Nuanced. - 103. Carolyn Stern: Emotional Intelligence, Leadership & Empathy

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

In an interview with Carolyn Stern, Aaron Pete delves into her personal experiences with emotions during her upbringing, how she developed a passion for emotional intelligence, and her perspective on what emotional intelligence entails. Additionally, he seeks Carolyn's guidance on practical steps individuals can take to enhance their EQ, as well as discusses her first book, The Emotionally Strong Leader: An Inside Out Journey to Transformational Leadership.Carolyn Stern is a renowned Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Development Expert, speaker, and professor who has spent over 20 years teaching emotional skills to both students and leaders. She used to view being labeled as 'emotional' as negative, but now realizes that expressing emotions is a powerful tool. Carolyn's courses and training programs have been adopted by top universities and corporations across North America, and she is passionate about helping individuals and companies connect authentically, communicate effectively, and thrive collectively through emotional intelligence. She believes that incorporating emotional intelligence into every aspect of our lives leads to more fulfilling and successful lives.Get a Copy of Carolyn's Book: https://carolynstern.com/book/Chapters:1:08 Carolyn's Background7:50 Education10:28 Overcoming Adversity19:28 What is Emotional Intelligence21:24 What is Empathy?26:09 Self-Improvement36:24 The Emotionally Strong Leader: An Inside Out Journey to Transformational Leadership40:33 How Do We Find Peace?47:40 How to Connect with Carolyn Stern49:57 Tim's TakeSend 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

This is the Bigger Than Me podcast with your host, Aaron Pete. Emotional intelligence is becoming a topic that's commonplace. My guest today is Carolyn Stern, the author of The Emotionally Strong Leader. As we have these complex conversations about how to strengthen our workplace, build resiliency, and look at more well-rounded leaders, I'm excited to sit down with Carolyn today to learn about emotional intelligence, how it can be an active in the workplace. As we go into tough times in our economy, I think it'll be a valuable conversation, and I appreciate all of you for tuning in today. Carolyn, it's a pleasure to sit down with you today. I'm going to ask if you could introduce

yourself for listeners who might not have met you before. Yeah, so hi, I'm Carolyn Stern. I am an emotional intelligence expert and the CEO and president of EI Experience, which is a leadership development and emotional intelligence training firm. And, Super excited, brand new author of The Emotionally Strong Leader, which just got released in the fall of 2022. I can't wait to dive into that. I'm wondering if we could perhaps start. You've talked briefly about how growing up your experiences were that you felt things deeply, that you had a deep connection to things going on around you, and it didn't always feel like you were understood in that regard. I'm wondering if you could talk about how you got started in this. Well, my entire family said I was an emotional child. And for many, many years, that got a bad rap, right? I was held. People didn't tell me things. I was taken away from family discussions. But what I realized, you know, early, well, later on in life, but early in life, my emotions around havoc in my life, right? Which caused a laundry list of undesirable consequences. But just because I'm an emotional person, Erin, doesn't mean that I am weak. The problem was I wasn't paying attention to and understanding what my feelings were trying to tell me.

That's what was ruining my world, is that I wasn't paying attention to them and I was letting my emotions run amok in my life. But in actuality, I still, to this day, feel things very deeply. All that emotional means is that you feel things deeply and are passionate. But that doesn't mean I can't be smart about those feelings. So since the days of my child that I've really come to learn that emotions aren't the enemy, right? We can make friends with our feelings. I think that the problem is we've been hoodwinked all these years to believe that showing vulnerability was a sign of weakness.

And really, in my opinion, showing vulnerability is speaking your truth and telling others how you really feel. Really, to me, that's your superpower. Was it a journey at all to be so misunderstood for such a period? And at what point in time did you start to realize that the perspectives of these individuals aren't something to be taken too seriously that you're able to process this in a different way? What was having people misunderstand you like? Well, having been pushed to the sidelines and kind of feeling like as a child that I couldn't, I didn't feel like I had the capability of making good decisions. That really created a culture of reliance on my mother specifically. I have a very overprotective mother. That coupled with my low self-regard

and her kind of, you know, being that typical classical helicopter parent really made my anxiety, my panic attacks, like take it an all-time high. And it was actually when I was a teacher, was a high school teacher teaching high school in my 20s, that I had two really difficult students in my class. And on the first of your class, think about this, I'm in my, you know, mid-20s. And they got into a fist fight. These are a bunch of a 17-year-olds, one boy, one girl. And I thought, how the hell am I going to get two students to learn for me, let alone listen to me? And what I decided to do is take those challenging teens and make them in the class, it was an entrepreneurship class, make them the VPs. So I made one of

them the VP of Human Resources, and I made the other one, the VP of production. And my colleagues, my teacher friends thought I was crazy, because why are you giving the most challenging students probably the most critical roles in the class. But I thought to myself, I wonder what it feels like. They might feel like I did as a kid, kind of been pushed to the sidelines, not been given a chance. And I wanted to show them the potential that they could have. And let me tell you, it took work, right? Like working with these kids, they were challenging for a reason, right?

