Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Emotional Intelligence is a Trainable Superpower | Dr. Daniel Goleman

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

This week’s conversation is with trailblazing psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence, Dr. Daniel Goleman.Daniel has transformed the way the world educates children, relates to family and friends, and conducts business.Well-known for his work in leadership and education, Daniel is also a distinguished voice in the field of meditation. A meditator since his college days, Daniel spent two years in South Asia, first as a Harvard Predoctoral Traveling Fellow and then again on a Post-Doctoral Fellowship. His first book, The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience, was written on the basis of that research, offering an overview of various meditation paths.Daniel’s other books include:  A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World and Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body.In this conversation, we discuss his key findings, frameworks, and insights around why emotional intelligence is foundational – and how you can develop it. _________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Podcast. My name is Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist and fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations, is to learn from people. And what we're going to do is we're going to pull back the curtain to explore how they've committed to mastering both their craft and their minds. Our minds are our greatest asset. You know that. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, this is just a quick little note here to check out the online psychological training course where we pull together the best practices to meet that unique intersection of high performance psychology and well-being.

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the inside out. Well known for his work in leadership and education, Daniel is also a distinguished voice in the field of meditation. So as a meditator since his college years, Daniel spent two years in South Asia, first as a Harvard pre-doctoral traveling fellow, and then again as a post-doctoral fellowship. And his first book, The Meditative Mind, was written on the basis of that research, offering an overview of various meditation paths. And then his other books, A Force for Good, The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World, and Altered Traits, Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. They're gems.

They're really good. And so I want to encourage you to check them out and in this conversation we discuss his key findings his frameworks and insights around why emotional intelligence is foundational to you being you and to you being able to explore your potential and then maybe even more importantly how you can develop your emotional intelligence. So with that, let's jump right into this loaded conversation with Dr. Daniel Goleman. Dan, how are you? Wonderful. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic as well. And so I have had the privilege of following your work for a couple of decades, and I'm honored to be able to sit with you, to learn from you, and hopefully to expose

some folks that are less familiar with the practice of becoming more emotionally intelligent. And so can you just start us off with why emotional intelligence has been so important to you? I think that I got into emotional intelligence because I care about people and how people are with each other. And emotional intelligence is kind of the science of how we are with ourselves and how we are with each other. And I've been fascinated by that for decades. And what was it like growing up for you?

And we don't need to spend too much time here, but just for context. Oh, I didn't have a lot of difficulties in my life. I grew up in a small farming city in the Central Valley of New York. I'm sorry, Central Valley of California. I live And I was student body president. I was, you know, school was not hard. And then I came east to school, to more competitive schools. I was no longer a big frog in a small pond. I was a small frog in a big pond. And things got more competitive. and I had more anxiety. That's what got me into

meditation, which I've done ever since. And I see a real resonance, a real similarity between some of the pillars of emotional intelligence and some of the benefits of meditation, which I've also written about. I don't know if you've seen that part of my writing, Michael. Yes. Yeah. It's been incredibly meaningful. I mean, it seems like a natural hooking between emotional intelligence and the practice of mindfulness and the science of it as well. So if you realize that the foundation of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, then you see that mindfulness is just applied self-awareness, knowing what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and why it matters. And you said that you didn't have many struggles growing up.

No. Most people that have been on this podcast, the extraordinaries, if you will, have not said that. They have said that there was times in their life that were hard and it led them down a path and they didn't quite realize it, but there was a struggle somewhere in there. And then, so you said that, which is counter to what I think a working thesis would be for the extraordinaries on this show is that I think most people would listen, if they've listened to more than five episodes, would say, oh, wait a minute. So if

I haven't had a real struggle in my life, maybe I'm not going to be able to figure out how to go the distance to my potential. But then you also- I would say that, yeah, Michael, I'd say the struggles came later, not in my early childhood. But also I would question whether I'm particularly extraordinary. I don't see myself as extraordinary. So maybe your thesis still holds. Oh, well, humility is something else that emerges as a theme here. Okay, good. Maybe you could do a quick flyover of what that, like a starting of the launching of the flyover was maybe the anxiety or something that was the beginnings of a struggle. And then the flyover being where your research and interest have taken.

And maybe along the way, you can drop a couple seeds of ways we can get better. So I'm thinking about an arcing moment for us right now, beginning with where maybe the anxiety started for you. Well, I think that being compelled into meditation to manage my anxiety as an undergrad helped me see that you can train your mind, that you can take control in a sense, not in a tight sense, but in the easygoing sense of what's going on inside you. And then fast forward, I became a science journalist. I got a psychology degree. And as I was working for the New York Times and covering brain and behavior, and I saw that there was a critical mass of understanding of emotions and their role in our lives.

That is what got me to write the book, Emotional Intelligence. And by emotional intelligence, for those who are new to it, I mean self-awareness, knowing what you're feeling, what you're thinking-awareness, knowing what you're feeling, what you're thinking, how it matters for what you're doing, for your performance, if you will. Understanding that you can use that information to manage yourself better. Self-awareness leads to self-management, to being resilient, to bouncing back after getting upset and being able to recover, being able to keep focused on your goals despite obstacles. And also, and this is the other half of it that I think is really crucial, empathy, being able to sense what other people are feeling

and to use that to have effective relationships, to be an inspiring leader, for example. You need to articulate some shared meaning or purpose of what we're doing that resonates with people, not bullshit. Really, what matters to you and what matters to them? That's what's motivating. That's what's inspiring. And to do that, you have to circle back to self-awareness, what really matters to you. So I see all of that as working together.

