Lessons

Lesson Info

Emotional Intelligence

Now we're gonna shift a little bit from mindfulness. We just talked a lot about mindfulness into a little bit more of the emotional intelligence pieces, okay. Let's talk about the difference between sympathy, empathy and compassion. You've probably heard all of these terms before, but like, how do they relate to you, and does it even matter that they're different? I say it does, so let's see if I can convince you. Sympathy, this is sort of recognizing someone else's emotions or situation from a distance. Like, "Oh wow, I feel so bad for you. "Uh, that really must sink. "That's so tough." Right, there's sort of a separation between you and I, okay. Sympathy can be useful, and it's not the worst thing in the world, but sometimes, has anyone ever received sympathy from someone and it didn't feel very good? Yeah, I won't make any of you tell that story. (laughs) It's maybe kind of a personal one, but sympathy can come off as really disingenuous, and like someone doesn't really care about y...

ou, yeah. So the difference between that is empathy, that's really like feeling what they're feeling. Kind of getting in there with them, right, and matching, syncing your limbic systems, right. Where their limbic system is bringing yours there. What you want to do with empathy at its highest version is bring the tools to get you both out again. You don't have to rush them out if it, but like climb down in the hole with them, and then bring the tools to get you both out. That's the highest version. The problem with empathy is it can be exhausting. Exhausting. Because you're taking on other people's emotions, and if you don't know how to not let them stick in your system, but let them flow up and through and out of you, you can find yourself very depleted as more of an empath. Has anyone experienced that, that sort of depletion after doing a lot of empathizing in the day? Does anyone have a story about that? Or an experience about that they want to share? You're like, oh, when did that happen? I'll tell you one about me. It's like I would walk around coaching and helping people, and I would just be drained at the end of the day, because it was taking it all on. Taking it on is my issue as much as theirs. So I'd recommend not doing that, but the other way I'd really recommend that you be is compassion. So we talked about this before is thoughtfulness plus love being compassion, but I'll add a piece. Thoughtfulness plus love leading to action. And when we spend as much time in compassion as possible, we stand witness to someone else's experience versus with sympathy, sometimes we're kind of protecting ourselves, we're distancing ourselves. We stand fully witness to their experience, but we're not part of it. There's a separation, but it's not out of protection, it's out of recognition that it's not yours, and you don't need to take it on. It's I'm with you and I understand you, but I don't take it on. But most of the time, compassion leads to some sort of action. Compassionate action. Whether it's bringing someone soup or a meal, or whether it's giving them a space to talk, right. Giving them a hug. These things are all little, they don't have to be big actions, they can be little actions. But what I want you to think about is being a manager, a leader is when someone comes to you with a problem or their struggling, sympathy can be really damaging. It feels like we're not connected. Empathy can be draining and maybe not even that productive sometimes. Compassion is something where you're really with the person, but you're focused on an action to support them or do something about it. This will be huge for you if you could think about what would compassion look like for me in my day-to-day and interactions? What would being compassionate, how would that be slightly different maybe than what I've been doing? If you want to jot down a note real quick, go ahead. What for me could I do a little differently if I was going to live in compassion a little bit more? So one thing I'll say that you might end up wanting to do is really super-charging your listening if you want to be compassionate. And the trick here is sometimes when we're with someone, we're thinking about what's in our own head versus really being with the person, because we're worried about what should I do, how do I help them, I hope this thing's broken, ah, something going wrong. Versus if we're really be able to witness them and be present, we get out of our head and we're really clearing the space for the other person. So I would say that mindfulness is a form of listening. If we're gonna meditate, we're listening to whatever our intention is, or we're bringing in more information, okay. It's a form of listening. There's so many different forms of listening. I wanna give you three types of listening that can really help you right now through the rest of the day and out, you know, out into the world immediately, okay. So these three types of listening, we call them three zones of listening. The first one is self. So as I'm explaining these, I want you to tune into your listening and try to move your listening around based on how I'm describing it, okay. The first level is self, so it's listening to the voice in your head. It's almost like putting your hands over your face. Your consciousness is going as far as the thoughts in your head. So right now, as I'm talking, tune into what you're thinking. What's that voice saying to you right now? What are you noticing, what are you paying attention to, what's that constant chatter or story narrative that's happening saying? That's yourself. Now why would self be good and why would it maybe not be so useful sometimes? What's good about being in self-listening? Okay, come out of self-listening for a second