But I got to know them on a personal level. And it was there that I realized when you can make an emotion. connection with someone. You can change their world. And so in the end, one student, it was interesting as I was writing the book 20 years later or 25 years later, I reached out to her. I couldn't find the one student, but I found the girl on Facebook. And I reached out to her and I said, you know, I'd love to talk with you. And she told me a story, Erin, that just put my mouth to the floor, which is she told me how much I had changed her life. I had known that she became like the improved student in school. I could see those external results. But what I didn't know at the time,

you know, 25 years earlier, is she was just getting out of foster care. And she had actually tried to end her life. And her, she said, I was pushing you. I push people away. That's how I know that they love me if they come back. And for what she said when I, and I, I quote her in the book, she said, when I pushed you, you pushed back. And then I knew that you weren't going anywhere. And then she felt safe. And like I said, what's happened to her life and her career since that story, that experience changed my life as well as hers. So not only did she become the most improved student in the school, but she also, so she went from fistfights to first in class, but he also has, you know, now has a thriving business and is, you know, a great

citizen in the world. So I feel really good about that. So it just made me realize that emotions are not the enemy. We just need to learn that we all have emotions, you included, and we feel things. And we're not just task completers. We're actually human beings that have feelings. And if people can tap into those feelings, great things can happen. I've heard this saying that when you're not seeing eye to eye, you should have a heart to heart. And it sounds like that's what happened there. Yeah, absolutely. And ever since that day, that's how I connect with every person I work with. So whether it's teaching at the university, because I now teach at a university for the last 25 years, whether it's teaching my clients or coaching my clients, or it's even working with my staff.

It's really learning to connect on a deeper level. That is what, you know, as you said, as you said, the heart to heart, right? Connecting at a heart level, because you and I, even though our lives might look different on the outside, bottom line is emotions are the universal language that connects us all. I tell you, hey, when was the last time you were fearful? I bet you can think of a time when you felt fear. And I can relate to that because I also have felt fear. That's what binds us together. So I don't care what you look like on the outside or what your story is, your economic status, your background, your race. None of that. You know, we're talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Well, if we all started talking emotions, we'd actually all be able to relate better

and make sure everyone feels included in those conversations. Brilliant. I'm really curious. though, where did this come about? It sounds like you went through a period of your life where you didn't know how to process this and you fell small. Was there a point in time where you went, you know what, this isn't for me, I'm a capable person and I just need strategies. You went to school for this. I'm just curious as to what that day was where you were kind of like, this is my passion to share this with people. Yes. Well, like I said, in that class, I didn't know that that was called emotional intelligence, connecting on that, like leading with emotional intelligence. I didn't know that that's what it was called, but it was when I was doing my master's that I realized, and

they actually taught us about emotional intelligence. And I was like, oh, I can now put a name to it. And from then on, it was like, I don't know if you've ever had those moments, Aaron, but it was like one of those moments that I was like, oh my gosh, this is what my, this is what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life. And that has truly been my purpose. So as soon as I learned about EQ, I remember I hit a wall. I was working 18 hours a day. I had gained 120 pounds. I had isolated myself into my house. I didn't even see my own family who lived in the same city as me for a year.

I wouldn't go out. I'd walk my dog at three in the morning. I'd only go to the grocery store, you know, late at night so no one could see me. I was very isolated and very ashamed as what I did to my physical body. And I was eating my emotions. And what it made me realize is I had this epiphany that, I don't know why, I remembered back at thinking about, hey, I learned about emotional intelligence in my master's. Maybe I should take an EQ assessment. And that's what I did.

And that assessment changed my life because it showed me what I was strong in, what I was weak in, and then I could do something about it. And it was hard, like, hard to see those results on paper. But I could then see that's what, and those are the skills I'm lacking. that's giving me the results that I have today. And that's what I try to do in the book. I basically get people to figure out where they are at emotionally. What is your emotional makeup? For good or for bad, it hurts and helps your leadership.

Because who you are is how you lead. So if we can figure out who we are. And in fact, I was writing a different book when I wrote this book. I actually had written a book all about leading teams. And I went, wait, I'm writing the wrong book. I got a first lead from yourself. So this inside out journey, right? figuring out who I am, what I'm all about is the way forward. And then once I know what my

development opportunities are, then I can focus on what needs attention. You talk about being willing to look in the mirror in that way and kind of reflect on the challenges. And it seems like that's often the hardest step for people is to actually look at themselves in the mirror and almost remove that sense of judgment and say, this is where I am today. And I think that That's a piece of mindfulness that kind of gets confused by people, which is you look at yourself and say, it doesn't matter where I am today, what my socioeconomic status is, what I look like, where I am. I have to love myself for this starting place because wherever I go from here is up and I can take steps forward that improve my circumstance. So I have to love myself here and then we can look forward and that's that sense of peace.

And I'm just curious as to what that experience was like. Well, I think this is what I talk about in the book. You need to look at yourself like you're an observer of yourself, almost like you take yourself out of the equation, almost like you're a director in your own film. And you're like, oh, Carolyn, that actress, I wonder, you know, what is her emotional makeup? Without judgment, without criticism, have compassion. The moment I started to realize why, because my lowest competency, no matter how many years I've been studying this, and this has been over two decades, right? No matter how many times I take this to testament, my lowest, emotional intelligence confidence is independence. And people are always surprised by that because on the outside, I'm financially independent. I'm not married. I have my own business. I travel by myself. But on the inside, I had, and as you've already heard, I had an overprotective mother. And she was a classic helicopter parent, did everything for me, did, you know, tried to make my life better. And the problem is, now I question my judgments. I don't, I need a lot of validation. so I hope by the end of this podcast, Erin, you're going to say good job.