And by the way, I'm just doing an article for Harvard Business Review, marshalling very, very strong data now that shows that this makes people more effective at work. It makes them better leaders. It makes teams work better. So the business case for emotional intelligence is stronger than ever. I was actually mostly interested in education. There's a lot of schools now that do what's called social emotional learning, which is helping kids learn the basics of the whole spectrum of emotional intelligence

from self-awareness and managing yourself better to tuning into other kids and getting along with them, collaborating, teamwork. And by the way, those skills help you right on through life, no matter what you do. Okay. So are you dropping the seeds that there's three parts to emotional intelligence? There's the awareness, there's the tools for managing, and then there's the connection with others. Yeah. I see four because the second one connection with others depends on what I see as part three, which is your ability to read other people. What's going on with her, with him? How are they feeling? They're not going to tell you in words.

They don't. People don't do that. They'll tell you in tone of voice and facial expression and so on. And being able to read that well and effectively means you're empathic. Then you can use that empathy just in parallel to using self-awareness to help having more effective relationships, for example, for teamwork. It's absolutely essential. Okay. So I want to talk about manipulation too, right? I know the altruistic nature of emotional intelligence is where we're coming from in this

conversation, but the dark triad is real as well. And there are dangerous people that are incredibly sophisticated with a high EQ, a high IQ, and their motives are unpure, let's say. So can you speak to that a little bit? It's a wonderful question. And the answer has to do with the nature of empathy. There are three kinds of empathy, and they're actually based on different parts of the brain, different circuitry. One is cognitive empathy. I understand how you see things, how you think about the world, your mental models to speak technically. And that lets me communicate with you very effectively. The second is emotional empathy.

I know what you're feeling because I feel it too. And there's a different set of circuits in the brain that does that. But then there's a third kind of empathy. It's called empathic concern, technically. This means I care about you. It's not just that I know how you feel and think, but I want what's good for you, not just what's good for me. So the dark triad, narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, Machiavellians, they just care about themselves. So they use whatever skills they might have to get what they want. They don't care what it does to you. You know, it's Bernie Madoff.

It's, you know, you can trust me because, you know, I'm Bernie. Well, you know, actually, Bernie has a Ponzi scheme. You don't know that. But if Bernie had empathic concern, he'd never use a Ponzi scheme. He'd alert you to people who are trying to use a Ponzi scheme with you. So I think that's the inoculation. Yeah. So the inoculation is the caring. And I love where you're taking this. How do you ladder in or hook around compassion and empathy? And I know that's a very technical question I'm asking, but how do you hook those two together? Sure. Well, caring is the gateway drug to compassion. I mean, there's no compassion

without caring. Caring and compassion are on a spectrum together. So you can think of our attention, how we parse the world, how we attend to it in terms of a spectrum from being totally self-absorbed. All I care about is me, mine, I, to noticing other people and tuning into them, knowing what they think and feel, to then caring about them and then acting in a compassionate way. And I would argue, and I think our data shows, that the leaders that people love to work for, the coaches that people love, can be tough when they need to, but they're basically caring. You know that they have your back. You know that you're safe with them. I know that, for example, on teams, there's some really good new work by Vanessa Druscat, University of New Hampshire,

who studies teams, hundreds of teams. She says that the one characteristic of a strong team is the sense I belong here. People welcome me. Now, you've done a lot of work with sports teams. I wonder if you've seen that in the work you've done. Yes. I will say that I've got two stories I want to share with you. One is I have asked thousands of people. Now, this is not from a controlled research design, but thousands of people, both in athletics arenas as well as corporate arenas. And I asked them to describe what a great coach in the characteristics of a great coach in your life. You know, it comes back. I mean, and listen, it's going through my filter of biases. But the thing that comes back more often than not, and I would stand on just about any table

to say, I think that I'm highly accurate here, is that it was a sense that they were in it to see my growth. So I mattered to the coach and somehow they conveyed it to me. Beautiful. Yeah. And so that, that's one that's really important. I want to pull on that thread with you. Like how, how, what are some really cool practices to allow that? What seems to be a magical exchange of care, you know, how can we get better at it? But the second story is that, you know, that I think is really important is that there was an Olympian, one of the best in the world that I worked with. And she was already the best in the world for decades prior to the work that we had done. And she said, it wasn't until I knew that I mattered to my people.

And what she was talking about is her coaches and her deep relationships in her life. It wasn't until I knew that I mattered to my people that I was okay. That's where the freedom came for her to really push and take risks. That's sometimes called coaching with compassion. In other words, the person being coached knows that the person coaching, who may be driving them hard, may be very tough, really has their best interests at heart,

is really helping them grow and develop. And by the way, one aspect of leadership, which is too often overlooked, but I think is key, is acting as a coach, helping people develop further strengths. It's the same as in a sports team. if you will, that people who are in leadership or coaching positions can do is to start by not saying what they think the other person needs, but to ask them, who do they want to be? What's their ideal self? And then set up a program of learning and training that helps them go where they want to go. That tells the person that you see them, you see them as a person, you care about them. And by the way, I can help you get there. Would you suggest that leaders and companies do this with their direct reports?

