Emotional intelligence in customer success with Jenelle Friday

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome back to the CS School Podcast hosted by Customer Success Collective. This is the podcast for any CS professional all over the world who wants to know about the hottest trends, developments and customer success. And we really try to break it down into our digestible format. So today on the podcast, I've been joined by Janelle Friday, VP of Customer Success at Forecastable. Janelle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I've been excited to have you on for ages. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Now, Janelle, uh, if anyone know, she was nominated as CS Leader of the Year last year in 2023. She's spoken at, ah, our Customer Success Festival in Austin back in February. She's a CSE ambassador all round time. Good, great girl. And she's also speaking at our Customer Success Festival in San Francisco in um, I think It's. Is it September 4th, September 4th, 5th. Yeah, too.

Speaker B: So I'm your emcee for that event too.

Speaker A: Oh, you're the mc. Oh, brilliant. Fantastic. Well, yeah, Janelle, I'll stop doing the intros. Could you let our listeners know a little bit about you and your kind of, I guess your customer success career to date, how you fell into this wonderful world of customer success?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I kind of fell into customer success organically. I was working at an organization and kind of executive level support and ended up taking over the book of customers from the company owner. Um, and that was sort of boots on the ground, manager, managing, multimillion dollar contracts. Didn't know what I was doing. Uh, and it was such an extension of who I am, building and maintaining really great business relationships that when I moved from Washington state to Colorado nine years ago, I found my very first official customer success manager job. And my career has just kind of skyrocketed since then. Um, I've had amazing positions, I've been able to lead amazing teams, meet, uh, incredible customers and just really, really kind of lean into customer success as a career path I never imagined I could ever have. So it's been a pretty amazing journey.

Speaker A: Oh, that sounds brilliant. Yeah. Nine years, Nine years in the game as well. Like that's, that's, that's pretty good going.

Speaker B: Yeah, like, well, and for three years before that. So really I'm at like 13, 13 years almost, which is just crazy to me. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker A: Oh, it sounds like you absolutely love your job. And you know, the event she's previously spoken at, uh, you know, being nominated CS Leader of the, ah, year and the upcoming one. Yeah, lots of stuff, lots of great knowledge to share and um, I'm really excited about this episode. Um, yeah, because I think this is, so this episode of this podcast is like a nice, I think it's, I want to call it as a nice introduction to the keynote you'll be delivering in San Francisco. Um, it's a really, really good one. So I'm, yeah, thrilled to be talking about this. We're going to be, we're going to be talking about emotional intelligence, eq, aren't we? Um, and I think this is a really interesting one because for, for a number of reasons. I think we all talk about empathy and customer success and I think everyone's like, ah, yeah, empathy, I've heard of that one that, that comes up. That's a, that's a good buzzword, you know. Well, you know, obviously it's a real, it's a real thing, but it comes up a lot. Whereas eq, I feel like per me personally speaking on and just, you know, research online haven't seen as much spoken about it. So excited to get into that today. Uh, so for our listeners, we're going to be talking about self awareness, differentiating between empathy and eq, difficult conversations, uh, and training and development and things like that. So I'll stop gabbing. Would you mind explaining to our listeners a little bit about the core pillars, I guess, of emotional intelligence and, you know, why they're essential things. You know, why they are, why are they so essential in customer success? How does it lend itself to customer success? You know, know, um, yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker B: Sure. So there's a couple different models you can follow. There's really one that I've clung to and it's. There are four pillars in emotional intelligence. There are two that focus on you and there's two that focus on others. So the two that focus on you are self awareness and self management. The two that focus on others are social awareness and relationship management. And really what I found is you cannot manage yourself if you're not self. Aware. You can't be socially aware or manage other relationships if you're not self aware. So self awareness really is kind of the front door to emotional intelligence. And the self awareness we're talking about is not oh, you need to smile more or oh, did you know that when you talk to somebody your tone is a little bit off. Yes. But truthfully, the self awareness that is emotional intelligence is who are you? Why do you do what you do? Why do you Think the way you think. Why do you have emotional triggers that, that grab you and you're not really sure why you reacted it to it that way? Um, how much of yourself has come from past experiences and subconscious reactions or behaviors that were born out of trauma or difficult things as you grew up and now they're a part of you. And no one talks about the graduation from childhood to adulthood and that how you manage stress and trauma as a child is no longer appropriate as an adult. But how do you work your way through that to become self aware so that you know exactly who you are? And that's where self confidence comes from. It's where self conviction comes from. And in my opinion, the best relationships come from individuals who understand how to listen, how to allow freedom for the other person to speak and offer their opinions. And you're not threatened by what they say. You're not emotionally triggered by someone using a tone or words that might be offensive to you. Um, you know how to build trust with people because you're confident in who you are. It starts with your own Persona, your own person, and then you can extend yourself outward.