But I need all of that, right, because I don't feel like I can give it to myself. In fact, my employees tell me I pay them to reassure me, which is probably true. But the challenge is now, rather than blaming my mother for why I am the way I am, I could just go, wow, now I understand why my independence is so low. And I call it in the book emotional muscles, just like you work out your, supposedly we all have a six-pack under here. I have yet to see it. I don't care. I've now lost 125 pounds. I still don't see it. But if I didn't work crunches, it would come out, right? Well, it's the same thing with emotional muscles. I have independence muscles. I just, they're underutilized because I never had to work them. If you grew up

in a family that you were given the key and you had to make all these decisions, my guess is you'd probably be more independent than someone like me who their mother did absolutely everything for them, including, by the way, she woke me out this morning at 5 a.m. to make sure. sure I was up for this for my day. I kid you not. Like this is not this should be in a comment. I should write a book on how to live with your helicopter mobile after, as I'm 52. But the bottom line is we all have different upbrings and that makes us who we are. Once we can stop blaming our situation, my doctor once said the people that are the happiest or the people that accept what is is. So accept what is is. This is your baseline. And as you said, Aaron, we can only move up.

Once we know better, we got to do better. So now that I know independence is my struggle, now I need to do something to become more independent. So as much as I want you to say good job at the end of this, I encourage you not to because that will feed my lack of dependence. Yeah, it seems like oftentimes the deficits in our life, the areas in which we struggle the most are actually the areas that we grow the furthest and set us apart from other people and give us this. Like, you think about the fact that you started at this deficit and now you've got a book out about this whole topic and breaking it down. And we couldn't have had that unless you did face this adversity and face these challenges. Absolutely. And I think that's truly what leadership's about.

To me, what leadership's about is being willing to go first. You don't have to be the best. You just have to be willing to go first. And one of the things that I encourage people to realize is, and I call it the emotionally strong leader, isn't about leading teams. This is about leading yourself. So, you know, for someone who lacks independence, let's be honest, writing a book for the world to judge was a really scary proposition, right? Because now it's out there in the world and everyone can judge it. But guess what? I can be brave and afraid at the same time. And that's what I encourage people to do, is if, you know,

you're always going to stay in your comfort zone because it's comfortable. The only way you're going to learn and grow is if you push yourself. That's my job as a trainer, as a coach, is to take you from your learning zone into your, sorry, from your panic zone into your learning zone. But I don't want to push you to a point that it becomes panic. So it's going to be comfort, learning, panic. So I as a trainer or a leader needs to push my employees or my students into from their comfort zone, into their learning zone. And the more they learn, the bigger their comfort zone becomes. But if I push them into panic and it becomes a negative situation. That's the challenge. Now, the problem is your comfort zone and your panic zone and your learning zone is different than my. So I might give the same

assignment, the 35 students, one of them could go into complete panic from that assignment and the rest of them could be fine. And the challenge is, is you've got to tap into yourself, figure out is am I pushing myself that I'm a little bit scared or am I literally throwing up in my mouth and I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack? That's probably panic and you need to pay attention to those body sensations so that you don't go into panic. One of the challenges I feel like so many people go through is they feel like learning completes when they're done high school or they're done their undergraduate degree and there's this disconnect and I feel like the perfect zone is being curious and remaining open because as you say,

say, there's so much we don't know. And I think our surroundings often indicate that we do know things. You know when the lights are going to turn green. You know when you're going to be at work. You know some things. But you don't know all the types of grass that are in the lawn over there, the types of trees, or the names of the birds, or most things, you actually don't know. And then you can go, oh, we're a rock hurtling through space. And I actually know nothing. And I don't know what the purpose of all of this is. And I don't know if there's other life or whatever else is going on in the universe. And that can be incredibly overwhelming, as you describe. And so how do people start to think about being open to learning, but not going so far as to be overwhelmed or be

discouraged because it's too much? Yeah, great, great question. I think, again, I think you need to pay attention to what's happening inside you. And I think the problem is, Aaron, we've, none of us, including myself, have had an emotional education, right? Much ado has been made about IQ, you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Very little has to do with EQ, our emotional skills. If we knew our emotional makeup, if you knew, like if I, and in the book, I ask people 15 questions, and that's going to kind of determine where you kind of land on, on each of these 15 different skills. Well, if you and I have different levels of empathy, the strategies, the exercises I'm going to give you are going to look different than for me. So I think the first thing to do before you go

into overload is start to pay attention to your emotions. And one of the simplest things that we do on my website is we give out a free emotions poster. And I know it seems Mickey Mouse, it's a bunch of little faces, but we got to give people an emotional education. We've got to teach people what the difference is between frustration and anger. And when I ask people that question, it's like a deer in headlights. They're like, I don't know what the difference is, even though I feel these things all the time. Well, the causal difference between frustration and anger is frustration stems from unmet expectations. Anger stems from injustice or unfairness. Well, how many, Aaron, come on, you've got to be honest, me included, have been frustrated at work, but shown it as anger, right?