If they had 12 direct reports that they would sit with each and say, help me understand who you want to become? You know, there's an important aspect of being a leader that's often overlooked because we're too time pressured these days. And it's a one-on-one conversation with the person, not about the job, but about the person. What do you want from life? What do you want from your career? What do you want from this job? How can I help you get there? That tells that person that you really care about the person. And it gives you valuable information so you can give them feedback or set up a program of learning in terms of where they want to go, not just in terms of what our organization needs from you,

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is that I'll sit down and say, okay, let's talk about the vision that you hold for yourself in this organization and for your life. You know, like what is the vision that you hold? And I think that that's what you're saying, because then they start talking about like who they want to become as a as a leader, as as a as a father, potentially, or a mother or. OK, now I want to ask something super technical. This is philosophical. Do you believe that people are working to become who they already are or that it's something that they need to, that they're working to develop that they have not yet fully embraced? And I'm not even saying this the way that, this is confusing to me. And so it's a philosophical thing I'm trying to work out.

Like, are we trying to become or is the work to be? You know, in a way they're the same because they're both aspirations. I think that conversation about who you want to become might be answered by, well, I want to become myself more fully. Or it might be, you know, in five years, I'd like to be X, Y, or Z. But those are both aspirations, and they both give you as the leader or as the coach, the information you're looking for, which is how to frame in a way that person can hear where they're going. Okay. I love that. I love the simplicity. So, okay. We understand emotional intelligence is foundational and it's important and it's

important to care about others. Okay. Did we get all four pillars? Self-awareness, knowing what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and how it matters. Self-mastery, leading yourself, handling stress well, keeping your eye on the goal, bouncing back, resilience. Empathy, tuning into other people, knowing what they're feeling without their telling you in words. And then using all of that, not only tuning into the other people, knowing what they're feeling without their telling you in words, and then using all of that, not only tuning into the other person, but how you handled yourself to have highly effective relationships with that person. And by the way, it's not just about being nice or harmonious. I was talking, you know, I have a podcast, first person plural. And I talked to Vanessa Dreskat, this expert on teams, and she said one of the signs of a high-performing team is that people belong.

But it's not just that they belong. They feel a lot of psychological safety. In fact, when Google looked at its high performing teams among engineers, psychological safety was the number one element that stood out. So she says, you feel safe enough to say things that make other people uncomfortable. You can, it's not just like playing happy family, like we're all really happy here, but maybe we can bring up what's making us unhappy and deal with it. So I think this is important because there's a stereotype that emotional intelligence means just getting along. But I think it means more than that. It means you can bring your authentic self to what you're doing. Okay. Music to my ears. And raw intelligence, for the most part,

intellectual and cognitive intelligence, well, most of us would say you're kind of baked into it. There's some migration that can change, but for the most part, we're kind of baked into it. Emotional intelligence can be developed, is trainable. So in what ways do you find to be most powerful to build emotional intelligence so that it can be applied in the right way? So IQ, cognitive abilities, are basically hardwired. They don't really change that much through life. I mean, G, which sometimes is used to stand for general intelligence, has a high correlation actually with genetics. So that, you know, what we're given is what we got.

On the other hand, emotional intelligence is learned and learnable. And you can upgrade it at any point in life. So, you know, your childhood gives you a basic foundation. And that's why I'm very interested in getting this into schools along with the other curriculum so that kids will come into their adulthood, come into their career, having learned a lot of this. But if you haven't, and by the way, I don't like the idea of like a single EQ score, like an IQ score, that's fallacious. There are at least 12 competencies that I've studied. I have an assessment, the emotion and social competence inventory that looks at all 12 through the eyes of people who know you well. The reason that's important is we have blind spots. We don't know what we're not good at. We see what we're good at. And it's by getting what's called the 360 view that you get a better idea of what you're really good at as seen by people who know how you

do day to day. So you get that and it's across a template of 12 different abilities. So you may need to work on empathy or maybe teamwork or maybe stress handling stress. It's different for each one of us. But let's say you pick one of those. There are five steps to getting better. And the first step starts with the basic question, which is, do you really care? Because if you don't care, if you're not motivated, it's going to take time and effort. Forget it. You can stop right there. But if you care, then you can get this kind of a diagnosis, or you can just ask people who know you well, who will be honest with you. The nice thing about the 360, the emotional social confidence inventory, people are anonymous, so they can be very frank with you. And you get

an aggregate score. You don't know who said what. But you do get this profile of strengths and limitations. So the second step is to get a good assessment. The third is to pick one thing that you think matters to you, that you care about. Oh, so I could improve my listening skills. You know, poor listening is like a common cold of leadership and management. I don't know about coaching world, but it's like, okay, I'm the boss here. You start talking and I cut you off and tell you what I think. That happens all the time. But let's say you want to get rid of it, but you actually want to listen to people.

