Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Robin Hills Director of Ei4Change

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Robin Hills is a business psychologist and the director of Ei4Change. A company specializing in emotional intelligence for change in educational training, coaching, and personal development – focused around emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and neuroscience. Awarded “International Impact Company of the Year” – Award Winner by Dotcom Magazine in 2024. With the most comprehensive and detailed courses on emotional intelligence, Robin has taught and empowered more than 400,000 people across 195+ countries. He is an accomplished author and keynote speaker. Awarded “Best Transformative Emotional Intelligence Coach” – of the Year 2024, by The CIO Times, and “Men Leaders to Look Up To” by Passion Vista magazine. In early 2024, Robin was presented with an Honorary Doctorate in Advanced Studies in Psychology in recognition of his contribution to Emotional Intelligence training.Learn More: https://ei4change.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-robin-hills-director-of-ei4change

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Robin Hills, who's the director of EI for Change. Robin, welcome to the program. Mike, it's a pleasure to be on here. and thank you for inviting me.

You are welcome. I'm excited to talk with you. I know you have extensive work and experience before we dive in, though, to that work. Give us a little bit of your story. How did you get into the industry and then what inspired you to start EI for change? Well, Mike, I was working on the commercial side within the pharmaceutical industry for a number of years. And my role kept being made redundant. He kept changing. The dynamics were very fluid at the time, as indeed they are now. And after a series of redundancies, I thought to myself, do you know, I can make myself redundant here?

So that was a nice opportunity for me to set up a company, to start a business, and to start to utilize some of my experience for the greater good. You know, one thing I did not hear you say during that is I found an industry where I can make a whole lot of money. No, you're looking for ways to enhance the greater good. I think that is spectacular. So what exactly is E.I. for Change is a company that specializes in emotional intelligence for change at the personal level, at the team level, and at the organizational level. And so, of course, with it being focused around people and their performance, it doesn't matter what industry I go into because everybody can do with looking at the way in which they work with their emotional intelligence to improve their performance. You know, I hear the word improve their performance. And I know that any business owner or director or C-suite executive would say, you got me at improved performance.

That's great. How wide through an organization would emotional intelligence be able to impact? Oh, it impacts everybody from the entry-level people. I was going to say entry-level graduates, but they don't have to be graduates, the people entering into the company all the way up through to the C-suite. And, of course, it affects relationships inside the company and outside the company as well. You know, and I almost think that it would be, you would agree with this, it's like the ripple effect. It would be, you know, when one department starts to make this change, it has an enhancement in the ripple effect.

But then doesn't that also mean that the next department over must also conform to some of the emotional intelligence objectives to make sure it's really, really going to take effect? Ideally, yes, and the ideal way in which to improve emotional intelligence throughout the organisation is to start right at the top because people who are emotionally intelligent lower down in the organisation facing an organisation that's not being emotionally intelligent through its leadership are going to get frustrated and if they can't affect any improvement themselves, they'll leave. Yep. Yeah. So what I'm sure you have seen trends in this industry of emotional intelligence, because frankly, I think that people can kind of think emotional intelligence as a buzzword or a fad. What have you seen over the years of how this emotional intelligence and your vision kind of transition and grow over the years? Oh, most definitely. The thing is we were working with and we were aware of emotional intelligence way back. in the middle of the last century.

It hadn't been researched. It hadn't been labelled. It was researched or the academic papers were published at the beginning of the 80s. And Daniel Goldman published his books in the 1990s, which brought it into the public consciousness. And from that time onwards, emotional intelligence has gained in popularity. Is it a fad? No, it's been around 35. 540 years with that label, I don't see it going anywhere else, but being ingrained in the public

psyche at a much deeper level. But there's a lot of work to do. When I started my business up, Mike, I found that most people weren't really aware of emotional intelligence. Nowadays, people are more aware of it, but they're more aware of emotions and intelligence. And they're really asking the questions, how can we get the two of them to work together, which is where E.I. for change and where I come in, it's taking the academic work, the what and the why, and providing the how. This is how you work with, And this is how you use emotional intelligence. And the great thing is we, and that's my team and I, have got the experience of working within business,

of being managed and led by good and bad emotionally intelligent leaders. So we know what works. We know what doesn't work. And we can do it with a business perspective. You know, I think when we kind of dive in deep with the phrase, emotional intelligence, that means that there are emotions involved, obviously. So what are the typical kind of most common emotions that are regularly focused on to make sure that the organizations work and performance are best impacted? Well, what we tend to do here, Mike, is we bring the idea

of working with emotions very much to the fore, surrounds expressing emotions and looking at the rational side and the logic and the analytical side and the technological side, we're bringing people into the mix and we're saying that as people, we have emotions, therefore we need to work with emotions. So what we try to do is we get people to think about emotions in a different way. We work with some of the misconceptions around emotions and we try and break those down and make them more effective and workable within the business environment. So this misconception of positive and negative emotions is something we knock on the head very early on.