And then the problem is if you're angry or I think you're angry and you stomp down the hall, when you're actually in actuality you are frustrated I attribute an emotion to that and say oh Aaron's angry that's what psychologists call attribution bias I'm attributing an emotion to to your behaviors but it might not I'm not brave enough to ask hey Aaron how are you feeling so I think the key for us to you're right I think we can go from I know it all or oh my gosh there's so much to learn in the world I think the key is to start to pay attention to what you're feeling. feeling? And what is that feeling telling you about you? Because our emotions are incredibly powerful if we start to pay attention to what they're telling us. What do you define emotional

intelligence as? Quite simply, it's being intelligent about your emotions. It's recognizing that we feel things. It's understanding where those feelings come from. So what are your triggers. It's labeling them appropriately, so am I angry or am I frustrated? It's expressing them appropriately. So it's like, Aaron, I'm angry rather than yelling and swearing at you. And it's regulating our emotions. And as I said in the very beginning of this podcast, it wasn't that I'm an emotional person that was getting in my way. It's that I was letting my emotions take the driver's seat of me. For the last two decades, I have spent time and energy and have researched finding the cognitive strills and the mental strategies to be bigger than my emotions so that when I am

angry and I want to pick up the phone and yell and scream at you, I press pause and make a conscious choice of, hey, if I did that, what are the consequences of that action? And if I make a highly emotional intelligent response, which would be, hey, Aaron, I'm angry, and here's why I'm angry, then what's the impact of that conversation? I think we don't press pause long enough. And let's be honest, do you even know what your triggers are?

I work with so many executives and when I ask them what their triggers are, again, like stairs. They know when they're triggered, but they don't actually know what their triggers are before they are triggered. Right. How does empathy tie into this?

Because empathy is a growing topic of discussion for people as well. And when we're talking about being able to look in words and love yourself at that starting place, even though you may not want to be in that place long term, it seems like that's also applicable, as you kind of described to your mother, that you can look at the benefits of what you went through, even though it's put challenges and barriers in your way, you've grown as a consequence of that. And it seems like empathy is a growing conversation. And I'm just curious as to how that fits in with this. Well, I'm really glad you asked that question because it's actually the reason I find. after five years of lobbying, got an emotional intelligence course in the School of Business at the University I teach. But it's because we have this big empathy gap. And what empathy truly is, is being, be appreciating and feeling how other people might feel. So putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. So, and caring about your feelings as much as you would do your own.

So it's being attuned. So as much as, you know, you and I both have our cameras on, I'm watching your body language, right? I'm listening to your tone of voice. Your words are just 7% of what I'm hearing. 38% is your tone. But if you were sitting like this cross, you know, and had your arms cross and making a snarly face, I might not, I might have a different opinion of what you might be saying the right words to me, but showing me it in different ways. And my mother actually jokingly says when I was little, she used to, when she was really angry at me, she'd go, you little rat, I just, you know, I want to strangle you right now. And she would say that in the cutest voice. And as a baby, I'd be like Googling and goggling. But I mean, the point is our tone has so much, our body language, what we do with that. So can we, when we're empathetic, can we put ourselves in somebody else's shoes and see it from their perspective? And there are three types of empathy. There's cognitive empathy, which is perspective taking. I can see. or think how you're thinking.

There's effective empathy, which is, I feel your pain. And then there's compassionate empathy is, I feel your pain and I want to help. And the key is we have created this empathy gap. Let's be honest, when our stress goes up, our empathy goes down. And let's be honest, we've been very stressful the last few years. So we have lost the ability to really put ourselves in somebody else's shoes. And one of my favorite quotes is you are not the standard to which everything is judged. Wow.

That's a really beautiful quote. Yeah. I'm curious as to how people proceed when we're talking about empathy, because it seems like one of the challenges so many people face is being able to see and put themselves in shoes that they may not understand all of the backstory. So you think of having an employee or having a friend and not knowing what's in their bank account. And so you don't know that that's a stress. And so you're talking to a person and you think you know what the issue is

because they're saying the issue is X when really it's three different things that they haven't told you about that's one of the challenges. You think about having a conversation about employee about their performance and you don't know that they actually just lost a family member or A, B, and C issue going on.

And I'm just curious as to how we remain cognizant of these things when we may not be aware of all of the skeletons in the closet. it. Well, I think you make a really good point, and I mentioned it in the book. Emotions can be both experienced and expressed. So I can experience one thing, but show it as something else. And the problem is, unless you go underneath the surface, and in the book I talk about these inner iceberg conversations, you know what killed the Titanic? It wasn't that little piece of ice above the water. It was that deep piece of ice, the iceberg underneath that water. Well, people are a lot like an iceberg. What you see is just what's immediately apparent. What's below the surface

is, so what you see above the surface is our communications and our actions. But what's below the surface is our biases, our assumptions, our personal history, our attitude, our motivators, our stressors, our concerns, our fears, all of that's below the surface. So what I encourage the people to do in the book, and I encourage all my clients to do and my students to do, is have inner iceberg conversation. Hey, how are you feeling today? One word feeling. Don't say fine, because fine is not a feeling, nor is good. How are you feeling? What is that feeling telling you about you? What are your motivators? What stresses you out, Aaron? You know, what fills your bucket? What are your assumptions about that, that situation that we've just been in? Do you have any personal biases that

you're aware of and that you might not even be aware of? If we start to have those deeper conversations, not just, you know, what's the weather and who won the last sports game. But if we have those deeper heart-level conversation, as you called it, then we can get to the heart of the matter. And really, it's our emotions that are at the heart of the matter. I'm curious as to what the reception has been for this, because I think of some of the leaders that I know of, and they're so hardened, and they view their toughness,

their stamp on things as their greatest gift. and I consider them people who potentially would struggle with the idea that they have areas of improvement that perhaps people should be more like them and I'm wondering if you've ever come across these people and what that kind of dialogue might look like. Well, and the time is up, right? The jig is up, the time is up. We've got to turn leadership on its head.