so you can share. (laughs) You're in tune with yourself. Yeah. It's like I know what I think and I feel and maybe what I want, and what my intuition is saying. You've got to know what you think, right. You've got to have a point of view. What's maybe the downside of being in self? You're disconnected. Yeah, you're not able to be with what's outside of you, right. And there's so much more outside of you than inside of you in a way, right. (laughs) Even though everything really happens inside of you, but that's a little bit more, we'll get into more esoteric Buddhism another time. (laughs) Okay, so then the second zone of listening is tunnel listening. That would be like as I'm talking, you try to tune your listening into exactly what I'm saying, what I'm showing you with my face, and you're blocking everything else out. If you're in the room, anything else, any other colors, noises, it's just me and you. If you're at home, it's like it's just you're in the monitor with the sound, everything else fades away. That's tunnel listening. So try to really tune to that tunnel listening and be really, put everything towards me right now and what I'm saying and see how that feels different if you can. And if you fade or you sort of stray from that, just come back, okay. That's tunnel, you're just right with me. It's great. Now why would tunnel be good and why would tunnel maybe not be so useful sometimes? What's good about tunnel listening? You're giving them all of your attention that you've got. Yeah, you're really getting as much as possible from that focus point, right. That specific one. That specific one, exactly. So you're really, if it's something really important that someone's saying, you really got to pay attention, it's like, "Okay, listen, the world's gonna end "unless you get to site and diffuse the bomb. "Here's the directions to the site, "and here's how you diffuse the bomb." You may not want to pay attention to literally anything else except for those directions, right, if you need to save the world. Why would it not be so useful though? Not aware of your surroundings. Yeah, and what's bad about that? I don't know, someone's falling off a cliff, you won't know that's happening. Metaphorically, if something's like about to, something more important than what you're focusing on is happening, it's saying, "Hey over here, pay attention," but you're so tunnel vision, you won't redirect to the more important thing. Totally true. What else is bad about it potentially? I would say you're just missing so much more data that's available to you, right. If you're just with me, there might be a lot more happening inside of you, in the sphere, that sort of feel of the room. And so that's why we have global listening. Global listening is sort of the goal most of the time, which is really trying to listen to everything all at once. So trying to notice, can you feel the energy in the room right now? If you're at home, can you feel what's going on, like your energy, the energy of the room, can you pay attention to what I'm saying? Can you kind of like, tune into it all and open your aperture of your consciousness and try to get as much data as possible, while not losing track of what you want to focus on. So just invite you to be in that global listening now for a second and see if you can sort of the sound of the room even changes, and the feel in your body changes. Any observations as you've been playing with the three different levels, when you think about listening that you have to do? What's some observations you have about these levels? Yeah. I think for the most part, you transition between them without even noticing. Yeah. You tend to not have control over what the. You are flipping between these three all the time. The goal is to be more aware and more intentional when you're in one for what reason. And it's just about having the intention. Oh, even knowing there's different ways I can listen, or different zones of listening, that gives you the power to start playing with that. All you do if you get into self and you should have been in global or tunnel is just, you can acknowledge it to yourself or even sometimes out loud. "Oh, I got lost there for a second, "and I really want to pay attention to what you're saying. "Can you just repeat the last two sentences for me?" I have to do this all the time as a coach. My job is to listen to people, and I sometimes fly away for a minute, and I have to call out that I went into self completely. I was not with them. And it's much better to own that. That's part of the vulnerability of being a leader than just pretend that you were listening. Anything else, any other observations or thoughts about the zones of listening for yourself? If you can be aware of where you are, this becomes a super power. And people just feel really good now. Wow, this person's really connected and locked in. Great, so let's talk about the concept, we're talking about listening, okay. And listening can also happen when you're talking. And I'm going to explain how in a couple of ways, okay. Listening doesn't have to end when you're speaking or when you're thinking about speaking. So one, the first is a mindset. It's this thing called the concept of completion. I'm speaking to you, not to have the whole thing, the whole conversation wrapped up in wrapping paper with a bow on top where I can just give you a present to open. That's not how I'm communicating. I'm communicating with the idea that you have a piece of the puzzle that I'm missing, so I'm communicating, and I'm kind of just waiting. What are you gonna throw back? What are you gonna add that I'm not even sure what it's gonna be, but I'm leaving space for what I'm saying to be incomplete without your contribution. Whether that's with one person or a team, right. We