So the next thing is to develop a learning plan for yourself. Like every time I have a chance to listen to someone, by the way, it could be your teenager or your spouse, I'm going to stop myself from interrupting and taking over the conversation and actually listen to what they say, then say what I think. Wow, that's a very big step because you have to, A, overcome something that's just knee-jerk habit for you. So you have to be mindful at that moment and notice, oh, here's a time I could do it differently. And then stop what your impulse is to do and instead do something new. That's how you master something new. And then the last step,

practice at every naturally occurring opportunity. And we find that if you do this between, say, three to six months, what happens is you get new brain circuitry. And what was initially difficult for you becomes easier and easier to the point that here's the neural landmark. The new habit, the new way of doing it, say, good listening, happens without you having to think about it. That means that it's instantiated in part of your brain, which controls habit. It's called the basal ganglia. And once that happens, then you're good. Then you're golden. You've really mastered it. Can you walk through the 12 components and this is your model and just kind of hit those? And then I'm going to have a part two that I want to lead us to hopefully, which is I'm not convinced that the actual intervention is as important than understanding where you

are across these components that we're going to talk about. And then having a way that seems intuitive, reasonable, to be able to practice them with consistency. So I want to know the 12 components, and let's talk about those, and then go to the application of training from there. Let me speak to your second question first. I think I agree with you. I outlined a general learning model, but maybe it's you know someone who's really good at what you want to get good at and you use them as a model. You try to be like them. That's valid. Just so you have a path to improvement. That's what matters. I don't care what path it is. I love that. And then, sorry to interrupt, I want to be even more concrete here is that what

we found in elite sport is that let's use, let's use, um, let's use joy just as a general happiness. Let's just say that for just a moment. It's, this is not directly related to your model. And if we tried to pair two athletes, one that was incredibly high with joy and happiness and somebody that was really struggling with it, it wouldn't work. So we want to find somebody that's just a couple degrees away from each other. So there's this proximal. You found the same to be true as well? Yeah, I really think it's important not to try something too grandiose as a goal, but to take baby steps, really something manageable, something you can do and feel good about because you see that you've

done it. So I would agree with you, Michael. Yep. Oh, very cool. Okay. Let's get into the 12 components. Okay. I may not remember all 12, but I'll do my best. The first is self-awareness, tuning into your thoughts and feelings and knowing how they matter for how you're doing. And also is how you see yourself the same as how other people see you? That's that 360 question. The second is managing stress. It's emotional balance. Can you bounce back from being really upset, for example, or do you just get hijacked? You know, a lot of people in the sports world get hijacked and they get thrown out of games. They get thrown off teams. It can totally sabotage a career if you don't have that emotional management skill or the recovery skill. It's not that you could determine when you're going to be hijacked because our emotions come unbidden and they can come on very strong.

The question is, what do you do once you feel that way? Can you recover? So that's number one. The second is, do you see yourself in other people's able to grow and change? Can you recover? So that's number one. The second is, do you see yourself in other people as able to grow and change? Can you get better? This is sometimes called the growth mindset. Can you stay headed toward your goals, whatever they are in life, despite obstacles? Sometimes it's called grit. Can you keep going despite setbacks? Those are all absolutely essential parts of it. And then a fourth part of managing yourself is staying optimistic. No matter what happens,

can you see the bright side? Can you see that things will change and they can change for the better? Then there's empathy. This is a fifth ability, tuning into other people, knowing what they're feeling. And then the last five parts have to do with using that to, for example, be influential. Each one of us, no matter what we do, we have a sphere of influence. Maybe our family, our friends, or people at work. Some of us have large spheres, some have small ones. But the question is, can we act in a way that helps people see the way we do? Change minds, that's influence. Then there's inspiration.

Can we tune into something really deep that has meaning, a sense of purpose that resonates with other people? And we welcome you. We all belong here. And then that means that we'll be able to work toward our goals better together. Managing conflict, conflict's inevitable. Now, for example, on a team, do we feel safe enough to bring up things that need to be dealt with? Or in our organization or whatever group or part of can we bring up that that thing that needs to be said and needs to be dealt with uh so that that's uh that's i think 11 of 12. don't ask me what the 12th is like yeah okay i'm taking notes too oh yeah oh the last is coaching and development, helping people get better.

And this is right up your alley. This is what you've done. So I think it's part of emotional intelligence. In fact, you can't be a good coach without emotional intelligence. And also to help people get better at emotional intelligence, coaching is really a wonderful way to do it. I want to tell you a funny story. I was working with, um, to be unnamed, uh, an enterprise company that is, um, it's a large company. So it's a mover in the world. And we're talking about coaching and like how the sport world coaches from a mutual accountability framework, the athletes. So the athletes are responsible for some stuff and the coaches are together responsible to the athlete

and the athlete is responsible to the coach. And together they're responsible for the shared mission of the team. And so we're going through that together and sharing it in the business world. And it's like, it's foundational. And it was almost like a throwaway comment, Dan, where I said, you really have to care about the person that you're working with. And it felt like the room turned upside down. And the question was, okay, well, Mike, that's what we don't understand.

