Nuanced. - 1. What is EQ and Why Does it Matter? | Emotional Intelligence Explained

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Aaron and Carolyn Stern delve headfirst into the profound significance of emotional intelligence, taking the conversation beyond textbook definitions to real-life experiences and effects. By accurately identifying, understanding, expressing, and managing emotions, the two unravel the power it harnesses in reshaping our framework.Join host Aaron Pete on the Bigger Than Me Podcast for an enlightening Emotional Intelligence mini-series with renowned expert Carolyn Stern. In this 5-part series, we'll delve into why EQ matters and how it affects you, your family, and your workplace. Get ready to explore the various facets of Emotional Intelligence and enhance your life in meaningful ways!Learn more about Carolyn Stern:https://carolynstern.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

So really, it's being intelligent about your emotions. And I think, you know, we were just talking prior, you know, before we went on air, is that, you know, we can get emotional. And I think all of us, me included, we're never given an education for it. So it's really being able to recognize how you are feeling, understanding where that feeling comes from, labeling it accurately, expressing it constructively. and regulating it appropriately. And that sounds so easy, but it's not. Because when we're emotional, it tends to take over and of our behaviors. And what we need to do is take a pause between the emotion and the action.

And few of us know how to do that. I'm really excited to be sitting down today with Carolyn Stern. We are doing a mini-series exploring emotional intelligence. I think this is so valuable for people because you provided so much great insight in our initial conversation. But this gives us the time and energy to really explore topics and get to know each other on a deeper. level and explore some of these in a more meaningful way. Would you mind reminding people who you are and the work you do? I'm Carolyn Stern. I'm an emotional intelligence expert, so I'm a trainer, keynote speaker, now author, and I like to help people with their emotional intelligence

and improve it and enhance. I think it's a skill that we're not teaching enough in schools. Could we give a refresher for people? What is emotional intelligence? What does that look like? So really it's being intelligent about your emotions. And I think, you know, we were just talking prior, you know, before we went on air, is that, you know, we can get emotional. And I think all of us, me included, we're never given an education for it. So it's really being able to recognize how you are feeling, understanding where that feeling comes from, labeling it accurately, expressing it constructively. and regulating it appropriately. And that sounds so easy, but it's not. Because when we're emotional, it tends to take over and of our behaviors. And what we need to do is take a pause between the emotion and the action. And few of us know how to do that.

I think of children in this regard, because often they feel things 100%. There's no 80, 20, there's no in-between. It's when they're upset, they're crying. When they're angry, they're just slamming on the table. or they're showing it fully. And so we don't want to repress them. We don't want to push it down, but we want to navigate them. Am I on the right track? Exactly. And I think the problem is none of us have had any kind of navigation. So I don't know about you, but I was told to push my emotions under the rug. As a child, you're supposed to be seen and not hurt. I was a very emotional

child, which is the reason, one of the reasons I kind of started to write the book because my emotions ran amuck in my life. And my parents put me on the sidelines, right? Oh, we don't want to upset Carolyn, so we better put her, set her aside so that, you know, we don't want to see that emotional reaction. But the problem is, then I felt there's that were something wrong with me. The problem was, not that I felt things deeply, the problem was I didn't know how to regulate my feelings. And that's what I think you're saying with children. So was this something you started at that age being passionate about emotional intelligence EQ? When did this start for you?

Yeah, no. So, no, I wished it did because it would have saved me years of therapy. But really, it was in my 20s. So kind of around your age, I was a high school teacher at the time. I had, it's quite a funny story. I had the thugs of the school in my class, for whatever reason they all, their parents decided to throw them in entrepreneurship. And the first day of class, imagine this, I'm in my, I think I was 26, 27 at the time. And I'm teaching 18-year-old kids.

And the first day of class, two kids, a boy and a girl got into a fist fight. And I thought, how the hell am I, are they going to listen to me, let alone learn from me? And what happened was I decided to do something that my teacher friends thought I was crazy, which was I made one of them the VP of production of the business and one of them the VP of Human Resources. and people thought, what are you doing? These are the most challenging students in the school. But there was something I thought to myself, Aaron. I thought, those kids probably have never been given a chance.

Those kids were labeled probably as the troublemakers. I thought, what if I put my faith and believed in them? What would happen? And when I did that, great things happened. So the one student who was always in the principal's office did a lot of bad things in school, probably not legal things at times. I, you know, I would work with her.