Speaker A: Oh, brilliant. Thank you. And I completely agree. I think there's a real, I think that probably leads on to the, to the next question about empathy as well because I think we all know people who think they're ticking boxes or we've worked with people who are ticking boxes to appear. I'm getting you, I understand you. But really there's either a complete lack of self confidence in their own ability and that has, ah, that translates because it just turns up, you know, the working relationship or the, or the friendship turns. It's a bit of a nightmare really, because they're not equipped to deal with. Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Well, when you, when you think about it from a, from a training purposes right now we're going to get into this. But sales people are taught how to sell. Right. Product people are taught how to build product. Engineers have the degree, they know how to build things. Right. Marketing knows how to be creative. We are, we are in essence relationship managers. That's what we are. But we don't proactively as a industry or as a whole in general, we do not teach people how to build great relationships. We assume that when we hire someone with people skills and they've done the job before that they know how to do that. But what I'm finding in all of my research and training and, and implementing into my own personal life is that building trusting relationships is not inherent. You have to learn skills of how to deal with difficult people, how to diffuse a situation by the words that you use, how to remain calm under pressure, how to listen to somebody and identify something that you can connect with and build upon that to create a connection with someone. We're not teaching those skills and we're dealing with something in my lifetime that I don't understand. The dependency on cell phones. I didn't have a cell phone until I was 25. We have college grads that are coming out of college that don't know how to relate to people because they've been on their phones and tablets and computers for. And so again, these people relationship skills are sometimes being lost. And that's why you hear people, uh, this is what I say. Why is it called common sense? Because it's not common. Why do we call it common courtesy? It's not common. We're having to go back and teach those basics because society as a whole, we're losing our ability to relate to one another. And we're also taught as a society, you're not enough, you're not thin enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not rich enough, you don't have the right car, you don't have enough stuff.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We're taught to believe that we are not enough. And that's a lie. The people that I work with, ah. All I help do is guide people to figure out who you are, what are you good at, what are you passionate about, what, what sets your soul on fire every day and it doesn't have to look like the person next to you. And when you embrace that and believe in all of the skills and abilities you have, and it radiates from within, outwardly, that's when we can build the most amazing relationships. Brilliant.

Speaker A: No, I completely agree about the reliance on technology. I think, personally speaking, always considered myself pretty. I don't know, I've always thought myself pretty emotional, intelligent. But then I don't know if you're my. You know, my sister rings me up and I'm like half doing something, I'm half on my phone or half finishing up something at work. And, um, she's like, you're not listening to me. And I'm like, I've always thought I've been a pretty good listener, but then it's things like that. I think you, you kind of, you take it for granted, like these kind of skills. And actually you can kind of plateau a bit and you need to kind of keep polishing these skills because, just because you think you've marked yourself, I'm A, you know, emotional intelligent person or I'm, you know, you can slip and you can, you know.

Speaker B: Well, it's a, it's not a race to be won for prize. It's a lifelong journey. And so you're going to find areas of spring and growth and fruit and you're killing it in an area you're super self aware and then something really massive can happen, trauma happens to all of us and you slide back. It's just like any other area of life. It's a constant check and balance and, and re evaluating your own self awareness or your own EQ on a regular basis. Because sometimes the changes that impact us are subconscious and we don't even realize they're impacting us that way. So, so being willing to be very introspective and very self reflective and don't be afraid of what you find and don't be ashamed of what you find, rather look at yourself and go, what do I want to change? What do I want to fix? How do I want to do this differently? And there's many ways to try different things too, right? It's what I tell my mentees is it's a buffet. You take some, you leave some and every plate's going to look different. Don't try to copy what someone else's plate looks like. Figure out what works for you.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's very, very wise of you I think. Especially like, I think you're talking about the pillars. So can you remind me of the pillars again? Um, the self awareness, self awareness, self

Speaker B: management, focus on you, Social awareness, relationship management, focus on others.

Speaker A: Brilliant. So imagining like some sort of quad, like they know then it's ah, a How do you, how do you picture that? Are they, are they all necessarily equal or are they all kind of like, you know, some things growing, you know, at certain, you know, in certain spades. Like is it all going to be linear? Is it all going to be, you know, I think we all like to try and think. I think we all like to try and compartmentalize and think I'm doing this, this and that and it's all but some things.

