific causes of these emotions. And the really big difference is in the expression of emotion, sometimes called display rules. And we actually, we've done cross-cultural studies on the Mesquite, and what we find is that first ability mapping, reading emotions, it's pretty universal.

At least in the data we have, there's very few differences. The huge differences have to do with an area that we don't measure, which is the expression of emotion. How do I display my emotions? When do I display my emotions? That is driven by culture, but also frankly, individual differences. If I'm a more shy, quiet person,

I'm not gonna yell and scream and stomp my feet. How do I express my frustration? Some people are passive, aggressive, right? So perhaps the way I express my anger is by being late for an appointment, whereas someone else might just come out and say it. So huge individual as well as cultural differences on the expression of it and with regard to display rules. And that's something that's really important just, you know, as a leader in and in learning development, are people expressing how they feel? Or are they masking it? You know, a smile a nod of the head, what does that actually convey? It's very difficult to know unless you know the person. Yeah, and that is my next question. So especially from the perspective of a leader, I've heard

a few times recently from my recent guests that, you know, leaders set the tone in their organizations. And I think that means a few things. The emotions that they are willing to express and that they do express and how they express them kind of invites others to express the same range of emotions which can be limited or it can be broad. And also how leaders invite others to just connect with each other, I guess, and how they do it in front of others

opens up avenues for people to express their feelings more honestly and to actually, you know, just speak more candidly, I think that's really important. And just, you know, the development of psychological safety overall is a big component of this, I believe. But through the lens of move, I would like to talk a little bit more about how we can manage one's own emotions, especially as leaders, and then what we can do to manage the emotions of others in our organizations. You give a handful of different sort of tactics and strategies for this, but I think it's natural we start with how to manage one's own emotions and then kind of go from there to teams, other individuals, but also like, you know, if you can apply that to groups of people within an organization.

Yeah, you know, emotions self-management is pretty critical, but I do wanna stress that in a lot of approaches, a lot of EQ approaches, emotions self-management means not being emotional. And as you have said, and we pointed out here, that's not what we're about, because sometimes that anger is justified. And so if I were to say something hurtful to you in this podcast, you should be angry with me. And you should express it in some way. You shouldn't hit me or throw things at me.

express it in some way. You shouldn't hit me or throw things at me. Through the screen. But you know, but the importance here is not, our goal is not always to be happy and upbeat and chipper and cheery. Now that said, there are classic things that people can do long-term strategies to reduce what we call your emotional set

point. So, if someone gets frustrated, but there, you know, it's all the classic things, lack of sleep, exercise, diet, nutrition, all those kinds of things that everybody has heard a zillion in one time, you know, these are the things you must do to reduce your set point. You know, you know, these are the things you must do to reduce your set point and what we mean by that is just it just takes more Stuff going on in our lives to you know to set us off If you can think about yourself or you know, your listeners can think about a week when again, they weren't feeling well There was some stress in their family

They were running around and they drank a lot of coffee But they're you know, they really didn't sit down and have a good meal add all that up You're in a crappy mood, right? And so little things will set you off now a lot of people don't have time for that I've done a lot of work in healthcare and it's a very humbling experience to have a physician who has said to me Hey, you know buddy I'm getting up at 4 a.m. To hit the hospital to do rounds get into surgery then I'm getting up at 4am to hit the hospital to do rounds, get into surgery, then I'm charting my patients, then I'm in clinic. You want me to get at three to exercise? So respecting that point of view, we really stress in the moment strategies. And a lot of that is

pretty straightforward. It is taking a pause, taking a breath. You know, in this podcast, I might go like this, I might take my glasses off, tap my forehead. And it's just, I want to think for a moment before I say something, you know, taking that deep breath, all the classic physiological strategies that people use. And that's really key because you want to hit your own reset button to figure out what's going on. There's another strategy here that is sort of a move strategy,

but also meaning, and we really stress the need to differentiate a mood from an emotion. Yes. And, you know, that's key because a lot of people say, well, this is going, you know, with your gut feel and I should just, and the answer is no, not always. You should go with your analyzed gut. And so again, you know, things like anger or frustration. Well, I might as well do this. I've been, this is a very personal example, but there are some days when I'm in my kitchen

and I'm looking in the dishwasher and my wife has loaded the dishwasher incorrectly. Like everything's in the front. So it's like, we gotta run it because it's filled. Said, no, it's not. It's about 10% filled. So do I get really annoyed? And if I do, it's because I haven't gotten a lot of sleep.