How do you care? I was like, what do you mean, how do you care? Like, how do you care? How do you build that muscle of caring? And I was put on my heels. I was like, you make a decision. I didn't have an answer, Dan. I said, make a decision. Well, let me give you another answer. I think that's another way to think about it. It turns out that in terms of the brain, the circuitry for caring is the same circuitry as the love you feel for your kids. It's the mammalian caretaking circuitry. Everybody has people in their life they care about. The question is, can you expand that circle of caring to include these people? So there is why one of the ancient meditations of loving kindness works. Like the pebble in the pond meditation,

where it's more of a Confucius model where you're extending love and care out to people. Right. Okay. So that is actually mapping onto which circuitry? I'm not totally familiar with the circuitry. Oh, it's the parental caretaking circuitry. This is brand new. I'm geeking right now. So where do I find more about the parental circuitry? There's a guy named John DeCety, D-E-C-E-T-Y. He's a neuroscientist at University of Chicago. If you don't mind reading something quite heavy and technical, he's written about the three circuitries of empathy. And that's the third. So that will get you into it if you want to go deep. If you want to go light, then read my book, Social Intelligence.

Yeah, I think that your book is not light by any means. I mean, it feels like table sticks, your book. If you want to make a difference in your life and others' lives and potentially do it at scale, I don't know how we do it without awareness and, and what you're calling emotional intelligence to be able to map on to making a difference because nobody does it alone. Well, no, but I think you're really onto something with tuning into those loving kindness, pebble in the pond practices, because what they do, and there's good brain science on this now, is enhance the circuitry for caring. So people who do these practices, and the practice is simple. You think of someone in your life you're grateful for because they've really cared about you

and you wish them that they'd be safe and happy and well and so on then you wish it for yourself and for people you naturally care about people you love people you know and then you widen the circle to you know eventually everyone everywhere that's the big one that's the big actually you know you know okay go ahead i was going to say where I get stuck. Yeah, go ahead, please. Yeah, we'll come back to that. But it turns out that just doing that practice a little bit daily, 10 minutes, say daily, strengthens the circuitry for caring. People become more likely to give to charity, more likely to help someone in need. They become more caring. So it actually works on the brain. It's not just wishful thinking.

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the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. I actually do it in a little bit different order. I first do self-gratitude. So I take a moment and just kind of thank myself for how hard I work, you know, for myself, for my family, for my loved ones, for my teammates, for, you know,

so I just kind of fill up that way first. And then not to get too woo woo with any of this, but to be as concrete as I possibly can. It feels as though I've got this center of love that's inside of my chest. And I'm trying to expand that and push that out to the edges, almost like my full body. And then maybe even a wetsuit, like it's right outside of my wetsuit. And if I can get it to emanate just like an orb almost, again, not to be too weird, but I really just start with this inner, as long as it connects my inner cavity, if you will, and I'm connected to it, then I can push from my heart to another person's heart. Beautiful. And so that's super concrete. And then once I feel like I've really connected and poured in, then I'll move to somebody else. And where I get stuck is

at the layer where it's sending love and kindness to people that have really hurt you. It's like, that's the toughie. Yeah. It's like, I don't know. I will do that one later, you know, but that is the toughie for you too. Well, yes, but there are ways around it. I'll tell you some other, uh, Judah metal judos. One is to see that person as basically good, but doing something hurtful. That is, they acted that way, but it doesn't mean they're that way always. They're probably kind to some people in their lives, just not to you in that situation. So you don't see them as being all that hurtful person, but rather this is just something that they did. Here's the pro level of that. Can you imagine yourself taking on whatever pain in their life led them to be

so hurtful to you and giving them good feeling, happiness, well-being, and love. That's the graduate level. That is the graduate level. And is the practice I described similar to your practice? Because we are now talking about training, caring for others. Yeah. And I think the way I heard it, Michael, is that what you're doing is extending the caring to targeted people that you need to repair a relationship with. And sometimes I don't get there. Sometimes in my practice, it's, you know, let's call it 10 or 15 minutes and I'm doing it with people that like my family and people I work with and my customers and clients and whatever. And I don't get there. But is my practice in training similar to yours? I bet that it does something similar. Yeah. It's just a variation.

But the general movement is from myself out to other people. And in your case, you have specific people in mind. And I was talking about a more general practice, but I think having specific people helps. I think that's good. Yeah, it makes it really concrete. And then once I get through that, I blanket a particular area and then I'll blanket a larger region. And is that how you're thinking about it as well? Oh yeah, that's the same practice. That's the same practice. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. So that is a, oh, I don't know.

That practice has stood up for 2,600 years. It's pretty old. It's pretty good. Maybe older. At least. Yeah. And so what are some other practices for, well, actually, let's answer the critic. The critic that goes, wait a minute, I'm trying to compete.

I'm trying to get mine. I want to do good by my teammates. But like people around, like I'm not so, why do I got to do all this? Like I want to be great for my teammates. Yeah, I get it. But listen, it's also cutthroat in my business. My teammates are also trying to take my job. And if commissions aren't right and if numbers aren't right and my teammates are outperforming

me, we got some issues. And I'm now thinking business because that also holds true in sport. But I'm just thinking of business. How do you address that, let's call it a mindset of scarcity and a mindset of, I would call it a misguided competitive mindset, but how do you address that critic? Well, I think it's clear that you need to take care of yourself, of course. But if you stop there, I don't think that's enough. You're seeing your teammates as oppositional, but you are on a team. And I assume that how that team performs matters too. But also, what about the organization as a whole?