Speaker B: So the way I, I mean there's lots of different images that have put out there about emotional intelligence. The one that I kind of see in my head is you have a temple, the foundation is self awareness and then you have the other three pillars that make up the base of the temple with EQ being at the top. So it's a temple with three pillars. And, and while there are four pillars, technically in my experience over the last four years, self awareness is where it has to be in place. So you cannot be emotionally intelligent without self awareness. It is the um, um. And so I don't know that I would say it's linear. I, I think it's a squiggly map all over the place because. Right. There's no real structure to this. It truth, it truthfully is a person to person experience. But what I'm finding is that all of the material on the market about emotional intelligence, there's research, there's studies, I didn't create any of that work. I'm building on what others have done. But what I'm doing is I'm translating everything I know about EQ into practical life application skills. Right. So how do you ask the right questions of yourself to come up with the right answers? And once you have those answers, you get to ask yourself, do I want that to continue? Uh, do I want to continue to have that be true about me? Right. It's just guidance. People need guidance to figure out. I want to be more self aware. How do I do that? The how is what I'm trying to translate and help people with. Because it's not intuitive and it's not, there's not a lot of material out there on the how or the, the real world daily application of that.

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. No, yeah, it sounds like it's, I think it's, to me it's, it sounds relatively like straight, straightforward when you just say it like that. But God, I can imagine it's just like how, how does. Because I'm um, going to have, I'm going to become more self aware. Well, that's not something you could just sort of speak into the, into the thing and it's like. Yeah, no, it's, yeah. So how does one become more self aware, particularly when you're in the workplace? Um, you know, you know, we've got, you know, for example, customer service manager. You know, they've got all these clients, you know, client facing, but then they also such. They're in that really unique position where they're, they're spread across the entire business. You know, they're dealing with a lot of perhaps challenging personalities, a lot of people with different kind of workflows and you know, you know, people working in like tech or in development might have a very, you know, a certain way of communicating compared to say somebody in marketing. So you've kind of got to adapt yourself to all these different sort of personalities and that's a hard position to be In, Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, it can be, yeah. Because, like, to your point, right, I have technical co workers, I have sales co workers, I have difficult co workers. Um, self awareness. And I'll give you an example, right? So I, I, we have two, two bathrooms in our house. A master bathroom and a guest bathroom. And I'm from Washington state, and so I've always been Pacific Northwest coast, really. Just loyal, you know? Um, and so the guest bathroom is all Pacific Northwest stuff. I have a framed old photo of Mount Rainier. And my. Right, it's all. And the other day I was in there and realized all it does is remind me of my early childhood, which is where a lot of my trauma stems from. And I don't actually think about the Pacific Northwest with love. When I'm surrounded by all that stuff, it makes me feel bad. And I'm like, that's a really weird feeling. Why do I feel that way? And normally I would just brush it off and say, oh, no, I love the ocean, I love the green. I love the, you know. Um, but I was talking to my husband. I'm like, I think I want to change it up. I think I'm good with moving on from the Pacific Northwest. He was like, that's really self aware of you. And it all, it always comes down to when you feel something. You have to ask yourself, why do I feel that way? Mm. Self awareness is when an emotion hits you asking yourself, why do I feel that way? Where did this come from? Have I felt this way before? And what triggered it then? Um, self awareness is asking, why do I think the way I think? And I think imposter syndrome and insecurity is really prevalent right now. And so I talk a lot about this, which is the imposter syndrome voice. My husband has a name for his voice, but we all have an internal voice that talks to us. You're not good enough. You can't accomplish that. It's negative thoughts all the time. And most of us grew up with some form of that. So when we've heard that voice for forever, that becomes our normal. And so self awareness is the ability to hear that and go, that's not true. I actually am pretty smart. Um, I'm totally capable of doing that because that inside voice is a lie. But what, what happens is when we're faced with a challenge or we're a little bit uncomfortable, instead of embracing something new or changing, we go back to what we know, which is negative. It's hard when you've been in a negative mental place for so long. To proactively decide. I'm not going to listen to that anymore what's true about me. So I encourage people to do what. What's called an IM statement, which is a one page document that is a list of who are you? So I'm resilient, I'm brave, I'm m kind, I'm loyal, I'm tenacious, I'm passionate, I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. I need 30 minutes of quiet a day with no screen, no noise. That's who I am. And no matter whether I'm married, working, wherever my life takes me, those things are, will always be true about me. Right. And I think a lot of people struggle with that concept of when I ask you who you are, Grace, who are you? Tell me about you. Sometimes it's hard to do that. And so self awareness is the ability to answer that question.

