EntreLeadership - #169: Dr. Travis Bradberry—Magnifying Your Potential

Episode Date: October 17, 2016

Emotions are the primary drivers of our behavior, and we’re all hard-wired to let them get the upper hand. So how do you deal with them? This week’s guest, Dr. Travis Bradberry, discusses how understanding and increasing your emotional intelligence can take your leadership skills and workplace performance to new heights. Dr. Bradberry is the award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founder of TalentSmart, the world’s leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training. entreleadership.com/podcast E1D Book Deal President Reagan's Speech Infusionsoft's Free Email Templates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, or leaders. As always, so grateful to have you join our conversation. Speaking of Conversations, our feature interview this episode is with Dr. Travis Bradbury. He wrote the book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and he's the co-founder of Talent Smart. They're doing some really innovative stuff.

And InfusionSoft, this stuff is really going to help you, and we love to give you free stuff. The E1D live stream, unbelievable, we've been telling you about this. And we're only two days away. October the 19th is the very first Entree Leadership One Day event that we will live stream. Never done this before, and we're very excited about it. We've been telling you about it. And Eric, the producer, tells me there's still time for you to join the live stream and get the special deal. So a quick reminder, you can get it for only $29.

And this is such a great price for you, your team, to join in on this amazing day of leadership and business gold. So it's $29. And with that price, you'll get a free copy of Dave Ramsey's number one. Bestselling book, Entree Leadership. You'll get the audio book of that book as well. And all you have to do is text book deal. That's one word. Book deal.

Text that word to 33444. That's 33444. or we have the link to get the special offer and all the goodies in our show notes. It's episode 169 at entreleadership.com. Click on podcast. So when was the last time you talked with a dual PhD in clinical and industrial, organizational psychology? That's a mouthful.

Like I had to come in a little bit early just to be able to get that phrase out to you, but Travis Bradbury, very smart guy. And if you lean in and listen closely on this conversation, you'll hear his brain. I mean, this guy, he's just a deep thinker, really, really smart guy. And the things we talk about here are so important to us as leaders, to us, people who want to maximize our potential. So let's get right to it, get ready to take some notes. You're going to love this. This is Dr. Travis Bradbury.

Well, Travis, it is a pleasure to have you with us, and I've been a fan of your work for some time. And the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I think it's mandatory reading for leaders. I'm really excited to dive into some of the book. And so to get us started, to give our listeners some context for those who haven't read the book, I really want you to unpack what emotional intelligence really is and essentially lay out the four skills that you write about in the book. The first thing you need to understand is that emotions are the primary driver of our behavior.

Our brains are hardwired to give emotions the upper hand. everything that we experience in the world around us enters at the base of the brain. And these signals have to travel through the limbic system, the place where emotions are generated before it reaches the area of the brain where we have rational thought. So we have these strong emotions that are generated, they motivate our behavior, and then we sort of think ideally, we think rationally about them. Unfortunately, it's something that not a lot of people do. And emotional intelligence is the skill of how aware you are of emotional.

in yourself, how well you understand them, and how you respond to that, how you manage them. And there's also a social component. It's how well you are able to read and respond to not just the emotions of other people, but what they're experiencing, what they're trying to communicate to you, what the world looks like through their eyes, and then how you're able to respond and react to that accordingly in order to better manage your relationships. Now, you break this down, obviously, self-awareness, self-management. That's the personal competence on this. The social competence is the social awareness and relationship management. I want to focus a little bit on the self-awareness part because this seems to be, it's difficult

for us humans to really become self-aware. And I know you talk about the science of what that looks like, but what have you found in all of your writing, all of your studying, all you're speaking on this topic? What are some breakthrough things that help us really, truly be able to look in that mirror and see what we're supposed to see, not what we want to see. Wow, the thing that really enables people to break through is good quality feedback. Not the old, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, but the kind of stuff that really rocks your world and gets you to see yourself in a whole new light. And it's something that isn't that hard to do in the sense that, you know, my company,

Talent Smart, we've tested more than a million people now. And we find that just 36% of people are aware of their emotions in the moment, are able to accurately identify their emotions in the moment. So when you do something like take an emotional intelligence test that actually measures your behavior and your skills, that feedback tends to be very eye-opening. You start to see sort of where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are, and which specific behaviors that you need to alter. Yeah, you give us so many self-awareness strategies in the book.