And in the sports situation, what about your industry as a whole? What about your sport as a whole? Is there a larger way you can look at this that takes you out of that narrow, it's all about me and has an us that you're part of? I think that's the important question. How clear is data around this type of work for, let's call it individual wellness, maybe meeting performance or team performance? What are the data? Well, for one thing, from an organizational point of view, people are only about themselves are a little bit dangerous because they're likely to leave

or people won't want to work with them or for them. So it's not in the organization's interests to have a lot of people who only care about themselves and don't care, for example, about the company, who don't care about the team that they're on. There's another factor, which is that younger people who are entry level in organizations today care enormously about the sense of purpose of the organization. And talented people, young people, would rather take less pay and work for an organization of me firsts with no larger purpose than maximizing our return, you're going to lose out in the long run as an organization or as a company, or maybe as a team. I don't know in sports. Dan, when you double click under like a real life scenario where a leader says, okay, everyone, psychological safety, we know the research is foundational, or we know the findings from the research are foundational. I want to make sure that we build that here.

And one of the practices that I want to do is I want us to become more tuned to building emotional intelligence. And I want all of us to take Goldman's practice or assessment. And then what I'd like to install is a mindfulness practice, you know, that we do together. Okay. Let's just say that that's kind of a map. And then once one of the, I don't know, one or two of the colleagues on the team say, I appreciate it. Not for me. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this care development work. It's

not for me. Everyone else on the team is practicing it, but this person is not, or these two people are not. So they're free riders in a sense. They just don't want to participate. Yeah. Everybody else is going to do it, but they're not. So people will feel unsafe around them, but safe around everybody else. So they'll be on the periphery of the team. They'll be marginalized. They're marginalizing themselves. So what they're doing is limiting their scope of effectiveness by taking that stance.

So hopefully they would see that and come around or else the team may eject them, reject them. Yeah, it actually has created this particular team I'm thinking about like, well, whatever, that dude just doesn't participate. He just doesn't play right. And so that's kind of a thing that comes up. And now we've got a new scenario, right? Because we're trying, you see the double entendre here is that person who doesn't want to at least try to be part of the care and the mindful practices. It's a funny thing that I've seen take place. When I was a kid playing, you know, pickup basketball, we called those ball hoggers because they never passed to someone else.

They didn't see they're part of a team. And I imagine at your level where you're coaching sports teams, seeing yourself as a team is essential to the team success. Someone who wants to be the individual star and is not gonna help their teammates, I think in that context is a loser. I don't know. What do you see?

I love that. They're a loser. Yeah. I think that there's a reason that they're selfish and they don't trust. And I like to understand those reasons. Right. At the same time, understanding is not enough. If there's a consistent demonstration of not being

part of something bigger, then the bigger doesn't happen for them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And teams win by being a team. That's right. And there's a saying in Japan, all of us are smarter than any one of us. And I would say that all of us are better than any one of us, no matter what the game is, business or sports. On that thread, what are some phrases that you hold near and dear to your heart that it could be a song, it could be like a lyric from a song or a poem or some axiom that's come from your own mind? What are some things that you're like, I love these statements. I say them a lot. I find that I repeat these a lot to myself or others. Drawing a blank on that one, Michael. Sorry.

No, I know you've got favorite songs and lyrics. Don't do me like that. I'm not so sure. Not at the tip of my mind right now. Okay. So what are some of your favorite genres of songs? Is it R&B? I don't imagine, but is it country? Is it rock and roll? I happen to like guys with guitars. Paul Simon, Bridge Over Troubled Water. I don't know if you saw his 9-11 tribute. It was so moving. I did. You know, Hello Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk-11 tribute. It was so moving. I did. You know, hello, darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk to you again. It's actually a song about reaching out. And then Art Garfinkel, when they broke up, used a line from Bridge Over Troubled Water.

He said, you know, I'll be your friend when you need one. Look at you. You said you didn't have any. Look how quickly we got there. Oh, yeah, I guess. Okay, if that's what you're looking for, there you are. You're welcome to. You're welcome to.

Yeah, so why did those two parts of lyrics come together right now for you? I think it's about connection. You know, I started the book, Emotional Intelligence, with a story about a guy who was a bus driver, who I happened to be on his bus one day. It was a hot, muggy day in August in Manhattan. He's going up Madison Avenue. And this guy did something very startling for New York City. He looked me in the

eye and he said, how's your day been? Like he cared. And then it turned out he's talking to everybody on the bus. You're looking for suits. There's a sale here. And did you see the exhibit in this museum up here? And on and on. People get off the bus. He'd say, I hope you have a wonderful day, like he meant it. That guy made people feel better. He was really an urban saint. And it turned out, I read his obituary years later. I didn't know anything about him, but I realized he had gotten 1,300 letters of commendation, not one complaint. He was the only bus driver that the transit authority threw a party for when he retired. And that guy connected. And I think that the ability to reach into yourself, as you're saying, you find that place in yourself that's loving and you try to spread it out to particular people. He did it with everyone as they came on their bus. And it turned out he