Speaker A: Um, okay. Yeah, no, completely, completely relate to that. Um, especially with that small little voice. We think we all have it. Um, and I. Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking what you said talking about um, when you were actually. Sorry when you were just talking then about the difficult conversations and I think I was just thinking about how would, how would somebody, um, in a, in a workspace environment. Um, so let's say they ah, they've got a new manager who perhaps wants them to, I don't know, let's just picking a situation that might be quite difficult for somebody. They're asking them to do something that has not been particularly part of their job role. They don't feel like it's, you know, bringing much value, but they're having to do it anyway or I don't know, something or sales are, you know, I mean in that situation you're kind of angry, you're kind of feeling frustrated, you kind of want to, you're not going to lash out, but you're kind of thinking, I want to say, you know, how. Obviously you just. How would you go about that in that situation?

Speaker B: Well, the first thing to keep in mind is that most negative emotions have one root cause and it's fear. So if you're feeling a negative emotion, you need to ask yourself, what am I afraid of? So if a, ah, new manager is coming in with a new list of activities and you don't like it, your first question is, well, what am I afraid of? Am I afraid that I won't perform the new job duties well and I might lose my job? Am I afraid that I'm under scrutiny because they're trying to get new people in? Um, am I afraid that my new manager doesn't hear me, doesn't see my value, doesn't understand all the good things I bring to the table. The next question is, what's driving that person's behavior? If you don't stop to take into consideration what the other party is going through, he's probably new. He's had massive expectations put on his shoulders or he's going to get fired. He's trying to make a good impression. He's trying to show the company that. That he has new perspective, creative ideas, and he's doing the best he can. Right? So it's. It's asking why. Why am I taking this personally? Why am I feeling all of this emotion? And if it's negative emotion, what, uh, am I afraid of? The next question is, where is the other person coming from? That social awareness. This is the relationship management piece. Because if you understand you. And I'm like, oh, that negative emotion, actually, that. That comes from a long time ago. Somebody said something that triggered me, and that's not true anymore. In the moment. You've got to be able to question those thoughts in the moment and take a step back, pause, and go, okay, wait, I'm afraid of this. That's driving my thought or my negative emotion. I can course correct here. Okay, first, um, focus on you. Then in that pause, you also have to say, if the individual I'm working with is difficult to work with, what's driving them? What don't I know about this person? So an example I gave at the. At the speech in Austin was I had a customer. When I inherited this customer, I was told, oh, good luck. He hates everyone. Right? And I was like, I'm gonna make that man my friend. You just watch. And, um, so when I met him in person the first time, he was like, you know, it's nice to meet you, but no one else has. Has used my time well. So I kind of feel like this is a waste of time. And I said, okay. So I just slowly started to involve him in conversation, keep him looped into email. And they needed help standing up a product. And so I took a team. We went on site for two days. We did a workshop. Um, and in. In a breakout session, he was so agitated. And I'm like, okay, I'm putting everything I know into the circumstance. I'm really trying here, but it doesn't look like we're connecting. So can you help me understand where you're coming from? Because I feel tension, and I'm trying to work out where that tension's Coming from. And all of a sudden he revealed that, um, his job was on the line. If we did not have a successful launch of the product, he was going to lose his job. And he's like, I can't believe you asked me that question. No one's ever asked me that before. And I was like, well, I can't really help you if I don't know what's going on. And while that might feel personal, it helps me understand you better and what's important to you and how I can communicate with you. Um, and so again, it's all about asking the right question at the right time. To be intrinsically curious, to be somebody who wants to understand root causes and what drives behavior for myself and from others.

Speaker A: Brilliant. So did you find that he started to open up a bit more? How did that relationship shift? Like, what was the. I mean, what was the outcome actually in the end? Did he hope he didn't lose his job?

Speaker B: He didn't lose his job. He, um, he actually told me, he's like, no one's ever cared before. And I think, you know, I've had people tell me, you care too much. You, you go too far out of your way. No one can keep up the pace you're doing. I don't agree. I think when you genuinely care about the person you're talk, whether that's a customer or a colleague, it changes your perspective. So the fact that he recognized that I genuinely cared, yeah, he opened up way more to talk me through. What was he being held accountable to? What were the things that were causing his job to be under threat? Uh, and how we could negate those together? He became a referral for me in many ways. He helped write a letter of recommendation for my graduate degree application. And he's still in touch with me today. So, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, yeah, when you build real authentic relationships, they carry you way beyond the customer. Customer success manager relationship.