Emotions are physiological and psychological reactions to our circumstances. So it's how do we build up the emotional components of working in order to improve performance. And to go back to your original questions, what do we work with? Well, there are six or seven basic emotions that have been identified through psychologists and anthropologists, and these are happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, and fear. And also there's contempt within that. So if we start looking at these basic emotions, and start to define where they can be found within the workplace. How can we work with each of these emotions in a constructive way

that builds performance and builds relationships rather than in a destructive manner? So we're not looking at the emotions as being positive or negative. We're looking at the behaviours, the outcomes of those emotions and we're labelling those not necessarily as positive. or negative. We're looking at labeling them more constructively or destructively. You know, that's interesting that you said that because it makes me think of something else, which is stress. And I think that, you know, it's a whole other category,

but people are under a lot of stress. And if someone would say, you need to eliminate all stress from your life, that actually could be a bad thing because we all need some kind of positive, you know, stress can be positive because it does. motivate us, but it's when it gets overwhelming as bad. So I'm sure that we could look at that list of negative emotions and go, oh, that's a bad one. But in reality, a little healthy fear is a good thing. So talk a little bit about some of those differences where you take one emotion that some people would say that's a negative one, but in reality, it could be looked at and used in a positive way. Yes, most definitely. Let's look at emotions as being pleasant or unpleasant. And

unpleasant emotions of people being fearful or people having high levels of anxiety. And prior to coming onto your podcast show, Mike, I had a degree of anxiety and it doesn't feel good. But I need that emotion to physiologically and psychologically put me in the right space in order to give a good podcast interview. Now you and your listeners are going to have to be the judge of that. But this is a way in which I recognize my anxiety and say, yeah, I'd rather not have it. But boy, do I need it in order to deliver and perform.

So somebody going into a C-suite and delivering bad news around sales figures, for example, the last quarter was down and it was down to poor performance within the team. That person is not going to be experiencing pleasant emotions. In actual fact, their unpleasant emotions will probably have reduced the amount of sleep that they would have had the night before. And so they won't be feeling that they're performing at their best. They will be fearful. They will be anxious. Yes, it's important to recognize that because they don't really know what's going to happen.

They've thought through a number of different scenarios. But they go in probably more emotionally prepared than they realize. And then on the pleasant side, happiness is considered to be, oh, whoopee, a positive emotion. But have you ever tried communicating with somebody who's deliriously happy and overjoyed? When you're trying to deliver some news that they'd rather not be hearing, oh, don't worry about it, be happy. No, but come on, we've got to address these figures. These are down this month. What is it that we're going to do about it?

Oh, we won't worry about it. Let's just be happy. Happiness is great because it helps with creativity. It helps us because we can reduce our attitude towards risk. But it's not an appropriate emotion on many occasions, particularly when bad news or stressful events occur. Yeah, that's a really great way. one because when you're happy and delirious, you kind of sweep things under the rug and go, that's not a

big problem. But in reality, it really could be. So that's a challenge. What are some other common challenges that people face when they're developing their emotional intelligence inside of an organization with the end result being, we want to improve? So what are some of those other common challenges? Well, look, before we actually answer that question, Mike, I think it's best to give people a very simple definition of what emotional intelligence is. Emotional intelligence is the way in which you combine your thinking with your feelings in order to make good quality decisions and in order to build up authentic relationships and to do so with the intent of taking action.

So by looking at emotional intelligence, the way in which you work with emotional intelligence and your emotions is to look at ways in which you're. you can then say, how can I utilize this feeling pleasant or unpleasant in a constructive way to make the best possible decision and to maintain the relationships and build the relationships that I've got? Now, look, realistically, there are going to be certain situations where you'd rather not make any decision. Any decision is going to be a bad decision.