The stoic, unflappable, perfect leader that, you know, that scares everyone in the office or that appears to have all their ducks in a row is out, right? People follow people who are relatable, not perfect. And people don't, let's be honest, the younger generation, Gen Zs are lower at problem solving, lower at stress tolerance, and lower at independence than any generation before them. Why? Because they grew up with these things, phones, and helicopter parents, right?

And so the worst thing we can do as leaders is one, tell them the answers. That's number one, because we have to remember we're teachers, first of all, first and foremost, as leaders. And I guess what? I know the answers to my students' test, but I don't tell it to them. If I do, they ain't learning. So the worst thing we can do for this younger generation is to tell, be the problem-solving hero and come in with our capes and show them, oh, you know, never let them see you sweat. No, we need to be authentic. This is a more emotional generation. We need to show them. We need to connect. That's our superpower. That's what's going to unite us. So time is up for this stoic, unflappable leader. because no one believes that anymore. No, everyone knows. I mean, the pandemic did such a service as much as it brought a lot of heartache. And I was quoted in the Vancouver Sun in 2020,

but I was saying what everyone wasn't saying. I said, there is a silver lining, although we're losing jobs and lost lives and isolation and all of that, I'm not discrediting all of that. That's hugely disappointing. But the silver lining is it taught this younger generation to be emotionally resilient because guess what? Google and their parents,

didn't know the answer on how to live through a pandemic. They had to figure it out themselves. And the problem is because this younger generation has everything at their fingertips, they don't have to think. They don't have to go into the trees and just be with their brains and kind of let their minds think and innovate. All they have to do is scroll through other people's ideas and try to, you know, bounce off of somebody else's ideas.

What if just clear your brain, what's going on in your brain? What do you think? What are your thoughts? What are your actions? So the worst thing we can do as leaders is to be that stoic, unflappable one. I'm also curious about the research because you are an educator. You work hard to educate students. You're sharing messages through YouTube and other channels. I'm just curious about what it's like to also tie this in with real data that's useful for people. For the skeptics who may say, I've been doing this this way for 30 years, you're bringing evidence. And I'm wondering what that's been like. Well, my favorite part of the book is actually all the observations I witnessed in the classroom and then showing them the research that proves what I'm seeing and then showing them because we graduate these kids without giving them an education, it becomes your responsibility as the leader to use it. So let's just use, for instance, students not getting enmeshed in people's stuff and having too much empathy and caring too much. So carrying the lion's share of their

work on their shoulders, taking a passive approach, maybe getting enmeshed in people's stuff wearing their emotional burdens on their shoulders. Well, guess what? I guarantee that's happening in the workplace. Someone at work is not standing up for themselves, not saying, hey, Erin, you're not doing your share of the work. They're taking that passive approach because we didn't teach them how to assert themselves in school. And we also didn't teach them that you can have empathy and boundaries at the same time. So you can still care for people. Think about what I do all day, and I listened to people's emotional troubles all day long in a corporate situation. I hear a lot of things.

I would never go to bed at night if I didn't be, I wasn't able to separate myself from my students and clients. And I remember one semester alone in one semester. And by the way, I just teach at a regular university, you know, I had one student that had gotten gang raped. I had one student that walked in on his sister who had hung herself. and I had one student that her parent got murdered in. Her father got murdered in Mexico.

One semester. Wow. And because what I teach, they tell me these things. But I guarantee those students didn't tell all their teachers. And they tried to get through it. And as much as that's a lot to carry, I also know that no matter what problem comes our way, we are incredibly resilient individuals, that as sad as those stories are and as painful as those

stories are, I absolutely believe we all have the tools to be bigger than our problems. And all I did was connect with them on an emotional level. I didn't have to solve their problems. I don't know how to deal with those kind of traumas. That's never happened to me. I've never been trained in that. But what I did ask was, Aaron, how can I support you? And then I listened. And I think that what I am noticing with all the research, and you can see, like, this book is full of research. As much as I talked about what I observed in the classroom and in the hundreds of organizations I've been in, what I am still observing is that this lack of education, this emotional education,

we're focusing too much on the wrong thing. You know, these kids can want now look at with AI, right? These kids can write their own papers by just sending a sentence. What we need to teach them is how to apply these emotional and personal and interpersonal skills in the workplace. Because guess what? We're still human and we're going to be working with other humans and humans are emotional creatures. And until we learn how to work with our emotions and then learn how to work with other people's emotions, we're missing the boat. So I think the key is in our education system, I still stay.