was a minister at a church and he saw people on his bus as part of his flock. He was tending to them in a way that really mattered to him. So it had huge meaning for him and great effect for everyone else. And I think it's that ability to extend yourself to other people that's a mark of emotional intelligence. That's remarkable in so many ways because it ladders up to purpose. Yes. And then there's a philosophy, a personal philosophy involved that I am going to be about my purpose. So he knew his purpose and And there's a philosophy, you know, like guideposts about how he was going to be true to that purpose. And then he practiced it even in the bus or wherever, you know? Well, what's interesting to me is that that purpose

does not match the purpose of his organization. The purpose of the New York transit authority is getting people to where they want to go efficiently says nothing about their feelings, but his, he found a way to use his niche in the organization to fulfill his purpose. That's so good. That is so good. Cause you know what, Dan, I, I, I found myself saying this maybe too often, or maybe I should not say it anymore ever. Oh gosh, you're making me think that if your purpose, if you can't figure out how to align your purpose with the company purpose, we'll probably have some problems. It might not be the right fit, but actually, as I'm saying it out loud, that does provide the right amount of space.

Well, here's a counterexample. Let's take someone who's passionate about the environment and climate. There is a climate activist who goes to work for an oil company because they see that in the long term, that company is going to have to become sustainable and find alternative energies. And here they are in the company positioned to help them do that. So that's someone with a strong purpose who sees how they may bend the purpose of their organization going into the future. That's one scenario. Another, this is research I did with the Korn Ferry Institute. It turns out that people who have clarity about their sense of purpose, like this bus driver, can find ways. We call it purposefulness. If you have good purposefulness, you can find a way to make what you do express your purpose.

Like the bus driver. So I'm not sure that you need to align your purpose with your organizations. You need to find a way that your niche in the organization allows you to express your purpose. I love that. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change. That's when people pay attention. Now, that's why I've been loving iRestore Elite. It's a hands-free red light therapy device that helps stimulate dormant

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to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa, L E E S a.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. Okay. How do you help people clarify or yeah, let's say clarify their purpose. And I know, I know that we've talked on this podcast a lot about, um, you know, the science of purpose, the three parts of purpose. It needs to matter to you, bigger than you, and there's a future orientation to it. But what are your best practices to help people connect to their purpose?

Well, I use a slightly different model. Okay. Which comes from Howard Gardner, who's at Harvard School of Education. And he did work with Csikszentmihalyi, who's a guy who did research flow, and a guy named William Damon at Stanford on what they call good work. Good work has three parts. One is what you're best at.

What skills do you have? What's your tool kit? The other is what do you love doing? What engages you? And the third is what matters to you. That's your purpose. And what they say is align those three things and you'll have work that you love whatever it is that you're doing and so you say to folks what are you good at do them again one more time what are you good at what do you love what matters to you yeah what are you good at you just have them write that down what do you love and this if they say, I love skateboarding, but what I'm good at is math. What happens there?

What matters to you? You didn't answer the third one. Okay. And so I was getting hung up on the first two. You're right. And then what matters to me is making sure that I am building dwellings for people in third world countries. Oh, well, math is a no brainer there because it's an engineering problem. Engineering is math. So I'm glad you're good at math skateboarding is something you love but that's a uh kind of like a hobby what do you love doing oh i love give me three more give me three more things you love dr goldman i'm telling you i love skateboarding i work so i can go skateboard i'm i'm not playing a role i'm playing a role with you. No, I understand. So in your work, what do you like? Do you hate everything you do or do you

like some things? No, at work, well, I like talking about skateboarding, like on the water cooler. I like showing highlight videos to my colleagues because they don't understand skateboarding. And what is it about skateboarding that you love is it the thrill of moving so fast or yeah it's creativity balance yeah it's creativity it's creativity it's it's finding ways to freestyle and do things other people haven't thought of doing perfect so we'll take that creativity and move it over to what matters to you about building houses or homes in the third world in creative ways, using your math skills. Fabulous. I see what you've done.

You've done this before, Dr. Goldman. Never did it before, but I'll do it again. Thanks. Okay. So you talked about the importance of listening, and that's been said for years. Can you walk through how you listen? You know, you need to ask my wife because I'm listening to her the most. She's quite attuned to whether I'm really listening or not, which is very helpful because she'll tell me if I'm not really listening.

And you know what? She's right. I'm thinking of something else. And so getting a feedback signal from the person, whatever it may be, is really helpful to help you stay listening. And it might be eye contact, for example. There's a problem on Zoom, by the way. Do you know what that problem is? It's structural. Totally. Yeah. Do you see the research though that people look at themselves more than they look at the other? Have you seen that research? It's amazing how narcissistic we are. And then

the other is like, it is structural. Like I'm not looking at your eyes. I have to look, I'm looking at you on the screen. So we're not getting eye contact. There's no eye contact because when you look at the screen, then the camera shows that you're looking away. So in person to person, face-to-face, real live interaction, you have eye contact. You're picking up signals, enormous numbers of signals from the other person, moment to moment.