There's 15. and I want to hone in on some of these because this is eye-opening stuff. The third one that you give us of the 15 is lean into your discomfort. And again, I don't think this is a natural default mode for human beings. I want you to unpack that and why that's so valuable. Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up. The reason that this is not a default mode for most people is we're taught that behavior doesn't change, that we all have these strengths and weaknesses.

And so we tend to really put the blinders on when it comes to the things that we're not good at. You know, I'm amazed how much pain and suffering successful people, entrepreneurs in particular, are willing to put themselves through to get ahead. But the moment it comes to increasing their self-awareness, they go back to this default mode. They don't want to see it.

They don't want to think about it. They're basically assuming that these are things they can't change. And there are some things that you can't change. your IQ is fixed at an early age. Even most aspects of your personality are fixed at an early age. But emotional intelligence is an area of the brain that's what neurologists call is highly plastic. That means it's flexible and adaptive to change.

So when you strive to increase your emotional intelligence, which hinges on your self-awareness, you need to lean into the discomfort. You need to say, what is it that I need to do differently? where are these things that I'm not currently seeing that are going to open my eyes to new behaviors that I can incorporate into my repertoire? And that's this whole idea of taking the blinders off, leaning into your discomfort, and looking for opportunities to grow and improve. Context here.

How do we use this in parenting? Because this is so huge for us parents. Well, the biggest thing, you know, I think people tend to overcomplicate it in parenting. And that's because it's these small daily battles with your children that really, you know, really influence the degree of emotional intelligence that they develop. And so much of it comes down to modeling, the kind of behavior that you model. Not that you need to be a perfect example, but it's really about how you process emotion. If you have this knee-jerk, anger, reaction, and impatience-type reaction with your kids,

that's how you teach them. They often generate frustration in adults, right? I have a seven-year-old. We've already had some frustration this morning. and how you respond to that teaches your children how to respond to frustration. So you need to work on being a model and recognize when these high emotion situations surface, what kind of model you're going to set for your kids. The other thing you want to do is teach them to process emotion.

So a lot of times, let's say a child will overreact to something that, so we were camping last weekend and it was like Lord of the Flies, there are 40 kids running around and, you know, every once in a while, something would happen and there'd be a kid crying. You know, they all made the rounds. My son had a couple shots at it. And sometimes they're crying over nothing. Well, that's an opportunity to process emotion. Talk about what they're feeling, what they're feeling this in regards to, and whether or not the emotion is appropriate. So your kid might be overreacting, but instead of just dismissing that and saying, oh, you're crying about nothing, it's, okay, let's take a look at what you're crying about

and what you're feeling and whether or not that's the magnitude of your emotion is appropriate for the situation. So you begin to teach them how to process and understand their emotions as opposed to what most of us were taught growing up, which is very dismissive of emotions. 13. This is the 13th self-awareness strategy. Again, leapt off the page for me. You tell us to spot our emotions in books, movies, and music. And I love this. And I really think that we've probably sometimes we get so into the books and movies or music that we listen to and we kind of check out. It's a refreshing moment. But this is a great discipline. I think a wonderful truth teller. Explain how this works. Well, the movies and music that we're drawn to in a moment are a reflection of ourselves.

I mean, when you're feeling melancholy or you're feeling down, you listen to sad music. When you've just had a triple espresso and you're cranking at work, you turn on guns. and roses or whatever your cup of tea is. So it's in those moments of reflection that you can think about how what you're drawn to is a reflection of your current mood state. And in movies, it's really interesting. We actually, we have an emotional intelligence training program. And we use short Hollywood film clips to illustrate different aspects of emotional intelligence and action. I do this when I speak as well. Because it provides such a great opportunity for reflection and for people to think about how they would respond in those situations.