Speaker A: Uh, oh, I'm so glad that's. Oh, God, that. What a great outcome. I wasn't expecting that at all. I thought, I'm glad you did. I'm glad you didn't say, oh, yeah. And he lost his job. Oh, that's lovely.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, there are negative outcomes, right. So another example was I inherited a customer in year three of their three year agreement. And the first two years were failures. They never got the customer stood up on the product. And so when I inherited them, he's like, I think we're just going to be quiet. When the contract rides itself out, you know, we're going to, um, we're going to seek something else. And I said, well, you've never had me before. Let's, let's try and see what we can do. Uh, and so we, for three months, I threw everything in the kitchen sink at this customer. And we ultimately realized we couldn't stand them up, uh, because of how they were configured. The salesperson who sold that, that deal didn't do his homework and so promised things we couldn't deliver. And so the kicker here was that this individual had chosen the product, so his job was under duress because if he failed. Right. So rather than let the contract end, I went to two of our largest competitors because I knew people there. And I said, hey, I have a customer who will be churning at the end of the summer and we would like to avoid having downtime, so I want to bring in another product that we can transition from our product to your product before their contract ends. So there's no gap in the support of the product that they need. And so he interviewed two companies. He went with one, and sure enough, before our contract was up, um, they churned and stood up the other platform. And while it was a loss for us, it was a win for the customer. And that was the ultimate. You can't always think that your customer has the, or your company has the best solution, the best product, the best. Right. Sometimes doing what's right for the customer means letting them go and not letting them go with angry words or, fine, go. We're not going to renew your contract or be frustrated by it. You can see it as an opportunity, if you are customer centric, to go, well, how can we help the customer, even if they have to find another solution?

Speaker A: So that's a hard conversation, I imagine, with, I guess, seat higher up that, that they're not necessarily going to want to hear that, though. That must be a tricky, uh, one to you.

Speaker B: It is, but it, but it shows active listening. It shows that when you, when you bring a customer on board and you care about the customer experience, if the customer tells you over and over again, this isn't going to work, this isn't going to work, isn't going to work. You sort of shoving the solution down their throat only makes that relationship more difficult. So while we don't want churn, if you have a customer that genuinely is not going to be a good fit for your organization because not, uh, every customer is a good fit, keep your reputation intact, care about that person's experience and have them transition positively so that when someone says, well, what was your experience like with company A? That customer goes, oh, well, they were terrible. It turned out not to be a good fit. And they just, it was an awful experience. They can say, well, it wasn't a good fit, but they really helped us transition to a right fit. How amazing would that be? It's like the, it's like um, the old Christmas, um, movie where Santa Claus is promoting the other store. The old black and white version where he's like hollywog frog or whatever. He's like, oh, they have it on sale over this other, this other store. Executives were freaking out and they're like, well, what if we did that? If you can't find it here, we'll tell you where to find it. This absolutely revolutionary concept, and it turned customers loyal because it was no longer about the bottom line revenue. It was about what's the best experience for our customers.

Speaker A: But that, but that sucks because you're so right. But I think, I'm sure I was in prep for this. Something like only 22% of like, I think it was 150,000 leaders, only 22% were like, found to have like, strong emotional intelligence. And the fact that you've said that so many, you know, it just, just to, just to put what you just said into perspective, like, not everyone is sort of thinking in the way that you are or the way, the way

Speaker B: that lots of, you know, because I'm not money motivated. And um, I think so much of our, our corporate America is money motivated. And we're still, and I say this with a grain of salt, right? Because not every leader is this way. But I still believe that from a general perspective, we are driving business through the sales perspective. Right? Net new logo. Net new logo. Net new logo. But the truth is that most organizations that have customer success, um, 60 to 70% of their revenue are renewals, upgrades, referrals. So we are still throwing all of our weight into net new logos and the sales teams. And yes, that's important. But if you're not viewing your customer success post sales teams as a revenue generator, you're missing it. And you're, and you're, you're not focused on the right things. That's my perspective, my experience. But, um, yeah, we've got to shift the way we view business, how we do business.

Speaker A: I think a lot of people listening will be, they'll be right, right there behind you.

Speaker B: I wish you'd shut up, David.

Speaker A: No, honestly, I think a lot of people will Be thinking, absolutely right. Because I think there's a. What you've hit on. There is a really crucial problem. There's a lack of training. There's a lack of training for people to sort of break. There's a one specific mold that's also the sales LED mold. Like, I think that every kind of every business across the, you know, the planet probably does M to an extent, but no one's actually really thinking about actually, how can we, how can we, how can we make a change? And so EQ training is something we spoke about when we were talking about this episode, what we're going to do for it. You know, empathy is something everyone's heard of. You know, customer success wasn't something people heard of, you know, more than 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But EQ training seems to me more important now than ever for customer success teams because, well, um, just like you said, the examples you just gave. So, you know, why, why, what methods can people, you know, if there are, you know, leaders like yourself who are thinking, I wish my team were more like that, how can I help them get like that? You know, it's my responsibility to sort of give them these, you know, help show them where these resources are. What would you say to that?