I still am a teacher. I still am a professor, and I stay there because I want to make a difference. I want these young kids to know that there is more than IQ. You know what? I don't even know about you, but I don't even remember my GPA. I don't even know how to calculate it. And by the way, I'm a professor. So as much as our IQ is important and might get us the job, our EQ is what's going to get us

promoted. And ultimately, the byproduct of emotional intelligence is happiness. And I couldn't be a better example of that. My life is not perfect, Aaron, but I have never been more happy and more content with my life than I ever has because I now have the tools, no matter what comes my way, I can deal with it. Before we move on to the book, I have one more question about all of this, and it's just around politics. It's feeling like the politicalization of our society is continuing, and I think of this empathy and understanding where people are coming from, it seems like that is really low. on you have one side and they think the other side is just a bunch of jabronies and then you have another side and they think the other side is completely evil and malevolent and it seems like that

understanding sort of what you're talking about what's going on behind closed doors what people are thinking the struggles that they're facing the logic as to why they're making the the decision they are in regards to supporting one group or another is all something we forget to do when we're having these conversations. And I just, as a young person, I see so many people not being able to sympathize or empathize with the other side. And that doesn't mean agree, as you describe, but you can put in your boundaries and say, I will not agree with that, but it at least gives you the ability to sympathize and empathize and say, okay, we may disagree on this policy or that policy, but I understand where you're coming from. And I'm just curious as to your thoughts

on that. I absolutely think that's the key to a lot of the world problems. I think if we, again, back to my favorite quote, you are not the standard to which everything is judged. We need to remember that. I am seeing through the world through my lens. And I have a different upbringing, a different religious background, a different economic, you know, I come from a different economic status. I don't see the world through everyone else's lens. So I need to ask. You cannot make assumptions and just assume, oh, the world sees the world the way I do. And so I think it's really important to ask people their why. Why are you? Do you? what you're doing. Why are you thinking what you're thinking? Now, I would always stay away in the

book I talk about this. I try to stay away from the word why because why puts people on the defensive. So you could say, hey, Erin, I'm curious how come you think that way. I'm curious how come, you know, you sent that email. What was behind that? What were your intentions? And that's those inner iceberg conversations. If we can be brave enough to not just look up what's on the surface, to go into their whys. And in the book, I talk about three whys, right? But the first why is why are you doing what you're doing? And then once we can understand that, again, we might not agree,

but we can at least have more compassion and understanding. And when I do these workshops in the workplace, oh my gosh, a two-day workshop changes the culture dynamic. I've never seen something more dramatic than doing a two-day EQ workshop and retreat with an organization. And they say, oh, my God, I've been working with. with Aaron for 30 years. I had no idea he was the way he was because of this. And now I have a deeper understanding. I don't necessarily like Aaron anymore, but I certainly understand him more.

And that's the key to having a peaceful world. Your book is brilliant in that it pulls together years and years of experience, like anecdotal evidence, but with the research. And I think that that's such a balanced approach that we don't always see. Sometimes it's all research and no real world experience and sometimes it's all real world experience with no real legitimate data. And I think that that's such an important balance. And as you said, we're starting to flip this idea on its head that a CEO is emotionless, all data driven, that there's certain qualities and personality traits that you need to have a healthy work environment. You can certainly squeeze out all of the productivity of a person. But when they're burnt out, you have to let them go and find new people

to squeeze all their energy out and find another person. And so I'm curious as to, you mentioned that the book came about originally for workplaces and for leadership teams, but now it's more about going inside yourself. And I think often we think of leaders as that person over there telling everyone what to do. But in your own life, you have to lead it. You have to lead your family. You have to lead your spouse. You have to support your children.

You're a leader in all different facets of your life, particularly with yourself. And that seems like such a beautiful thesis to write about. book about. And that's exactly, you know, I couldn't have said it better than you. I really did start this book as trying to help people to lead teams because that's what I was doing all day long. And then I realized, wait, I'm putting, that's book number two, by the way. But book number one, I stopped and said, wait a second, before we can help others, we got to help ourselves. And that is leading our life. And that's why the subtitle is the inside out journey to transformational leadership. And that's like you said, leading your families, leading yourself, leading your communities.

Right? That's what I'm talking about, not leading people, leading yourself, figuring out how to, you know, who we are is how we lead, right? Leadership isn't anything different than being who you are. And guess what? I have an issue trusting people. That shows up in my leadership. I'm overly flexible. I overaccommodate. That shows up in my leadership. As I said to you, I'm a really needy 52 year old. That shows up in my leadership. So our personality traits are our ways of being, our emotional makeup. is who we show up in the workplace and is how we show up. And the one thing I want to say, and you said it earlier, leaders need to remember if you are that stoic, unflappable leader, the jig is up because that's no longer your superpower. And the superpower is our emotions and connecting on an emotional level. We need to become emotionally strong, which means emotional, which means I feel things deeply and strong, which means I am bigger and stronger than my emotions. That doesn't mean I'm strong arming my feelings or having a steely resolve not to feel. It just means I feel things strong. I feel things. I am aware that what I'm feeling. I'm aware of what triggered that feeling. I'm aware of how to express that feeling. I'm aware of to label it appropriately. And then I'm aware of how to manage that feeling. That's what emotionally strong means. And that's the kind of leadership we need because, and here's the key. And here's the key.

how we feel at work affects how we perform at work. And if leaders could remember that, if my workers are overwhelmed or burnt out, how productive are they? When was the last time, Aaron, you were emotional. How creative were you? Think of the last time you were overwhelmed. How well did you remember what you had to study for the test?

You know, think of the last time you were angry. how well did you communicate that with your partner? I think we need to realize that people, how they feel, affects their performance. So we have to start talking about feelings. I couldn't agree more. And I definitely think of the challenges of being able to think clearly when you're experiencing these emotions and being comfortable. It's almost like you need to be comfortable in a storm. And when all of that's coming through you, that you need to be able to process it, close your eyes, take a second, breathe, and then start to focus on.

on the next steps, how do we move forward peacefully and kind of letting that ego aside? Because a lot of it is, as you kind of describe, defense mechanisms, reactions to protect yourself from some sort of feeling, rather than really processing how you feel. Yeah. Anger is a secondary emotion, right? And that's what the research shows. So I might be angry, but what's underneath that anger, right? And that's what we've got to figure out.