When you see two people dealing with some kind of problem, it makes you think about how in your own life you've dealt with something similar. And it really kind of builds sort of awareness and processing of things. But I want to go deeper with you because I know you're the emotional expert. But if I can, if I can push you and put you on the spot, I think it's deeper than that. And I'm curious to have you weigh in on this. And what I mean is when I'm reading a biography or I'm watching a movie and I have a emotional response and I connect to a part of the story or something to do with the character, their personality, or their values. Doesn't that tell us something about ourselves as well that we

need to really be in tuned with? Absolutely. It may be a quality that you aspire to or it may be a challenge that you're facing. I mean, it's a little bit like having a really moving dream and you think about it the next day and you say, wow, that's strange. Why am I so drawn to that? And the question is, What struggle am I going through that's manifest in this dream or manifest in this character? And it can really be an eye-opening, self-awareness increasing experience to reflect on that. All right. Last one on the self-awareness strategies, the 15th, get to know yourself under stress. This is hugely important.

How do we do this or what are we looking for so that we can manage our stress and respond much better? Well, when the limbic system completely takes over and your rational brain shuts off, that's when your brain's fight or flight response has been initiated. And oftentimes in high-stress situations, this will happen. And people can feel kind of hopeless. They say, well, I'm just a yeller and I'm always going to be a yeller. I get in these situations in the meetings and someone says something I don't like and I see red and that's just how I'm always going to be. But what you want to do is you want to have sort of a blueprint of how you operate in these situations. You need to really dig in and understand what types of situations and people push my buttons? How do I respond when my buttons get

pushed? Who are the people that call me down that bring things back and get grounded? Or how can I get grounded? So when you do that preparation and you get in that situation, it really enables you to think differently and do something differently. And you also begin to understand and test where these sort of self-calming type approaches don't work for you, and you start to remove yourself from those situations where your lack of emotional control is going to wreak havoc and cause problems for you. All right, so a follow-up on this is an article that I read in preparation for this conversation entitled How Successful People Stay Calm and Talent Smart did some research. This is a phenomenal stat. 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in time

of stress. So we all as leaders are facing stress, different levels. And of course, you lay out several different things that these folks do in the article. And again, I want to lock in on a couple. One is they avoid asking what if. Why is that so important? Well, there's a difference also between asking what if and doing contingency planning. Right. Contingency planning is rational. it's confined to a specific time and space. You sit, you think about it, you drop your contingencies, gather feedback on it, and you're done. And you know, okay, this is the path my business is headed,

and these are the different scenarios we might encounter. Asking what if, that's just these statements that pop into our brain and permeate our self-talk, you know, these little thoughts we have, these things we say to ourselves. And these just throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Because things really can, they can go in a million different directions. And any time that you spend, you know, perseverating on that and worrying about that, it just magnifies your stress. It takes you out of the moment.

It takes you away from here and now type action that you can take to improve your situation. And it just takes you to a place that you really don't want or need to go. Now, two of the other actions that successful people are taking to remain calm under stresses. One, they stay positive and then they reframe their perspective. And I think that absolutely we see that. I don't think we even need data to verify that. But there's something going on there. There is a perspective immediately.

They shift. And things didn't go the way they planned, but it's not the end of the world. We're not going to die. There's just a natural positivity that we will figure something out. Isn't that the mark of somebody who really handles pressure well? Absolutely. And people that have trouble with staying positive tend to dismiss it as sort of polygantish. And what they don't realize is that positivity,

positive thoughts, taking time to reflect on what you're grateful for, particularly when things aren't going your way, this is a way to control stress. It's not just a sort of feel-good Oprah-type moment. And they've done some really interesting research at UC Davis. And what they did is they had their experimental group at regular intervals throughout the day. They had them, what they called, cultivate an attitude of gratitude. So they just scheduled in their calendar a few times a day to stop and think about something they're grateful for. And in that group, they had reductions in the stress hormone cortisol by 23% doing that very, very simple thing. It physiologically affected their body. And that's because it redirected their thoughts. And it took them off stress. It calmed them down.