Speaker B: Uh, well, I'd first say to leaders who are still of the opinion that it's not personal, it's business. That's incorrect because emotions are personal. And there's never an instance where you can work emotional free, being emotionally free. Right. Our emotions drive most of what we do. So if you're a leader, you have to be comfortable with allowing your teams to have emotion, to become emotional, to have personal things happen. There was a post of a gal not that long ago, and I honestly don't remember her name, but she talked about how she'd gone through personal trauma. She got on the call with her manager and she started to cry. And her female manager said to her, see, this is why women don't succeed in business. We first as leaders, have to stop the expectation that when a team member is emotional or a team member doesn't know something, that we're putting a red flag on their port, on their profile. Instead, we need to approach it with empathy and approach it with an open mind to say, what are you struggling with and how can I help you? But in sales, if you don't sell, you don't keep your job. That's kind of the mentality. We can't operate like that. We live in a world where we are stuck so exasperated by the amount of people that are not working and the amount of applications that are come with every job. So if you're a leader and you're not investing in your people, to me leadership is very simple. It's what does your team need to perform to succeed? That's my job, is to provide them with whatever they need so that they're achieving, succeeding, successful, because then I'm successful, our company is successful. And so if you're not emotionally available as a leader, if you're not making time to be emotionally available for your team members who have life and have things happen, you're missing the mark. And so truthfully, training for our leadership needs to be, um, there are tons of courses, there's tons of organizations out there that offer corporate training for teams when it comes to stuff like this. So first, the corporation needs to agree that it's worth the investment they need to train their leaders. And second, you need to get that leadership to a place to say, you gotta be comfortable being uncomfortable. If crying makes you uncomfortable as a male manager, figure out how to be comfortable with it. Otherwise you'll never have a successful male female relationship. Because we as females tend to lead with our emotions. And when I'm mad, I cry. When I'm frustrated, I cry when I'm happy, I cry when I'm sad. Like it's just who I am. But to some people that's like, grow up, right? But it's part of life. And if we continue to, to put a spotlight on men and women who are emotional or who want to have a better working environment, that means that we have to come to humanizing it. As much as AI and technology move us forward, we are forgetting the most important thing, which is until it's a computer talking to a computer, it's a person to person transaction. It's not computer to computer, it's not transactional, it's relational. We have to have relational conversations and we can't do that if we're not willing to throw our own hat in the rain. And so, you know, I think it's incumbent upon the leaderships at organizations to look at their, look at their leadership staff critically and ask, do we see a high level of eq? And if the answer is no, don't get mad, don't fire, don't overreact. Just ask how can we help them? And then do your research. The market is flooded with, with resources, training, um, information to help guide a team through that.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Wow. And there's your talk as, especially in September, for the people who go and visit, you know, so it sounded a little bit mercenary then, but you're completely right. And also it's in leaders best interest to actually be emotion intelligent because at the end of the day like CEOs don't want high, they want, they don't want high levels of uh, uh, employees, uh, leaving. They want to retain it and think about how. And I, I know, I know we shouldn't be looking at the monetary value, but from their perspective, if they're more emotionally intelligent and can cultivate this culture of, you know, I'm not trying to sound really like wishy washy, but if they're called, you know, cultivating a culture where employees feel comfortable in, you know, in a meeting, I mean, I'm talking the bare minimum here. Everyone should feel comfortable. I mean the bar is really low.

Speaker B: Everyone should feel comfortable.

Speaker A: Meetings. It's a sad reality.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I have so many mentees that talk about their leadership and how leadership will allow gossip or leadership will gossip about other people. It's like when you have that kind of behavior at ah, a leadership level and you turned a blind eye, what you do is you create a really toxic working environment. And I've come from those, I've tried to very gently say to a leader, you know, the words you were using come across as really hostile and I just want to talk you through that. And I'm all of a sudden the one with the problem because the lack of accountability is really bad. Yeah, I can see a lot of things to that.

Speaker A: It's literally you're saying that and they're just pushing it back onto you like it's like some sort of. Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's because they're afraid of being called out. And that's what I'm saying is that when you have leadership that are behaving that way, while you could take it personal and say, well, I'm trying my best and I don't know what else to do, it has nothing to do with you. That leader is insecure. That leader doesn't know how to lead. That leader probably doesn't have a good leader themselves. A leader who's going to come to them and say, hey, we got to manage our people better. They're not being coached that way. So if they're not being coached, how can we expect them to coach anybody else? So it really, when I talk about customer centric mindset, has to come from the top down. That's exactly what I mean. Which is if your leadership, your core leadership does not care about training and uplifting mid level management. The people that are managing the boots on the ground and they don't know how to coach, they don't know how to lay their own insecurities aside, they don't know how to lay um, resentment or jealousy or whatever it might be down to truthfully help their employees succeed. That's the, that's the problem. But again that comes back to leadership teams being accountable and saying we have a problem and we could ignore it, we could make excuses for it or we can, we can tackle it head on through kindness and understanding and respect and empathy and, and, and, and all the positive things that we want. But that means time vested, it might mean money invested, it might mean that you have to slow down your growth of customers because if you add more customers but your team is not solid, what are you really doing? You're building a base of customers that are going to have a negative experience. So you might be running full steam ahead, but if you don't have the right team with the right EQ levels, all of that work is for not at the end of the day, that's my opinion.