can scale it up. So I think you complete my thought, and you can even make my thought better than I could have imagined. One of the mantras I have is this or something better for the highest good of all involved. But this or something better. It's like this with the thing I'm saying or idea or my point of view, or something better. Maybe someone has a different idea that's better than mine or an additive idea to mine that stacks on top. And then all of this is just a new direction. So by the end of that completion point where I share a thought, you share a thought, we may now jump off in a new direction, but that's only the start. We're gonna keep this rolling forward, right. It's part of being improvisational, being more creative, is a way of communicating with completion as a mindset rather than I have to be the expert. We talked about that, right. I have to have it all right the first time. No, you're missing out on so much that's available to us as a leader. Let the genius of the people around you contribute to the genius of the organization, or the team, or the project. So I'm gonna say one more thing about listening while you talk. Speak to eyes. Hopefully you've noticed in this room, that I've been talking actually to your eyes. That is very uncomfortable for people. More so in one-on-ones it's comfortable, but in groups, very uncomfortable. It's unnatural almost. You don't want to just stare daggers in people. That's why I spread my eye contact around. If you're in a one-on-one, you only want to be in eye contact between two thirds and three fourths of the time. You want to break eye contact to refresh, not be so intense. But if you can learn to speak to eye contact, that's where the real connection comes, and you can see, are they getting it or not, are they with me, are they low energy? The eye contact gives you so much data in connection that will do so much of the work for you. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. It's a skill. You can train it. As you're talking, read signals. People will give you signals, and if they're with you, if they're kind of lost, you know. Whether they're, they're get kind of tensed up, they're not with you. So if you read the signals and you watch how your words are landing, you can pivot. Ooo, let's try this a different way. Especially if you're trying to negotiate or sell someone an idea. If you notice they're not bought-in, try to keep talking a little longer before you give them a chance to respond, because once they state their opinion, people like to have what's called commitment consistency, so if they say, that's how I feel, then they're not gonna want to go back on that later. So if you could tell they're about to disagree with you or say no, try maybe a different way of selling them before you finish, so that you can only do that though if you're watching and paying attention. Don't, what I call, don't black out while the words are happening. Some people when they go to talk it's just like a total black out. Like in old school when Will Farrell like does the ribbons and he gets like a 10, and then he's, "What happened?" You know, that's how a lot of people communicate because it's pressure when people are looking at you sometimes, okay. This is something you can practice when you, the best way to practice this, go out in the world and at the next dinner party, the next cocktail hour with your friends, when you talk to them, when you tell a story, look in one set of eyes, look in the other set of eyes, and spread it around. Don't do it just in a row, but practice that in your personal life so in the work place when there's pressure, that's not when you're training yourself. Train yourself when there's low stakes. There's research that shows that a skill that's well-practiced under pressure gets better, and a skill that's not well-practiced under pressure gets worse. So give yourself the practice and when the pressure gets turned up, you are locked in. You're selling the scene, your executives or your senior leadership on exactly what the plan should be. Boom, because you've practiced that connection. Okay, so what we're gonna do is, we're gonna do one more exercise and this is around listening. And give you one more experience of mindful listening or emotional intelligence, right. So emotional intelligence is often knowing what to look at and how to look at it, and making it important. So someone, I want someone who has a peak experience, okay, to share it. Now your job this time is to take three types of notes for this person as they're sharing, okay. You're gonna take notes on their values, their emotion, and their body language, okay. And all your job is if you're the person sharing is just share the story with as much richness and passion as you can, and we'll figure out what values. I'm not gonna whiteboard this time. I'm gonna leave it up to you all to take the notes on these three areas. So does anyone feel comfortable sharing their peak work experience with us? Yes? Yes! Round of applause, huge round of applause, a ten please on the round of applause. (audience clapping) That was still like a seven, guys. We're here to get better. When she finishes, I want a 10, okay. Okay, so again, while Deanna, yeah, while you're talking, we're gonna take notes on values, emotion, and body language, right. Okay, so when you're ready, please go ahead. You can look at me or look at them, whatever's most comfortable. Okay, I think in my experience so far, the last job that I left, I had an amazing team who was already well staffed. They were making money. It felt, it didn't feel like work. It really felt like you were excited to go there because you were gonna hang out all day, and I think that's what work should feel like. It should feel fun. It should feel like it's not work at