What was it like to release this book? As you said, fall 2022, we're coming out. of the pandemic now and starting to think about what the effects were. And I think that this is a great starting place for people to go, okay, we just went through this. What are the next steps? How do I grow as a consequence? And so I'm just curious as to what the release of the book was like for you. Well, like I said, I'm a first time author. Nobody knows who I am. And already this book has become a bestseller on Amazon. It was, I just got nominated for 2020 Ford Indies a finalist, and I just was awarded the 2022 Axiom Award for the best business book in leadership.

And that does, yes, did I write a good book? Yes, I'm proud of myself. But more importantly, I wrote a timely book. When I started my company, no one knew what emotional intelligence was, even though it's been around since the 90s. And I had to convince people why they needed an emotional intelligence training. Now, since the pandemic, the phones are ringing off the hook because our emotions erupted from the surface and we realize not only are we ill-equipped to deal with our own, we don't know how to manage anyone else's in the workplace. So I think the reason why this book has gained so much popularity. And again, like I said, for a nobody as a first-time author, this is pretty, I've been getting quite a bit of media coverage, you know, quite a bit of

accolades for the book. It's because we're sick and tired of thinking that we're just task completers at work. We have emotions. And like I said, the jig is up. We want our leaders to realize that we are emotional creatures and they need to talk to us about our emotions and they need to learn how to manage their emotions, but teach us how to manage our own. And we can't do that unless it starts in schools. We have to start this in the school system because bottom line is we graduate these kids and it becomes the leader's responsibility. We send them to the office, but they haven't learned these emotional skills. So we have to teach them in schools. and if we haven't taught them in schools,

we absolutely need to teach it in the workplace. And that's why I think my books become so popular. I'm very curious about the goals of the book because we're talking about who this audience is for. And I think that it's beautiful that it's written for everybody to be able to improve. But I do think about the financial stress so many people are going through. We're seeing increases in inflation rates. We're seeing increases in the pressure on people's finances

in regards to their mortgages, car payments, and again, some of these things are outside of people's control. You can't change the price of your home. You can't change the price of your car. You can't change the price of food at the grocery store. But you can try and control how you experience that and how you manage those emotions. And I just imagine that people are coming home

and feeling incredibly stressed and overwhelmed when they look at the lack of money in their bank account, when they look at the price of food. And I'm just interested if you have any thoughts on how people can start to work towards this. Obviously, one of them is going to be to pick up your book and start to read and go inside themselves. But I'm just curious as to how we can think about these issues differently.

Well, I think, again, it goes back to like, how do we deal with change? If you're someone like me, I'm overly flexible. Well, that can be a bad thing. I can over-accommodate. If you're someone who's very rigid in their ways and you're like, wait, the price of apples was this much. I don't want to spend more money on the price of apples. We've got to figure out what emotional strategies you can because you're right. We can't impact the external world around us.

We can only impact ourselves. That's the only circle of influence we have. So how we deal with it, how we experience it, how we deal with whatever emotion is coming up is up to us. We are in control. We are in the driver's seat of our emotions. So if you're sad about what's going on economically, what can you do about that? What is that sadness telling you?

Every emotion, Aaron, good or bad, right or wrong, negative or positive, has meaning. Let's take shame, for instance. Shame, you know, hey, I really like the thing on your shelf and if I wasn't worried about feeling so ashamed, I might come to your office and go steal it. But my shame is keeping me boundaryed, right, to not steal it, to not do the wrong thing. So every emotion, sadness, happiness, right, it all has a meaning. What is that meaning telling us about us and the world? And so what I would do is whatever, the economic crisis is for that person is what are you feeling about it? Are you stressed? Are you worried? Are you anxious? What can you do about those feelings that are in your control? And then the

other thing that I want to mention just from an organizational level, yeah, if things are tough, the last thing you want is your good people to leave. Right? That's only going to make your business worse. So how do we retain top talent? You make them feel cared for. You make them feel cared for. You make them feel valued, you make them feel appreciated, because no matter what, no matter what our role, no matter what our gender, no matter what our background, we all need three important things, connection, appreciation, and fulfillment. And when you feel connected to your boss and your team, when you feel appreciated for your efforts and you feel fulfilled in your role, it improves how you feel and perform at work. So if anyone out there is listening, that's what I would say

to you. You can't change what's happening with inflation rates, but what you can do is make people feel connected, appreciated, and fulfilled in their role so they won't leave, and you can retain top talent. Just like you said at the beginning of the pandemic, I think these moments of pressure that we're going to experience financially are an opportunity for us to come back together. When you think about the Great Depression and people dropping off a carton of eggs, dropping off margarine or butter to their neighbors reconnecting on that level is something I think we've missed for a few years now. And I think that these are opportunities for us to get to know each other again and not have the nicest restaurants and the biggest fanciest experiences, but to reconnect with other people.