Speaker A: But that's uh, no, you know, a lot of home truths, then it's complete. It's uh, also valid. Like I think that honestly the amount of people this will resonate with, it's, you're so right. It's, it comes from the top. It comes from the top this culture. And yeah, and again it's down to accountability. If they want, if, if businesses want a culture of, you know, without high turnover, they want, you know, they need to actually create that culture from, from themselves. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a brilliant place.

Speaker B: And digital, right? Digital customer success is a really big thing. We have to think about digital customer success, success. But you can't replace the human spirit in business. You just can't. And so if, if we're going to become a society where a computer talks to a computer and you don't need a human person, that's one thing. But as long as you have people doing business with people, EQ has to be at the top of the list for a skill set that needs to be developed or that someone should have

Speaker A: as you're building, if anything. Actually EQ is more important now, now that we're encroaching into this hybrid, this hybrid, digital hybrid automated world where they need to be clear boundaries, uh, and people like need to be accountable for good behavior. Especially you know, there can be sloppy behavior, there could be sloppy work, there needs to be kind of people need to be on thinking about, you know, this goes back to a podcast I did last year without being human first. Those skills are actually more important now to focus on in case, you know, like we said, it's not something we take for granted. Like I said about my sister, we take for granted the qualities we think we had. You know, but, you know, being good listeners and stuff, I think there's a. We're at quite an interesting. Do you think. Do you agree? We were quite an interesting turning point. Um, so those skills I think are more important now than ever because we've,

Speaker B: we've been racing ahead full steam and we're finding massive gaps in where we thought we would be. And I think it's because the model's changing. The model is changing from the old sales tactics to a new relationship driven tactic. And there are a lot of leaders of people that don't want to change. They're used to the old way. They like the old way. They're comfortable with the old way. They know the old way. But when you have leaders that don't understand the customer perspective but they're still leading from the sales tactic, they're stuck in the old way of thinking and they won't survive because the new way is where we're headed. And I think leaders are sometimes too afraid, afraid to admit I don't really know what I'm doing in customer success, but I would say there are a lot of people that are very familiar with customer success and to find those people, to bring those people in and say, what do you recommend? Versus saying, well, here's the result that I want. Figure it out. Right. Because yeah, it's, it's a m. Tough, tough ask for sure.

Speaker A: No, absolutely. And it should be it. I think eq, I mean, I know we, I guess interviews when you're recruiting and hiring, I think it should be incorporated more because like you said, if you want to, we want to flush out. And that sounds really cruel but you know, you want to make sure we're getting. We wanted, you know, we don't want any square pegs and round holes. We don't want people saying that I'm, um, you know, I'm customer centric, but they're going with a sales first attitude. You want the real deal, you want the real McCoy. Whereas. And I think if incorporating EQ into your interview process and you're actually building these customer centric teams. Yes, it's such a. Yeah, it's something people are sleeping on. Obviously. Obviously not everyone is obviously there Are a lot of people good people like yourself, but not quite enough.

Speaker B: The only reason I'm so invested in EQ is that it changed my life. So I, I was success. Excuse me, I was successful in being a customer success manager. But I kept burning bridges and I couldn't figure out why. And when my, when my personal trauma happened in late 2020 into 2021, I really, life stopped. And I had to ask myself, am I going to continue just because that's what I know and that's what I'm comfortable with and I don't want to change, or am I going to make a decision that, you know what? I realize this isn't healthy. I need to make a change. And what does that look like? I found emotional intelligence. So I threw myself into homework, research, reading, anything I could get my hands on. And I wasn't self aware, I wasn't self managing, I wasn't doing any of those things. And by throwing my full weight into it and allowing personal growth in myself, I realized that self awareness, um, and EQ is the foundation for how to behave as an adult. And I think from religion to religion, ethnic, uh, background to ethnic background, there's good and bad. What's acceptable? Right. And so I've had people say, well, how do you translate that to this religion? Or how do you translate that to this culture? It's, it's by, it's unbiased. Emotional intelligence is the standard we should all be operating on because it doesn't care what your background is, where you come from, skin color, sexual orientation, ethnic background, religion. It's all neutral under the banner of eq, which is why we can use it as a standard of behavior that we should aspire to. We're not always going to get it right.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I have days where you'd think I'd be so emotionally intelligent, but I'm crying my eyes out and I'm just frustrated.