And that's the key. I mean, these 90% of top performing leaders are high in emotional intelligence. And one of the things they're really great at is dealing with the stress that we face. It can be a major, major hindrance to your performance and people who thrive in those situations tend to do quite well. Yeah, this is science. As you said, it's not Pollyanna stuff. It's science and it's proven. And it leads me to, because you're talking about the effects on the body just by having an attitude of gratitude has a physiological effect that is positive. We're seeing a lot of articles, a lot of studies on sleep. That's a hot topic right now. You've doven into this topic. So I want to ask you, how is sleep deprivation killing us?

Well, there's a couple things here, and everyone knows that they need to get more sleep. I mean, the average person needs seven to nine hours a night in order to feel sufficiently rested. And we have jobs, we have stress, we have kids, we don't typically get that. But the thing that most people are really struggling with, it's not the amount of their sleep that's the biggest problem. It's the quality of their sleep. They need to clean up their sleep hygiene. And we need this because, well, there's two things that happen when you don't get sufficient quality sleep. One, there's toxic proteins that build up in the neurons of your brain throughout the day.

It's a byproduct of just being awake, of normal neuronal activity. And these toxic proteins can only be adequately removed when you're not just sleeping, but you're getting sleep of sufficient quality. So if you get sufficient quality sleep, they get removed. If you don't, they stay in your brain and the next day you wake up feeling groggy, feeling really cruddy. And a lot of your cognitive capacities are diminished. your speed of response, your emotional self-control. And there's also really negative health consequences

that come from sleep deprivation. You know, things like it's linked to heart attack, stroke, type two diabetes, obesity. It also causes overproduction of that stress hormone cortisol. And one of the worst things is it actually makes you fat. It increases the hormone grayling, which stimulates your appetite. And it causes reductions in the leptin hormone, which is how you feel full. So you end up, you're hungrier so you eat more and you have less propensity to feel full. Sleep deprivation is a very stressed out state. It's something that your body doesn't want to be in. So what you really want to do is clean up your sleep hygiene. Anything that you take that helps you sleep is hurting the quality of your sleep. If you have a couple glasses of wine before you go to bed,

if you take an ambient, if you take a couple Benadryl, if you take NyQuil, all of these things are interfering with your brain's natural sleep cycle and these toxic proteins don't get removed and you experience these ill health effects and that's the biggest thing that people can do another one is cut down in your caffeine take particularly afternoon caffeine has a six hour half life so if you have a triple espresso at three four o'clock in the afternoon you know 50% of that is going to be in your body at 10 p.m. when you want to go to bed and it takes about 24 hours before caffeine is not no longer considered biologically active. So that's why we say don't have any caffeine afternoon because you really want to give it at least eight, 10 hours, 11 hours to work out of your system.

And the problem with caffeine is even if you can fall asleep, it diminishes the quality of your sleep. And the other biggie that you can tell I'm really, I'm really into this topic. I have a lot to say, but I think it's huge for a lot of people, myself included. The other thing that really gets people and people have no clue that this is. happening is blue light in the evening. You see in the morning, sunlight is rich in blue wavelength light, and blue wavelength light halts melatonin production, so it tells you to be awake. It tells your brain it's morning time. In the afternoon, sunlight becomes increasingly orange wavelength light. So the blue wavelength light goes away. This tells your brain to start producing melatonin.

You get sleepy and you prepare for bed. But what do we do? Well, after dinner, we turn on the huge Mac monitor that bays us in blue light. We sit in front of the Kindle, all these devices that emit really high amounts of blue wavelength light. Well, this halts melatonin production. It tricks our brain into thinking it's morning. And a lot of people have trouble falling asleep, and this is the reason they don't even realize it. Or even if they do, it's kind of like with the caffeine. Even if you can fall asleep, it really has a detrimental effect on the sleep stages. So your body doesn't adequately remove these toxic proteins and you begin to experience these ill effects from low quality sleep. Oh boy. Now you got me on that one because I do the iPad mini. I fall asleep to it reading every

night. I'm a ferocious reader. But I've got the thing dimmed so low because my wife, of course, is the lights out. But you're telling me even with it dimmed, I'm in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a mini in the blue wavelength light. There's some apps that you can buy that They cut down on the blue wavelength light or you can do what I do. They have these orange glasses that block the blue wavelength light. So when I have to be on the computer, I just, I get to look like Bono when I'm sitting in bed. Don't we all want to look like Bono, though? Yes.