And it was hard. Like, let's be honest, she came from a pretty broken family, but I didn't give up. And not only did she become, like, our business, we made, like, lots of profit in our little school business. And in the school, in the history of the school board in Richmond, we won, like, awards and things like that. We were in the newspaper, but she became the most improved student in the school.

Well, when I was writing my book, this is 20 years later, I reached out to her on social media. I actually tried to find both students. When I found her, she said, you changed my life. And I said to her, okay, that might be the case, but you also changed mine because it was at that moment that I realized when you can make an emotional connection with someone, great things can happen. And when you think about it, building productive relationships is an emotional task. And once I realized that if I wished people could learn how to put that kind of investment into others, great things could happen. And that's what happened.

And it's interesting, she told me when I reached out to her, those 20 years later, that she had actually just come back from foster care because her parents had, she had almost wanted to end her life. And she said, you giving me a chance. 20 years earlier, not only saved my life, but changed my life. And now, you know, she's in the book. I talk about her a lot. So she is the reason that I realize that emotional intelligence is the answer to every personal and interpersonal problem out there. I love that because there's a certain point in people's life where we stop telling them to reach their full potential. The idea that they're capable of something greater. And I went through something similar. I was that student where all the teachers had written me off and they had told. with my mother that I probably wasn't going to graduate. And so being able to have one person grab out a chessboard and say, you can play this game if you do your homework. And if you

behave, it was like an incentive. It was a carrot that I needed to try and reach a fuller potential to start to take steps to manage my own life. But it took a belief from somebody else before I was able to believe in myself. And I think sometimes we get hard on people and say, you should just be confident. You should just have self-esteem. But you need pillars in your life to help you get there. Yeah. I always tell people it's competence before confidence. And when you think of things that you're confident in, it's not like you were born confident in it. You did something. It's a skill. And one of the reasons I teach emotional intelligence is I teach 15 different emotional intelligent competencies. Some of them you're high in, some of them you're low in. Some of them you

might be in the middle. And some of them you might be on the dark side, which is when you're too much of something. For instance, let's take empathy. When you're too empathetic, you can get enmeshed in people's stuff. You don't know how to set good boundaries. You coddle people. You might keep them small because you're trying to protect them so much. Well, that's not good, right? You can still have compassion for people, but not getting meshed in their stuff. And so it's really finding out where people's emotional makeup is. And I would love to sort of psychoanalyze you throughout the day. And then figuring out where you land and then what, do you need to do? Because your emotional intelligent strategy maybe look different than mine. Like, I struggle with independence. So I'm too needy. Well, the things that I need to do to become less needy is to trust my own judgment, to not ask for validation, to be more self-directed. Well, if you're someone who is already self-directed and maybe too much that you never ask for help, well, your strategy might be, okay, you need to start asking for help even when you don't need it. So we've got to figure out where people are at. Normally that stems from childhood. So a lot of the work I do kind of goes,

tell me your why. Why are you needy, Carolyn? Well, I had a pretty over a helicopter parent that kind of took care of me as a kid. So now as a 52 year old woman, I question my judgments a lot of the time. And so we've got to figure out where people are at today. And again, I think it's what you said. It's finding that person or having someone see something in you that you might not see in yourself. Yeah. Can we talk about some of the assumptions, some of the, can we dissuade some of the misunderstandings people might have around emotional intelligence? As a young person, as a young man, I think of what my mindset would have been to somebody feeling things and I want to be the tough guy and I don't want to show any of my emotions. And sometimes I think emotional intelligence

gets treated like you're too touchy feeling, you're too emotional, you're too focused on the wrong thing and you're not getting things done anymore, you're just focused on your feelings. And I don't think it's that. I think it's a balance between staying sharp in the moments and listening to like Navy SEALs on podcast. They talk about how their skill is often being sharp and thoughtful in the most stressful, harrowing circumstances. It's not having emotions. It's controlling them in the chaos. Yeah. And every emotion provides you a gift, even the negative ones. So let's take shame, for instance, well, if I didn't, like, I like your sweatshirt and I would steal it if I wasn't so worried about being embarrassed if you caught me. But what that shame does is keep,