And I think one of your messages that's coming out super clear for me is that we should do what's meaningful. We should focus on that and not necessarily on what makes us happy in the short term because that connection, that sense of meaning, that sense of empowerment that you feel when you're doing something meaningful is going to outlast any sense of happiness that you might experience in the short term because you're invested. The work that it goes into making a book like you did, every day might not be happy. When you get the edits back and there's a lot of work to go through, that's not always a happy day, but it's meaningful when you get to be here, when you get to know the people are reading the book and benefiting and

improving themselves as a consequence of the work you're doing. So would you mind telling people how they can find your book? So they can go on to my website, Carolyn Stern.com, slash book. They can pick their favorite retailer and then buy it online. And, or they can go on to E.I.experience.com, which is my corporate training company slash book, EI Experience slash book, and they can find it there as well. And if anyone's interested in any emotional intelligence training in their organizations, I absolutely think this is the most critical time to be doing it, because like I said, the jigs up, people are ready to have emotionally strong leaders. And that's, And I'm really glad I'm building a community.

Just like you're building a community with your podcast, I really feel what you're saying. You know, when I wrote the book, I think being an instructor and an educator helped me because halfway through the book, there's worksheets. So there's work to be done. And what I didn't say, which next book I will, at the very back of your book, Aaron, the very last page, there's a QR code. And if you click on that QR code, it takes you to a whole set of videos and a whole other workbook. So it's actually a book in one. because I want to teach, if I can't change the education system tomorrow, I want to give people access to this emotional education

because it changed my life, not only professionally but personally. And I really think emotional intelligence, it's been my lifeline. It is the answer to all our personal and interpersonal problems that exist. And if we could just learn to be bigger and stronger than our emotions and be smarter and have strategies to not let them take over our lives, we would all be in a better place. I couldn't agree more. Carolyn, I'm not going to say that you just did a great interview,

but I will say that I found you to be incredibly informative. I think you were incredibly raw and honest about the experiences you had growing up and how you processed those. And I think that that, as you've described, builds stronger connections with other people when we're willing to put some of our experiences on the line, share that that creates the opportunity for connection.

And I think you've absolutely done this. I highly recommend people go pick up your book and get educated on these issues because I do think it is the way of the future. And I'm just so grateful to have been able to spend this time with you today. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I would score very low in my emotional intelligence. I didn't say anything, but I've been the exact same boat. When things get stressful, I've been called a robot once or twice when things get stressful because I just start to go step one, step two, step three, step four. So I definitely have some areas

and improvement in regards to emotional intelligence. Yeah, I would say if something really gets on my nerves, I'll just internalize it versus really trying to deal with it. And I think it's an attribute of being an introvert. But you just like, you're... Yeah, I can't imagine you getting like, oh, I can't imagine you yelling him. although I pay to see it. How much would you pay?

A fair amount. I think it would be a fair amount for you to really come down on me. Yeah, you'd have to really set me off, and so far you haven't hit any triggers. I do love that, and I don't know if this part will be in the podcast or not, but there's this point in time, and I see it in so many of your guests, where, especially somewhere like that, is done a ton of media. and you get surface level questions and you know someone hasn't necessarily even cracked open the book

or done any research on the person but there's a point when your guests kind of lean in and go who is this guy who? I've seen it over and over again and it's just an attribute that you have of being an excellent interviewer

and really doing the research in advance it just shows up over and over again and I love that moment of seeing in the guests mind they're trying to like these calculations going on how old is he what is he doing like how and it's it's over and over again and I love it you were the first to articulate that because that's always been the goal is um and I have a substack article coming out and it's like a good question makes a guest feel seen like it doesn't matter if I have one follower 10,000 followers that recognition of getting what they're doing and seeing them for who they are

matters a lot and when you're doing these interviews and you get the same 10 questions every time it can be like that's an insult to what I do when I see people do that in news or whatever it is that's like very discouraging because these people put 10 years 20 years into what they're doing and the least you could do is do some research into what they do and try and have a conversation that flows so there's an arc and you can see the journey and when you pointed that out that became the dedication is making sure we do that every episode because that's in part I feel like why you've been so supportive is because you see that we did that panel event and really trying to be there and zone in on what they're saying so the follow-up actually makes sense rather than referring

to some script and I've noticed some people are skeptical when they're like you're not going to follow like the 10 questions and it's like no this is worth the risk yeah and this is bonus for someone watching on the video version of this production, but Aaron is staring into a teleprompter. We use it as not a teleprompter. It's essentially, he's staring down the people in a zoo window. But you can see a little bit that there's a room on either side of that zoom window. And I've asked Aaron, do you want to put notes there? Do you want to put your questions there? because others they use the studio do. They have their 20 questions

or whenever they're trying to get across or they really need to nail it and I don't disparage that whatsoever. It's super useful. But I do know that you're just staring down the guests the entire time and nodding and it makes a difference. When a person is studying their next question and only half listening to the answer that's coming back to them,

A, it puts the guest off and B, you can't react and ask a question that's off script, right? And so, you know, that's been the definite superpower of yours. Yeah, it is definitely a jump because doing a few interviews, and when it goes from this question to way over here, and they don't seem at all related, it's hard for your brain to go from one to the other. And then as you kind of describe, it's less engaging, but it is something I think I'm tortured by in a sense, because it's, do I follow up on what they just said, or do I go to the next topic of conversation, which in this case is a book? And choosing between the two is always something like, okay, we're at this point in the interview,

should I move on? I'm very curious, and it's like, it's that gut instinct of like, no, I have to know. I have to ask this question. I'm not going to be happy with this. If I don't, and that's always, like, good journey. Well, thank you so much. As always, that's it. What number is this?

We're, uh, 100 something. I'm not sure what order we're going to go in. Um, but as always. to number 100 and something. Thank you. It's been a journey.