I mean, honestly. All right, so that just means I've got some marital communication to come up with because I have to read before I get to bed. So, and I like to read until the last possible moment. You know what I mean? The eyes are very heavy and then throw the glasses off. So, all right, there it is. I've got to do that because that really bothers me. Because I have no problem falling to sleep, but you're still saying it's affecting the quality of my sleep.

Absolutely. And you'll notice the improvement right away. Well, hey, this was worth it just for that. That was really good. All right, I want to keep moving. Let's get into some self-management. So we talked a lot about self-awareness, which is huge. And again, folks, so many great pieces of content here, some real strategy, 17 of these.

self-management strategies. I'm going to focus on the second one. Create an emotion versus reason list. This spoke to me. What does that look like? Well, one of the big points that we make in emotional intelligence 2.0 is that your self-management hinges on your self-awareness. Self-management isn't about stuffing your emotions.

It's about channeling them into producing the behavior that you want. You're going to have these 400 emotional experiences every single. single day whether you're aware of them or not and you can't turn them off so when you increase your level of awareness it really equips you to do something more productive with it now an emotion versus reason list allows you to really sort of separate fact from fiction i mean there's a lot of things that um fuel the fire of our strong emotional reactions of our stress and our worry that we think are beyond our control. And when you begin to separate, okay, what's an emotional reaction versus what's rational thought about it, you start to equip yourself to read and respond to your emotions more effectively.

All right. I want to focus on focusing your attention on your freedoms rather than your limitations. That's another one of the strategies. Your freedoms rather than your limitations. And I think this is breakthrough type stuff. Well, yeah, your attitude in response to the different circumstances that you encounter dictates your success more than anything else. And people who believe that or focus their attention on their freedoms, you know, they believe that they can do something about it tend to be much more effective than people who awfulize and really just focus all their attention on the fact that the sky is falling. So one of the things that we really coach people to do is to focus on their freedoms, focus on what they control and minimize the amount of

that they spend, you know, crying over spilt milk, I suppose, is the simplest way to put it. Yeah, because, and again, this leads to back to this idea of being thankful. A person who's focused on what they can do, what choices they can make, it allows them to really begin to build some positivity, and then that leads to gratitude as well. And, and again, this is all a part of the brain learning how to press through, to power through, correct? Yeah, and let's say you, you, um, your business, is a vendor for a key client and you lose them and it's a big part of your revenue. Well, you can sit there and wallow in it or you can take a bigger picture view of the situation. I mean, think about it.

Maybe you should have a more diverse client base. Maybe that's really the problem. Isn't that you lost this account, but that you put all your eggs in one basket. And with the right attitude, with the right perspective, that massive loss can catapult you in a different direction in a far more effective direction. You know, 10 years down the road, five years down the road, you could have a diverse business that's generating a lot more revenue than if you continue down that other path. All right. I want to focus the rest of our conversation on leaders specifically in relationship strategies. Emotional intelligence in the workplace or any team environment is absolutely essential. And so if you were to sit down with leaders, I'm just curious, I'm going to get away from the

book right now and really just ask you, if you were to sit down with, you know, leaders and let's just say you can have leaders from all around the world just tune in you were going to say all right of what we have learned and what we have studied about emotional intelligence this is non-negotiable relationship stuff that you have got to practice you've got to master this to create a healthy culture and to sustain a healthy culture as it relates to your people what would you tell them i would tell them to quit adhering to this it's long at the top syndrome. People move into leadership positions and they assume that they are no longer managers of people. They're no longer part of a team. They're isolated. And they lose sight of, well,

they lose sight of the degree to which they succeed through other people, but perhaps even more importantly, they lose sight of the fact that leaders prime the emotional state of their organization. and people look to them for guidance. They set the emotional tone for the organization. So you're not just a model of this behavior, but people are looking to you for guidance. You are supervising and managing people. Your executive team may be outstanding.