keeps me boundaryed. It makes me stop stealing your sweatshirt, right? So it's a gift. And if we can start looking for the gifts, because every emotion tells you something about you, just like in advertising agencies, they use consumer behavior as data. We need. We need to be a gift. We need to to start using emotions as data. So, oh, I'm scared. What is that fear? What is that fear telling me about me, the situation, others? That's what we need to do. But we can't do that. What we do is we feel fear and then we bolt, right? It's that reaction, that fight or flight. Well, you've got to take a pause between, okay, why am I feeling what I'm feeling? What triggered that feeling? A lot of times our triggers come from our lives experienced, right? It's that little amygdala in our head firing off

saying we're in danger when in fact you're not in danger, it just thinks you're in danger, and you need to make that prefrontal cortex, you're thinking part of your brain smarter than that. So what I get really frustrated about with emotional intelligence and everything you're saying about being the tough guy and it's a mushy, you know, it's a soft skill, it's a touchy, feely skill, you know, there's nothing mushy about it. There's so much science behind this. It is using cognitive strategies to be bigger and stronger.

than your emotions. That's truly what it is. And that's the reason I named the book, the emotionally strong. I knew people would think I was crazy because when you think of emotional, you think of weak. Oh, that, you know, being emotional should cause shame or you're a weak person. But I wanted to tell people that you could be emotional and strong. They're not mutually exclusive. I love that. When we think of emotional intelligence, the area that I think people struggle with the most is communicating. Because when you're feeling an emotion strongly, it's hard to articulate yourself properly. It's hard to think things through. You think of when you're in an argument, you kind of say the bold thing. You don't really plan and thoughtfully

go, well, if I say this, how is that person going to feel? And yet that's often what we tell people, like think through what you're going to say before you say it. And in the moment that you need to, it's the hardest to do it. You have some recommendations, five different communication can you talk about those different styles? Well, the first thing you need to do is be an observer of yourself, right? Almost look from above, right? When you're in a situation, you're emotional, you're triggered. But if you can kind of take yourself out of the situation, almost like you're a director

in your own film and go, okay, I wonder how Carolyn, the actress, is reacting in this situation. What would be the most appropriate way for her to react when her boss gives her an unrealistic deadline. So the first thing I say is be an observer of yourself and take the emotional charge out of it. The second I think is really to have empathy, to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You know, one of my favorite things that I heard someone say is you are not the standard to which everything is judged. And I think that's so powerful because we see the world through our lens, which is kind of the third thing that I was going to say. So not only have

empathy to sort of put yourself in somebody else's shoes. But be objective. Challenge your own assumptions. I'm looking at you now. I'm making judgments just like you're making judgments about me. You're making sense of what you're seeing. But what if you're wrong? What if your judgment about me is wrong? And then your judgment colors how you have a conversation with me. Think about someone right now that you might not be liking in your life. How does that feeling about that person color how you speak to them, about them. I mean, that all changes. So I would say, you know, be the observer, have empathy, be objective. I also think the other piece is really know what you're feeling and why you're feeling it. Like, Aaron, do you know your triggers? Do you know what triggers you

that before you get triggered or are you someone who can react emotionally? And then the last one is, you know, really speak your truth. So respectfully and professionally say what you need to say, but regulate. You can still be, I can still be angry at you without swearing and yelling. Those to me are the five kind of key things on how to communicate best with emotional intelligence. I love the piece about the idea that things will trigger you and you won't always be able to get a rain on it prior because you don't always know what those things are. In disagreements, I think of like, this happened once. happened twice okay now this is three now I'm angry right and there just a little while ago I had lost

control over how I was feeling and was pushing it down so much that I didn't recognize that I was changing how I usually approach things and I had a luckily a partner who's willing to say you're being inconsistent like you just said this now you're saying this neither of them like make any sense anymore so you're obviously feeling more than you're thinking these through and she was able to say it in a way that didn't level me up anymore she was wasn't like, you're, like, you're being a crazy person, you're not making any sense. Like, having those people in your surrounding that are able to say, something's off with you, something's not making sense, like, do you want to talk about it?