But what you need to do is to utilize your emotions to make the most appropriate decision, the less bad decision that ultimately works for everybody. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I would venture to say that the challenge or one of the challenges that that brings up is when you try to make one solution work for everybody, that becomes like chasing, you know, a cat chasing his tail or a dog chasing his tail because you never. can please everyone or fix everything. So where do you and you're coaching with your clients and working with organizations, where do you tell them, okay, we got to work toward that and strive toward that, but you're never going to reach perfection in that? Well, I think that's the ultimate message that we need to leave with people. And when I'm working with people and coaching them, I'm certainly not in a position to be able to tell them what to do. They know their

culture, they know their organization, they know their teams, they know their clients, they know their suppliers, they know their stakeholders, far better than I will ever know. So what is it that they can do? And through a series of good quality, open questions, I can then coach people and support them in making the decisions that they need to make. And I can be a sounding board. I can then ask some questions, well, what would get in the way? What would stop you from doing that? How are you going to work with that issue? How are you going to overcome these barriers? What's going to work? What isn't going to work? How are you going to use your emotions more appropriately? How are you going to deal with these people who are behaving in destructive ways? They may be feeling unpleasant, but that might be appropriate for them to feel that way. You need to manage that environment, you need to manage that climate, and you need to make it more constructive. What's the best way to do that? That's pretty huge in perspective.

Oh, isn't it? Outside perspective. You know, like, if you, if you might have a sales manager that goes, I can do all that. Hey, Robin, those are great questions, but I can do that and I do that. But sometimes you are too close to the situation to fully see it and then also get by in. You know, we've heard the story before where it's like the parents tell the kids something and they don't do it, but then when their, you know, teacher at school tells them do the same thing. It's like they get it done and they believe it. Well, maybe that external third party

perspective like what you bring in with your coaching, you're able to see things they can't. And also, the organization is able to take action because it's coming from someone other than someone internally. Most definitely. And you know this as well as I. do as a coach, Mike. I think what we do is we go in and we act as a sounding board and we can get away with asking the stupid question because we don't know and we don't understand. And obviously often the stupid question provides the answer to people because they've actually got to go back to basics and think through. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Why is it not working? And these are things where self-revelation and self-reflection. Self-reflection will really work.

Yes. Talk a little bit about the courses that you have, the coaching that you have, and how does that work? Yeah, sure, Mike. I mean, one of the great things about what E.I. for change does within the marketplace is that we make emotional intelligence applicable within the workplace. And we do that through a range of online courses based around emotional intelligence. So we help people with communication, with teamwork, with collaboration, with diversity and inclusion, with personality, understanding themselves, self-aware, a whole range of different courses. And these are available online so that people can take them wherever they are.

Excuse me. wherever they are and whenever they want. So, and through self-based learning, they can go back and retake modules whenever they need them. Or if something really is very obvious to them, they can skip forward if they want to. You know, I like that, and I feel that so many times people today, we all are in the instant gratification on-demand mentality. So if I see this issue, I see a solution, I want it now. I don't want to have to wait 12 months or work through 19 modules and not be able to skip ahead. So that's that curriculum layout sounds really wonderful.

Do you also offer a hybrid kind of a group coaching or one-on-one coaching to help them implement these things in their organization? No, what we actually do, Mike, is within the courses, we build in the self-reflection, practical activities. Because in terms of developing emotional intelligence, you're not going to learn it from reading a book or downloading a load of worksheets or watching a load of videos. You've actually got to go away and put it into practice. So what we do is we provide these guided practical activities so that people can go into the workplace, reflect, try out of you things, see what works and see what doesn't work and modify their behavior. accordingly. Yes. I love that because it reminds me of the old saying, knowledge is power.

Well, no, knowledge is not power. Implementing that knowledge is the power. So I think that what you just said there is. Yeah, you've really got to make sure you're putting that into practice. I think that's great. So if someone is listening to this, what would be one red flag or trigger that they could notice in their organization that you would say, that is an indication that some work in emotional intelligence could help. I think every organization needs to learn to listen more.

So if people are not listening, that is a red flag. If you've identified an issue and people are not responding to that as an issue or they minimize it and say, well, that really isn't a problem. Let's forget about it. It'll soon go away. then that is very, very much a red flag. And the challenge there is, how do you get your voice heard? And if people really are not listening, then I think there is a great need and a great desire for people then to look at their emotional intelligence. Yes.

I think that's a really good point. And don't let it get too big and catastrophic. Watch for the small little red flags that could creep up and create up and create. in and that way you can learn and implement some things to put it into practice for improvement. So, Robin, I really like your approach. I think it's spectacular. I love your work you're doing in the industry. If someone is interested in your courses and support, what's the best way that they can learn more? The easiest way is to go through the website, EI4Change.com, EI.4Change.com. and when you land on E.I.forChange.com, up will come a pop-up. There's a little quiz there.

Complete the quiz, and you can download a free book developing your emotional intelligence. And behind the pop-up gives you all the information that you need around EI for Change, and it will get you access to the courses. Excellent. Well, Robin, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking. Mike, it's been a pleasure being here. Thank you ever so much. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.