They may all have 20 years experience, and they themselves are leading at a high level, but they still report to you. So as a leader, you have this standard. It isn't as lonely at the top as you think. It's just that the dynamic of interaction between you and other people in your organization is different than it was 20 years ago when you were a middle manager. Would you suggest to us somebody that you have observed, somebody that you know, who is a lighthouse, a model, somebody that leaders are listening in here and they say, okay, that's interesting. Because I always think it's good to emulate, and emulation is a powerful, powerful discipline.

and who is somebody or who are a few leaders that really are emotionally intelligent? You know, it's interesting because we, most leaders that are in the public eye, we get snippets of their behavior and some are good and some are bad, even from the same individual. And in a way, it's a small snapshot, but it's also a window to how we are. I mean, we're sometimes we have high-a-key responses and sometimes they're low. So there's specific examples that I really like, and I don't know for sure if it's indicative. of the person having a high IQ, but I do know that it is in that moment. And one of my favorites is when Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay. And eBay went down for a weekend. I mean, my company does

probably a millionth of a percent of eBay's revenue. And if our website goes down for a weekend, I mean, Lord have mercy. I mean, it is a major event. So imagine if what that was like at eBay. So their sight is down. They're losing, you know, probably tens of millions of dollars by the hour. And what did she do? Well, she left her home and she went into the office and she sat down with the team that was working on the problem and she just hung out with them. And she told them, she said, look, I want you to know that we know you're doing everything that you can and you have my support. So she was trying to bring their stress level down because she knew that it would enable them to be more effective. And she really as a leader was recognizing her role in that and that if she wasn't if she was far removed if she

was just sending emails they would be reading into them and feeling that you know she's sort of cracking the stick against her hand instead of understanding that that she was behind them all right a fun question here and it's not a political question but it is a political context and I'm just curious if you don't have an answer is fine but I'd love to know what would an emotionally intelligent political leader look like? An emotionally intelligent political leader, I think, as someone who understands the impact of his or her behavior. I think that's the biggest thing.

It's realizing the pedestal that you're put on, whether it's in your community or globally, if you're, let's say, the president of the United States, and being able to use that for good and alter your behavior accordingly. You know, if you're just, you're in a position of power so you can get away with whatever you want. But recognizing that some of the things that you do have negative implications for the people that you lead, it's choosing this different response. It's being more intentional about your behavior. I think that's a real sign of an emotionally intelligent leader. Would you translate that to, it would come across as radical, but transparency, just an almost unprecedented transparency?

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's transparency. And it's also setting, you know, these days it's funny. People will get riled up even about stuff that's 30 years ago. But I'll say it anyway. There's a really nice clip. And I'm again, I'm not using this as an example that this person or this party is more emotionally intelligent than the other. But these momentary, if you go on YouTube and watch the footage of Reagan announcing the Challenger disaster, it's a really nice high EQ moment. He addresses the emotional severity of the situation, talks about the children who were watching the Challenger Shuttle go down. It's just kind of a nice model of, look, this is a tough time for our country, and it's real, and it's heavy, and we're going to deal with it, and we're going to come through this stronger together. It's that kind of thing. It's recognizing the power of the moment and speaking to people in a way that they can

understand. I think that's something that all politicians do at one point or another, and the more you do it, the better. Well, this is fun stuff, folks. he is, Travis Bradbury, the book is Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Again, I said this at the top of our conversation. I meant it. I think it's required reading for anyone who is leading, who wants to lead. I think it's great for parents. Just really good stuff. And Travis, we know you're busy, but we appreciate you hanging out with us. We are better for it. Great. Thanks for having me.

Hey, folks, if you'd like to connect with Travis, talentsmart.com is the website, talentsmart.com. And Eric is putting up. a link, I love this, in our show notes for the actual clip that Travis talks about. And I remember this happening as a child of the 80s. You remember in the conversation he referenced Ronald Reagan, sharing with the nation about the Challenger disaster. And I thought this was brilliant on behalf of Eric the producer to come up with this idea. And if you have never seen it, or it's been a long time since you've seen it, it really is a master class in communication for leaders. And so that is really cool.