Do you need a few minutes? What's going on with you? Because you don't always get to have the benefit of hindsight and know what's going to happen and what's going to bother you. And I think that that's really interesting because as people, we think the world all makes sense. We look at the streetlights, everything works, but we don't realize that we are in some ways, like anonymous to ourselves. And there's this idea of the Jahari window that you can't always see these different angles of yourself. And so you have to explore yourself and figure out who you are

in tough situations, in stressful situations. And there's almost a temptation sometimes to avoid those circumstances. A hundred percent, which is one of the reasons I'm so busy. Because people don't want to have to look at themselves, to take a good, honest look in the mirror and see where I call it my wobbly bits are. It's not easy to look at ourselves and say, okay, I'm not not who I want to be in every situation. And actually, one of the things that I write in the book that I think is really important is the first step of my model is connect with yourself. So figure out what you're good at, what you're not good at, you know, figure out why you're

not good at that, figure out why you are good at that. That's the first step. But the second step is consult with others. Because a lot of times we have a perception, as you said, of ourselves of how we think we show up. but we all of us have blind spots, right? And it's those moments that you've got to figure out, okay, how are other people seeing me?

Because this is the difference between intention versus impact. I might come into the office and just, you know, not say hi to you in the day. And that's, you know, just because I'm really busy. And my intention was just I got to get right to work. But me not saying hi to you in the day might really have ruined your day. It might have really impacted you in a negative way that I didn't even know. it wasn't my intention, but that's how it came across to you. So it's really important for us to not only look at ourselves, but to ask others, hey, how do you see me? And I love it that your

partner is brave enough to have those conversations saying something doesn't seem quite right. Yeah. The other piece that you said earlier that I really love is the idea that you were not the measure like for everybody else because I think there's a stage in which you're learning from other people. So as an interview, I look up to the Sean Evans. There's other people. I look up to who interview people, but I'm not them. And I can never be them. So there's this journey of like figuring out what you love that they do well. And then slowly you need to start to figure out how you create your own secret sauce, how you become your own style of interviewer or how you excel without directly copying other people, interviewing rappers.

They talk about how, yes, Eminem may have inspired them, but now they've found their own style and they may take pieces, but they've formed something else. And during that phase, it's tough because you want to be the person you admire, but you can never be that person. So you're sort of in the in-between and figuring out who you are is, I think, like, an existential question people get stuck at.

For sure. And I think that's a question that a lot of people, even in my age, even though I'm probably twice your age, is that, you know, who am I? What is my purpose? What do I stand for? I think when I ask those kinds of questions,

simple questions, like one of my exercises is, what are your values? What do you value? A lot of times, people don't even know what they value. And your values, once you know what you value, you're making decisions become really easy. But when I was your age, I had no idea what I valued. I just did what everyone else wanted me to do. And again, because I struggled with independence, I worried about what people thought of me. So I just, you know, was a chameleon. I did what

everyone else wanted. Whereas, you know, now I need to ask myself, what does Carolyn want? Do you have an opinion. Is it red or is it black? I have to choose those things. And sometimes, a lot of times, a lot of people that I meet and clients I work with don't even know what they want and who they are. So absolutely, I think what you said is true. What is one of the biggest mistakes from your perspective, working with so many people from so many different walks of life, what is the biggest mistake they make in terms of communication? Two. We kind of tapped on it. The first is empathy. I think people do not put themselves in other people's shoes, so they lack empathy. They see it only through their lens.

And the other, which is very much connected to that, is this reality testing. They think what they're seeing is real, but what if it's not? And so I think a lot of people need to challenge their assumptions. I think people need to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think people need to, I mean, let's be honest, when COVID, right, our stress has been up. Well, when our stress goes up, our empathy goes down, right? And so we've got to start thinking about, you know, just because I'm feeling something, can I take that observer view and go, okay, I wonder how Aaron is seeing the situation.

As nervous as I am, I wonder if Aaron is nervous in this situation and really kind of stepping outside of ourselves. But rarely do we do to that. We let our emotions sort of encompass us that we forget to sort of separate ourselves from our emotions. And I think we're so afraid of emotions. Emotions are not the enemy. Feelings can be your friends if you look for the meaning they provide. And every emotion has a gift.

Every emotion can tell us something about ourselves. We just need to look for that meaning. I love that because I think of people, how they show up says a lot. When you think of going for an interview, a lot of people think of what they're going to say, but how do they relate when you're, if you're hosting an event, How do you make people feel? Do you make it easy? Do you make people excited? If somebody's offering to take you on a trip, are you the person saying, oh, thank you for inviting me. Let me buy dinner. Let me add to the experience. Let me invest more. And those are the people we want to spend time with and connect with. Are the people who are really there during the good times and also there during the tough times and willing to listen and hear you out. You think of people saying, like, I had a bad day. And then the other person saying, oh, you think you had a bad day. I had a way worse day. And kind of taking away your opportunity to share. And I also think about that in terms of disagreements. Often when I see people disagree, they'll say, I didn't like that you did this. And then all of a

sudden the other person goes, well, I actually didn't like that you did this rather than saying, well, I wasn't planning on bringing mine up. So I shouldn't now because you're bringing it up. And so respecting the space they just asked for to talk about their issue, now you're trying to muddy the waters between two issues rather than saying, okay, we'll deal with this. And then maybe tomorrow or later in the afternoon, we'll talk about what was bothering me, because you've chosen to do that. But we choose to sometimes muddy the waters and make it a competition. Who was worse?