Is it actually worth being frustrated? And I mean, some days maybe. But in general, no, that is not a moral failing, although some people would say it is, right? So you wanna differentiate, man, I was just, I didn't have my morning coffee or I had too much of it and I didn't sleep really well and did I have dinner last night?

No, I didn't. And so my background mood, I need to parse that out. And then what remains of my feeling, I guess I'm really not really not frustrated. So no, it's what's the big deal. And I think that is absolutely key for us, you know, to actually differentiate the source of our feelings. That is really basic. And then you go to other, you know, managing others' people's emotions. And you mentioned this earlier, Tyler, which is, it's called validation.

And it is one of the most powerful techniques you can use, not just at work, but in our family relationships, our personal relationships. Validation does not mean agreement. Someone can say something, you think, really, you're complaining about that? Come on, you know, get a life, which some people may feel or believe. But that is how they feel. So this idea of I can see how someone might feel that way is incredibly powerful move strategies to actually validate people. They feel heard. It enhances this feeling of psychological safety, right? Which is how do you actually do that? How do you operationalize that? And that's probably

the most effective way to move other people's emotions. Hear them, acknowledge them, validate them, and it works enormously well. It's not super hard to do. Yeah. I like that you gave that example about the dishwasher. I'm wondering how common this is among couples. A week ago, this happened to me, where my partner was filling it, and she goes, you know, in every relationship, there is the person who fills the dishwasher like an engineer, relationship, there is the person who fills the dishwasher like an engineer, and then there's the one who loads it like a barbarian. And then she looks at me. Luckily, I don't think we have enough things to actually ever like overload the dishwasher.

So I don't really think it matters too much. And she was making a joke and she definitely was not genuinely upset with me. But growing up, it was a thing that she had to do because of the volume of dishes and things and you know I look at her in the eyes and I said I validate your feelings no I'm just kidding I didn't do that um but in in any case I that's a really good example because you know mood is huge especially at work you know I think we can all think of a hundred examples where we were if we were in the office or even at home you know on Mondays,

like there are just so many reasons why you can feel not great, but it's not something that actually reflects, I don't wanna say truth, it doesn't reflect anything significant, it reflects something that can be easily overcome, that can be essentially ignored in, you know, in the moment of, you know, actual difficult conversation and dialogue.

It can be overcome, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at there. Oh, Tyler, it's really important that I, are you the engineer or are you the barbarian? I'm the barbarian. You are. I should have, I think- I think we need to end the podcast right now, I think.

I, okay, so I avoided saying this because I've done it for the last three episodes, but my girlfriend who I love to brag about is a doctor of neuroscience and she has taught me so much about EI and you know, just relationship dynamics and communication over the past couple of months. And I have started to apply a lot of this to, you know, workplaces and the learning and development world. And I'm really thrilled to lot of this to, you know, workplaces and the learning and development world. And I'm really thrilled to be having this conversation with you because I feel like I've developed enough language to actually be able to have a genuine conversation around this. Unfortunately, in the household, I'm still a big old barbarian.

I mean, I barely fit in this place because I'm huge and I have to bring in bigger plates to hold all my food. So I don't even know what to say. It's just gonna be a challenge that we have to overcome. Hopefully it's not that bad, but I do apologize for being the barbaric one when it comes to the dishwasher. In any case, when it comes to leaders, we've talked about sort of EQ and sort of hiding your emotions. I have to ask this of you because I spent a lot of time

in Los Angeles and San Francisco where there's a lot of entrepreneurs who advocate for just like really deep stoicism in the business world. They are so familiar with failure and hardship and they feel, a lot of these folks feel, there's a lot of courses out there, a lot of educators who just feel very strongly that you have to put your emotions aside in order to get by the challenges. And I do think that to some extent that's true, but I also think that there's a degree of societal expectation, especially in America in particular, to stuff that stuff away, especially among men obviously. I think we can safely say that. And it's just unfortunate to me that I've seen so many people be convinced that the best way to succeed is to hide away your emotions when it

comes to business and money and finances and all of this. And it seems to me to be a bit of an epidemic almost, just like a, because when you develop a company that actually succeeds, you've taught yourself to stuff away those emotions. And now you're building a community of people that work beneath you, that work for you, an organization with a culture. And that is going, I believe that's going to the way that develops will be the result of how you were as an entrepreneur and an individual and the people that you first hired. So I would just like to hear your thoughts on this. I sure you've seen this to people who advocate for you know kind of putting your emotions away and not expressing them correctly But do you think this is overall harmful for business for society? Even do you think it's a mistake that we've made to be this way or is it more complex than that?