So just click on the show notes for this episode at entreleadership.com slash podcast. That's episode 169. And if you're a Reagan fan like I am, oh, it's just a great couple of minutes of your day. So I'll do that. Thank you, Eric, the producer. That is really, really good stuff. I'll tell you something else is really good.

Something popped out to me. And I want to share something with you. Because Travis said that when we have an idea, I'm paraphrasing, what the world looks like through the eyes of others, it's a game changer. And it really is. Like, I just don't think you can be fully self-aware until you're aware of how others see you.

It's impossible to me. So you can say, oh, you want to about, oh, I'm self-aware, I want to be self-aware. Well, you can't be self-aware until you have other people. Take the mirror out of your hands, and then they shine it on you. Then all of a sudden, oh, okay. right? It's this idea of stop looking in the mirror. You can't be really honest with yourself until

other people are honest with you. And then hopefully you see yourself the way they see you. Then we can have some great conversations with ourselves. And it reminds me one time I interviewed Jack Dorsey. In fact, the interview is in my book one question. And Jack, of course, found one of the co-founders of Twitter. And I had an opportunity to interviewing one time at a leadership conference. And we got on to the subject of feedback. And again, this is kind of what I'm talking about here. I want dovetail off of this. And he explained to me his feedback process, the types of people that he would get in his life on feedback, whether this would be personal or professional things. And I took several things away from it. And one thought is, feedback is vital. Okay, but I want to give you

another side of this. But not all feedback is created equal. That's what I took away from my conversation with Jag. Now, what does that mean? So, You've heard about this idea of the critics math, right? You've heard this, the idea where you could have 100 people praise you. But one person writes a negative comment and all of a sudden, that's all you can think about. Now, let me just tell you, that's absolutely true. That's how we are. And you need to be very clear and have great perspective when you go in and get multiple pieces of feedback. Not all feedback is created equal. You could be going on the right path, doing exactly what you're meant to, and a naysayer hit you at the wrong time, and it can

absolutely knock you off the course. But if you've got a good range of feedback, then you'll be stabilized, right? When you get feeling a little bit weak, a little bit insecure, I don't know what I'm doing. If you've got a nice range of feedback, you've got some negative, you've got some constructive and you've got some really positive. Well, now you have what you need to stay on course. So the way to protect yourself from bad feedback is to get comments from numerous sources. When you fill your bucket with a range of opinions, I think you're going to have a better understanding of what reality looks like.

So consider the source. Well, that's what I'm trying to drive home here. The wrong who will give you the wrong what. that's one of my life maxims. The wrong who will give you the wrong what. Meaning, I got to be careful about who I ask. It's got to be the right person. So there you go.

Good stuff from Travis Bradbury. And one more time, I want to make sure that you know how to connect with everything he's doing, TalentSmart.com. He's also on Twitter. I think he's a great resource. If you like to, I follow him on Twitter, and I think he is a good follow. So make sure you check him out. And again, anything extra we just talked about, the show notes are at,

Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. All right, InfusionSoft has brought us another amazing resource to give to you. Now, I am a template junkie. Eric, the producer, do you like templates? Oh, he gave me the chest bump. Like he gave you the old fist to the heart. He loves the templates. Simply put, because the amount of stuff that Eric and I have to do, we have to rely on

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and it's going to cover practical things like a system for when this in the emails, the actual templates for the 10 emails, and so much more. All you have to do is click on the Infusion soft link in our show notes. That's entreleadership.com slash podcast, ontreleadership.com slash podcast. And of course, you're listening to episode 169. And so go right to that episode. And all throughout October, we're going to have this resource for you. So if this pops in your mind later. This is the October resource from InfusionSoft, and we appreciate them so very much. All right, folks, I want to thank Dr. Travis Bradbury for hanging out with us and sharing his wisdom. And for those of you that are going to be participating either live in Kansas

City or online via the live stream for our Entree leadership one day in just two days. Can't wait to see you and hang out with you. And again, if you want to jump in here at the last minute, you could still do it. Just text the word book deal. All one word. to 33444. You get an incredible price and a couple of extra goodies for absolutely free. On behalf of our amazing producer Eric and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We will talk with you again very soon.