all. And the feeling that that gave me, and the feeling that it gave the team members who used to work with me, we're all struggling to find that again. So my peak is that, and I'm trying to find that now in my current role, which is very different from what I used to do, but that peak feeling came because we were invested in one another. We were staffed because no one wanted to leave. Everyone wanted a chance into that store. We built great culture there. There was a feeling of camaraderie of teamwork, even though at the end of the day it was making money. It never felt that way. And so I guess my peak is collaborative of like couple of years of work that I felt then, and now I'm trying to find that again. Oh perfect. And the outcomes were good. You guys did well as a store. Yes, very well. So well. Yeah, awesome, that's great. All right, round of applause, 10, let's give her a 10. (audience clapping) And you're taking notes, and you can sit down. You did so good. So let's hear then, let's start with values. What are some of the values, and Deanna, we might ask you which ones felt accurate to you, how that felt. So you can listen to what they saw and tell us how you were feeling or what you think about it as well. So what values did we hear, yeah? I wrote down connection. Yeah. She's clearly very connected to the people that she worked with. Yes, huge. That culture she created. Yes. And her impact on that is obviously that they were results-driven in making money. Yeah. And then the collaboration on the team as well. Yeah, the story might've been a little different if it was like, "Well, it was really fun. "We all got fired because we didn't sell anything." Right, about why would I have felt it was good. So the impact's important. Right. Collaboration was there. Yeah, Adrian, what did you? Trust. Trust, yeah. That's necessary for the connection, and. Yeah, absolutely. Any other values we heard, yeah? I would say fun and also intent to do well, but also have fun at the same time. Yeah, it's like goodness is part of that, but fun definitely, she stood out. Did any of those values really stick out to you, it's like you know these are one of your core values? Fun probably the most. Yeah, you could tell. You're just a really fun person. So great, as you're listening, think about if this was the person that's your report, or a peer, or even a senior leader, you're listening as they're telling stories, which people tell stories all day. You start looking a little deeper. What's the value behind that? Now we know, this person cares about fun, so if we're their manager or we're their peer, even their report, we might want to cultivate fun around this person, so that they'll be motivated. They'll feel like we have their back, right. We know maybe how to play with them because of that. Okay, great. What emotions did we hear? Happiness. Um hmm. What else? Like, almost love, you could just see it. I think definitely love. Yeah. Would you say that you loved the people you worked with? Yeah. Absolutely. It's like family basically, right. So love and happiness, anything else on the emotion side? Proud, she was very proud of her staff and the company that she worked for. Yeah, yeah, it had that pride. There was like, we did it, we did good, and like, man, we gotta find that again. Any other emotions, any of those stand out to you, or any others? Well, I was going to say passion towards, yeah. She like really cares about the work that she does, right. Right. And kind of wants it to be, not just okay, but awesome. Absolutely. Any of those really resonate with you? Passionate. Passionate. I think I know her pretty well. Yeah. (laughing) So when people tell you their stories, you actually get to know them, right. Yep. And did you know each other before this? No, so think about that as a leader. If I ask you to vulnerable, right, and be authentic, how you tell stories or what you share helps people know you. Boom, okay, what body language did we notice? What was key about connected to her story? Smiling. Yeah, and I noticed, I mean, it's a little nerve wracking to come up in front of everyone, so it was maybe at first, okay, what am I doing up here? And then she got into the story, and she was remembering, some of the film was playing in her head, and she started really smiling, so the real smile, right. So you can tell in those moments, we could probably say body language at first, maybe a little nervous, and then comfortable, and then smiling. So you can kind of track the arc of things, and see what's going on with that person, and it'll give you signals. Anything else we notice about body language? I think she got like very expansive. She started like with the arms. Yeah, yeah. Like I want to, this was important. This was like, a big thing we did, and I want to find it again, wow. Absolutely, good watching. So when we're in global listening, we have access to the values, emotions, body language, everything. When we're in ourself and our mind, worried about am I doing this right, I need to get to the next meeting, what are my to-dos? We're not really paying attention on these deeper levels, yeah. Clear intention drives action. You have to have the intention. You can't, don't worry about every little action, but if you have the clear intention. You stay focused on that, the actions will follow. Actions that you do everyday drives outcome, so if you're getting this outcome and you're not sure, it's not really working for you, think about what actions am I doing? And then you can work your way back to what intentions or what theories are behind those? And lastly, success takes time and effort. You're not going to become a more focused or mindful or response-flexible person overnight. It takes effort and time. So pace yourself, but you have to really commit.