Look it's an incredibly complex, you know issue There are times to be stoic, right? There's a time and a place to express these kinds of things. And if you are so single-minded and focused on a goal, the other emotions you're experiencing are not relevant, then you may find them unhelpful. And you can do that for so long, right? So the downside of that poker face,

stoic leader is sometimes outside of the workplace. What are they bringing home? What are they bringing to their relationships and so forth? So with entrepreneurs, with resilience as key, so you know with entrepreneurs with You know resilience is key as you said, you know, they're used to failure and optimism is helpful If you don't believe we're gonna do this and you're not gonna get out of bed in the morning and setbacks are inevitable So there are times not to share Absolutely the huge issue here is

There's a psychologist at Stanford, James Gross studies emotion regulation He has Wonderful articles in this area and one of them I believe is a paraphrase is called the cognitive costs of emotional suppression. Yeah And the idea here is that the more you suppress your display of emotions, the fewer cognitive resources you have to process what's going on. So an example might be you're sitting in a senior leadership team meeting and you're the no-taker. Well, I was the no-taker.

So this is my own story. And sometimes people would say, including your bosses there, and it's like, that was a really dumb idea. So rather than me saying, did you just say that because that really seems like a dumb idea? I just smile and nod my head. And then I realize there's a gap in my notes. You know, I spaced out. It takes cognitive resources not to display an emotion. It takes cognitive resources not to display an emotion. You're not present. You're not attending to what's going on. So if you pride yourself on having, say,

a great poker face and being incredibly stoic and checking your emotions at the door, yes, that might be helpful situationally, but overall, you're losing data. You're not, you're losing awareness, situational awareness, not just emotional awareness. But what the heck is happening out there? I don't know.

I'm out of touch. I don't know how my employees are feeling. You know, I'm not picking up on these signals. Gee, I remember getting that email, but what did he say? You don't have the cognitive resources to attend to all the things that are going on. So that's the downside. Time and a place. Suppress, please. Imagine a world if anything you felt you expressed would be pretty bizarre. So there are times not to express things

But don't don't make that your go-to strategy make that one of the strategies that you have to leverage I Want to push this envelope a little bit further because I think it's natural to extrapolate what you just said you know, you don't have the cognitive resources to Just do your daily work and to maybe I I don't know, communicate effectively with your employees and the folks in your organization. But these days, a lot of major products are being created. A lot of companies represent services that affect everyone. In the last 20 years, we've seen the rise of social media. We've seen the rise of like global electronic and tech companies whose products affect literally everyone, like almost literally everyone.

And the the CEOs, the creators of these companies have been under scrutiny in a real way from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and all these folks. People have a lot of insight into the lives of these leaders. And I would argue that plenty of them seem to be the kinds of folks who, you know, shirk emotions in favor of like really, really aggressive achievement, like really achieving as highly as possible. And it seems to me that when you're doing that, it all like, that bleeds into your product.

It bleeds into what you create as well. The issue of privacy in the world of tech, very much to me seems like, you know, there's always been the argument that these tech leaders just kind of like lack empathy and that Mark Zuckerberg is a robot and that sort of thing. It seems to me that like, this is, being that way is either reflective of the kind of product or can be reflective of the kind of product or service that you create.

Maybe, like I said, it bleeds into how it develops into maybe just being less humanistic, I think. To me, sort of maintaining that deep level of stoicism and suppressing those emotions, it is a risk when it comes to how you're, what you're creating hits the world and how it impacts the world, especially if you have dreams of, you know, impacting billions of people and having billions of users. Would you agree with that to some extent? It's a really thoughtful idea. And so I don't know. I don't want to believe that. I don't want to either, but it's hard not to. Yeah, I think, yeah, and I think of, when we think of a leader, people who do these studies are like, think of a leader.

What's his name? Who might it be? You know, name names. And those are the names that typically pop up. And so I think we see those as stereotypical leaders. But there's also, and I believe it was Reed Hastings of Netflix. This is a paraphrase, it's not a quote by any means. It's something about here at Netflix, we do not tolerate brilliant jerks.

Yeah. I love that sentiment, right? I really love that sentiment because one of the things about when we measure emotional intelligence, you know, you also have to realize, emotional intelligence is not the be all. It's not the most important thing. I mean, that's just plain old silly. And some might call it a statistical sleight of hands when they used to say, EQ is twice as important as IQ.