On Zoom, there's a loss, but you still get a huge amount of signal. On phone, there's only voice, but voice carries a lot of emotional messaging. But on text, it's a disaster because your emotional brain thinks that how you're feeling and all of your cues to how you're feeling go with what you're sending and they don't. It's just the words. And there's a lot of misunderstanding because of that. Texting, email. So how do you become a great listener,

Dr. Goldman? You say when you have cues from your environment that- No, from the other person. From the other person. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. When there's cues from the other person that they sense that you're listening, that's when you know that syncopation is working. Well, there's another way to do it too, just to check, which is to say, not in so many words, but effectively, here's what I hear you saying. Do I understand you correctly? And then you repeat back what you think.

And that gives the other person a chance to correct how you're hearing them. You know what I love doing? I love listening to the storyline. And this drives my wife bananas. I'm listening to the storyline, but I'm trying to map the emotional experience of the storyline. And then what ends up happening is the storylines don't code for me properly. And it would look on the surface like I have a memory problem. And my teammates at our company will laugh at me all the time.

But like I'm trying to work at both levels and I accepted and not presenting in a way to be kicked out of the tribe and unfavorable. And there's this idea of fear of people's opinions that I want to talk to you about. But I'm listening to that second level and I'm losing the details of the story, which is problematic. I can play it back real time, but then they don't code for me. I think what is more gratifying to people is if you can sum up the feeling, you seem to be really sad about that. You don't need to have the emotional narrative that parallels the storyline. I think what's more impactful is to let the person know you get how they feel and how do you sound you say it more you use words you can say yeah and therapists do this all the time yeah you you're basically listening for the emotional messaging which

is what the person really cares about it's it's funny. As soon as I do that with my wife or a teammate, they look at me like, do not bring that shrink stuff over here. Do not. Yes, I'm sad. Well, I mean, now I'm pissed that you're just playing back. Like, it sounds like you're sad. You know, it's a funny kind of circular joke. Well, okay.

Use it. I mean, be smart about the context. If you know someone's going to react like that, then you don't do that. But generally, that's very gratifying to people. I'm so excited because there's been, to ask you this question, because there's a lot of buzz and narrative around the danger of masks from an emotional, intelligent development standpoint. And so wearing a mask for public health and some of the concerns for people is that our children are not going to develop the attunement to emotional signals

properly. And I want to say counterpoint to that, that I think they're going to become better because they're going to pick up micro expressions around the eyes. It's forcing eye contact. I think we'll be better at it, but we are missing two thirds of the face. You know, the mouth is really an important part of micro, you know, expressing emotion. So can you speak to that? Yeah, I don't think kids are going to suffer a loss of skill in reading whole face expression as you point out the eyes carry an enormous amount of emotional messaging what you call

micro expression and in fact you may know there's a test of empathy which has only eyes and it assesses how well people can empathize by what feelings they pick up from a person's eyes. And, you know, there's a larger question that's unanswerable now behind your question, which is what are the emotional social deficits for kids from the pandemic, not being in school with other kids. You know, they're missing a year. Kids learn an enormous amount of their emotional intelligence basis from other kids during the school years. So, you know, there's a year or two of missing that.

And at different ages, you might miss different aspects of it. We won't know the outcome, but I do know this. Kids' brains are enormously plastic and resilient, meaning they can make up for lost time. Once they have the chance to be with other kids, once they have the chance to see the whole face, they're going to learn it very quickly. I know that from lots of data, so I don't worry that much about it. Okay. Yeah. Very cool.

All right. Thank you so much for this conversation. And if there was a send-off that you could, if leaders that are shaping the future of work, if there was a send-off that you could hope for them, what would that send-off be to them? If they knew what you knew. I think one helpful hint is to think about the people that you work with, you as a business leader, and what are their strengths? What are you grateful for in your team? What do you appreciate? And do you let other people know it? Very cool. Okay. Okay. It's spring. It's hold on. Don't go. It springs. One more question is why are we so afraid of what other people think of us? What's happening? What's happening there? Why are we so afraid of what other people think of us? Uh, has to do with

what's called the social self, the part of us that manages the impression that we make on other people and cares about whether it's landing. And one mark of, I think, real maturity is that you're able to present more of yourself or all of yourself aesthetically and not care whether it's landing in a way which is pleasing to other people, but appreciating the fact that you're letting yourself be known as you are, whatever the consequence. I'm hearing this phrase called emotional maturity. Have you heard that phrase lately?

It's been around a long time, Michael. Yeah, I'm just hearing it a lot right now. And it sounds like it's exactly what you just described. Oh, good. So, okay. It's been around a long time. How do you think about emotional maturity? Well, I think of it in terms of growing in emotional intelligence domain, being more self-aware, being more in control of yourself and command of yourself, leading yourself better, really attuning to other people and using all of that to have highly effective relationships. I'd call that emotional maturity.

That's so good. Okay. So obviously your book is a staple. And then can you drive people to your podcast? The best way to find that? My podcast is called First Person Plural. Search for that. You'll find it.

And you'll hear me talk to people whose opinions I respect and whose work I really treasure. Thank you so much for your time, for the impact you've had in the field of humanity. And so I want to say thank you. I want to encourage people to know your work and to practice your work. And thank you so much. Michael, thank you for your good work. Keep it up. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast

and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback.

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Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well be well think well keep exploring