Who mishandled things worse? And not thinking about how do we actually understand this person and kind of resolve the issue. Yeah. And really listen. Really listen. And give people the space. I remember someone told me about a video of there. I think it was two soldiers, one much older and a younger soldier.

And when the soldier started saying, like, oh, I, you know, have a lot of PSD and all, um, um, a, what did I? PTSD. There, I had just had a moment. Um, and they say, um, you know, he said, I see you, my son. And he left the space for the person to just share their story. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, you think you've had it bad. I had it worse, right? And so I think just letting people, like I see you, I hear you, tell me.

more. A lot of times I think people just don't give people the space to share. I couldn't agree more. Can you summarize emotional intelligence for people and talk a little bit about your book? My book is a six-step self-coaching model because I was sick and tired of hearing people like successful leaders saying showing emotion was a sign of weakness. Emotional intelligence truly is being intelligent about your emotions, being in the driver's seat of your emotions. And so what I wanted to do in my six-step process is the self-coaching model, even though I teach people how to coach other people in emotional intelligence, I wanted this book, and the subtitle of the book is an inside-out journey to transformational leadership.

I wanted people to know, hey, in order before I can lead you, I got to lead myself. My mother always once told me, if you point a finger, three fingers point back at you. So how am I showing up and how is that affecting how I lead? So I take them through this process that they first connect with themselves. What is their emotional makeup? They then ask five other people, how do you see me? Do you think I like to give back? Do you think I'm flexible?

Do you think I'm impulsive? So I literally give them the questions on how to, you know, what to ask people. And then from their self-perception, how other people see them, I ask them to say, okay, what's the one or two or three things you really want to work on? So in my case, it was independence. I'm low in independence and I'm too high in flexibility. Well, that's not a good combination because I overaccommodate as a leader and I do whatever my staff wants me to do. And I care too much about what they think.

So I'm kind of a pushover. And so that's the work I need to do is I need to be a little bit more stringent and lower my flexibility and be a little bit more independent and not care so much about what people think. and I'm going to make decisions as a leader that not everyone's going to like and be okay with it. So once you clarify your focus, you've got to figure out what are the ways that you're going to do it. Well, in the book, I give them 60 different strategies on how to improve their emotional intelligence. And that's just to springboard some of their own. Like, I want you to come up with your own strategies. And then what's going to get in your way?

What's your barrier? What's the reason why you're not being your best self? And then from there, I want you to craft an action plan. What does that look like? But with an action plan, you've got to have a relapse plan. What are you going to do when you relapse? When you go back to your old patterns of behaviors, how do you get yourself back on track so that you don't start being needy and asking reassuring questions when you know?

And then finally, you need an accountability partner, a competency advisor, as I call them, someone who has what you want. So look for someone. So in my case, Natalie, who's half my age, who is my business development manager, she's my competency advisor. So when I get on the phone and I post a video, and someone gives me a thumbs down and hurts my heart, I call Natalie and say, walk me off the edge because I'm really sad that someone didn't like my video.

She then helps me in this area. So that's sort of the process that I take people through in the book, and I think it's critical. And so far, the book, not only has won quite a few awards, which I'm really proud of, but it's the stories that I'm hearing like, it's changed my life. I now can talk to my boss and really have an honest conversation, or it's helped my marriage, or, you know, I finally kind of made peace with my father. Those are the conversations that, you know, or the reasons, or it's the reason why I do what I do. I love it.

I love that we're going to be exploring these topics in depth. The next one is going to be on independence, confidence, and leadership. Then we're going to explore family dynamics, relationships with others. We're also going to be talking about work, money, finance, how do we develop emotionally in all the different kind of areas and niches in our own lives so that we can start to reach. our full potential and feel strong within ourselves. I'm so excited to be diving into more opportunities to discuss us. Me too. Thank you so much for having me. Brilliant. Awesome.