Silly, not true. And even the people who said it said it's not true. But, and so a lot of it is because in business, what are we rewarding? And a lot of it's whether it's daily stock price, we reward a lot of transactional work. But when you look at the literature on what Mesquite, for instance, predicts,

people hire on emotional intelligence, defined as an intelligence, measured as an ability, they're more resilient. They are more empathetic. They also, there was one study actually out of Australia with managers and what they found is the higher your mosquito score, emotional intelligence score, you were slightly more likely to achieve your objectives.

OK. Not a bad thing, right? So, you know, harder those hard objectives, perhaps smart goals, didn't help a lot, but it didn't get in your way, right? Which is really important. But the really interesting thing about this study is they found the correlation between Mesquite or emotional intelligence and how you achieve those results. That correlation was double the size of the of the what you achieved. You communicated effectively, you know, you dealt decently with human beings. And I really like

that study because what it actually suggests is that this hard skills of emotional intelligence intelligence don't get in your way. That's important. But you don't have to be a brilliant jerk. You can be a decent human being. And you can enhance, you can have an enhanced relationships. It doesn't have to be all transactional. Yeah. And that to me is really, really a great study and a really good way to look at this. So yeah, there are outliers and we think of these stereotypical leaders who are maybe they're jerks and maybe that personality is now imprinted on the essence of their products. But it doesn't have to be that way.

It doesn't have to be that way. I get the sense that especially my generation and the subsequent ones are more likely to peer into the lives of many leaders and critique them very seriously, especially now that so many things are more transparent, how much people are getting paid and the distribution of wages and that sort of thing. At my alma mater, Boston University, David Zaslav of one of the major three networks,

television networks gave the speech. And this was during the writer strike, the Hollywood writer strike. And while he was saying the words to be successful, you must learn to be friends with everybody. A protest broke out. And that to me is like a really, really deeply ironic demonstration of probably a lack of EI

demonstrated systematically. When you get to a certain level, can you no longer see how you're actually impacting people when you're that high up and you have that many people below you and tiers and hierarchies of people below you. And also the product that you make reaches quite literally billions of people. Can you really maintain EI? What does it represent at that level? It just seems like it's such a complex machine of emotional work that has to be done. But ultimately, I like to hope as you do that most leaders are

not like that and that ultimately it doesn't sort of bleed into their products and we aren't dealing with, you know, brilliant jerks and that sort of thing. So I, I've been a, in a slightly tangential manner, I would like to talk about these sorts of leaders from the perspective of, again, learning and development folks, or just maybe leaders that are a little bit lower down. But when dealing with executives and boards of directors, so in the book that I read, you give an example of like a volunteer board of directors, there's a blueprint as to how to work with them using the force skills. And I would like to hopefully to help our L&D folks out there, they are quite frequently dealing with executives and directors and, you know, chief finance officers,

but also just the CEO, COO pitching their overarching learning plans and specific coursework and trainings and all of that. And that's one of the harder things that they have to deal with is like getting approval for budget and whatnot. So would you mind kind of going over maybe some sort of a plan utilizing these skills as to how to maximize the likelihood of kind of getting what you want and working effectively with such leaders? Yeah, you know, the idea of a blueprint is simply applying those four skills somewhat sequentially and but in real time and almost literally writing it down and having a plan. And attending to how people feel about this.

So again, you know, mapping, how am I feeling about this presentation, about this proposal, about this email. Matching is again, what emotion or emotions would facilitate the understanding of my pitch, but the key here I think is meaning of emotion. So sometimes meaning of emotion, another way to look at it is it's called cognitive empathy.

It's really understanding why someone feels the way they feel. So when you're going, you know, talking about my programming budget for next year, and I wanna submit that budget, a lot of people go in saying, here's why it's important to me. But being more cognitively empathic,

it's what is important to that CFO or CHRO, whoever is going to get that document. So again, what grabs you may not grab others. Remember, we talked about emotions having universal causes, but there are idiosyncratic and individual differences in terms of what I value. So what we like to suggest, and to some extent using this blueprint to present to a board, to present to the CEO or anybody in the C-suite, is to do your emotional due diligence. What freaks them out? What are they worried about? How can you address their fears and their anxieties? How can you help fulfill their dreams and their goals? Not yours. And so the language and the terms that you use has to, should reflect their values, their interests, and their needs.

You know, you can't just say, well, learning is important. We're a learning organization. Why? What does that mean for you? How am I helping you achieve your goals? So, again, we call it emotional due diligence. You have to know the person. A really silly example along those lines is one organization I worked for, the senior leader would onboard new staff. And I was one of the first people that they met with because I knew this senior leader really, really well.

And one of the first things I said to the new hires was never, ever be late for a meeting with this person because he goes ballistic. Whereas if it's this other person, they don't care. And someone said to me, well, what if there's a other person, they don't care. And someone said to me, well, what if there's a snowstorm and I'm late? He said, well, he's gonna be even more pissed at you because you didn't leave early. Well, yeah, but what if there's an accident?

I said, well, tell him and he will be the most understanding person on the planet. It was unavoidable. To him, it's a sign of disrespect. So anyway, it's not exactly related to this idea of how to present, but that's the idea of doing your emotional due diligence. Truly understanding what anger someone,

what saddens them, what they're afraid of, what they're anxious about, and what would then bring them joy and happiness, kind of really experienced emotions at work. So we're coming up on time here. I would like to ask you one last question. I was very surprised to hear in our little pre chat that we had before we hit record that you've worked with a bunch of orchestras, a bunch of really successful,

like the big seven, I think is how you referred to them, orchestras in America. And I can't imagine any other type of group or organization or team that has to be so literally in sync with each other In the fact that they are playing music simultaneously, and that's how it works. They really got to be in tune and in sync I imagine that having strong relationships and communicating effectively and being empathic and all of those things increases the quality of sound from an orchestra. I guess you can probably attest to this, but I would just love to hear anything from your experience working with orchestras and musical groups that you think might be a good takeaway for organizations of other kinds, or that might be a good takeaway that's applicable in organizational settings.

Do you play an instrument, Tyler? I am a drummer. I haven't really been playing for a long time, but for the first, I don't know, 12 years of my life through school, I was, I was a big time drum set players in the jazz band and all that good stuff. So. Oh, wow. Okay. So that is impressive. You know, I played guitar badly for 50 years. I didn't know like two chords.

But just imagine the discipline it takes to be a musician as your job in a major orchestra. It is really similar to being a Green beret or a Navy seal. In fact, in October, I was on a panel where all the service academies came together and talking about learning, talking about leadership. And in an EI course I gave last week, several people were in the military. And they frankly reminded me of musicians in major orchestras. The top of their game.

And what they have in common is this ability to block out quote unquote distractions. A single-minded focus on the mission. And the mission, you know, in the military, you can imagine what that is. The mission here is to be at the top of my game to make sure that every note is exact, that I am, you know, watching my seatmate, my standmate, that I have all eyes on that music director.

But the intense focus that that takes requires huge skill in emotion self-management, that kind of discipline. There's a big however here, and this actually goes to your questions about other kinds of leaders and being stoic and so forth, which is that single-minded focus does to some extent block out other emotions. Yeah, I can imagine. And can be problematic as well. So I think there's things in common between leaders, folks in the military, and these elite musicians in terms of their ability to self-manage, to block out distractions.

But that also generates some issues outside of the green room, outside of rehearsals and outside of performance. Or when you leave, you know, the military and you reintegrate into society. That's when the perhaps lack of other skills or attention to the other skills causes some incredible difficulty around relationships and other kinds of things. I was actually thinking professional athletes, like the closest thing that I can think of to like a really high level orchestra is like a football team or something like that, where you have so many people who have to be in sync and they really have to Football team or something like that where you have so many people who have to be in sync and they really have to

suppress emotions in a serious way to be so in sync and to Not deal with you know, I mean in professional sports You have a crowd that may or may not be heckling or supporting you whereas you know an audience for an orchestra is something like Much more state obviously, but that's really fascinating So are you then working with these folks to kind of maintain their mental and emotional? Well-being sort of outside the performances is that more or less your main goal? It's not so much about their performances themselves and how they are in preparation or that sort of thing Yeah, and also with the administration as well How do you create an environment an environment a climate? Yeah, where people feel safe to speak up, you know around issues of bias

harassment climate, where people feel safe to speak up around issues of bias, harassment, and those kinds of things. How do you attract and how do you retain the best? Because if you are one of the best, you don't have to sit there. You have a lot of opportunities. So how do you create an inclusive environment? And a lot of that has to do with these hard skills of emotional intelligence. That's really fascinating. Well, thank you so much, David.

Before I let you go, can you just let our audience know or they can learn more about you and the work that you're doing right now? Yeah, probably the best way to do it is at eiscales.com. Perfect. You'll get my contact details and see what's going on. All right, wonderful. Again, thank you for joining me today for everybody at home.

Thanks for joining us as well. We will catch you on the next episode. Cheers.