Speaker A: It's not textbook, is it?

Speaker B: It's not textbook and it's not perfect. You're never going to be perfect. Right. But what it is is it gives us a standard to aspire to and it gives us, us an idea of um, when we truthfully are self aware, self accepting, self confident, self appreciative and we're able to look at somebody else and respect and appreciate them for all of our differences. But we have more in common than we have differences and the ability to value that other individual and work professionally with somebody from a place of like we've talked about, careness, empathy, respect, all of Kindness, all of the above. It changes everything. And that's what I found in my career. And so for me, you know, this isn't. I've said this before. This isn't a secret. That is for me to keep. It's something that I've discovered that all I want to do is help other people figure it out for themselves because I'm living my best life right now, and it's because of you, so.

Speaker A: Well, I'm so glad you did find it because you're doing the. Honestly, you're doing the world such a favor by telling. By sharing this. Because honestly. And I'm not. I'm not just being. I'm not being sycophantic here. I'm not saying this to the wrap because we're wrapping up the podcast, but genuinely, I hadn't really thought about those pillars, and I genuinely, I think going to use those in my life because I think we're all trying to better ourselves, but sometimes we just don't have the tools. We don't have the vocabulary. And people like yourself doing this is. Is an incredible. Yeah, it's incredible thing. Helps them be better at their jobs, helps them be better in their personal lives, you know, Brilliant.

Speaker B: Um, well, I've had. I've had relationships completely transform because when I step back and said, well, why. Why do I think this about this person? Why am I offended by that? Right? It came down to me. I was the problem. Uh, you know, I had to. I had to face that. So there's a humility, there's a lot of embarrassment, there's a lot of, I can't believe I just said that or did that. And most people would ignore it or brush it off. And an EQ says you have to really be critical and ask yourself, why get to the root cause. What am I afraid of? What's driving that? Why did I behave that way? And there's been people that have said, man, I'm really embarrassed by that. That's a good thing. Because if you're embarrassed or you're ashamed by that, it means that it's time for a change and not to be afraid of that change. And I think that's a tough thing, too. So EQ is. Life is a game changer. It's life changing. Um, and I just am passionate about helping people discover their own superpower and superhero within and living their best life through it.

Speaker A: Oh. Oh, thank you so much, Neil. And all the people who attend in our, uh, San Francisco event actually get to talk to you. This. You're giving, obviously your chair, you're emceeing and you're giving this keynote. But also people get. There's so much networking and there's so many opportunities to talk about these kind of things and learn from each other. I think there'll be so many people listening who attend the event as well, who are just thinking, like, I want to know more about this, how you know and hear more practical steps, you know. This is a lovely. This is. I mean, this is. I was going to say this has been a tater. This is. This has been way more than I thought. It was absolutely fantastic. This is honest. Yeah, this has been brilliant. Thank you. And, um. But yeah, you're in San Francisco, 4th and 5th of September. Get down there. It's going to be an absolute cracker.

Speaker B: I'm excited to meet everybody. I'm also going to be at the, the chief customer officer, um, one day event that you guys are doing too. Um, and I'm just really thrilled to be there. And I've got a couple people that are going to be there. I've met so far, but lots of people I haven't before. So I'm just so excited for that event. It's going to be awesome.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm so jealous. I can't wait. I can't wait to see the footage, can't wait to hear the stories. It's going to be a phenomenal event. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Janelle. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk about this. It's such an important topic. Um, something I've, Yeah, like I said, genuinely really found this so helpful for me. You know, it's. This is. Not that it's all about me, but, um.

Speaker B: Well, we can talk offline. Grace, you and I can work. No, this is.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's from my own personal therapy session. No, this has been great and I think it's going to be so helpful for so many people, so many leaders. Uh, yeah, this is. What more can I say?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Brilliant session, though. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thanks for giving me a place to talk and I could talk about it forever. I have my own little pedestal when you get me going. I can go, uh, but it's really great to talk openly because I think we avoid to talk about things because it's. It's difficult or it's like I don't know what to do or. Right. But we just got to talk it through and not be afraid of what we're talking about or what comes up in those conversations. And just be open minded. So I appreciate your willingness to just let me be and throw ideas out there that uh, are maybe some controversial ideas. But you know, it is what it is.

Speaker A: It's so welcome. Thank you so much Nell. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to check out our other episodes and go to the customersuccesscollective.com for even more customer success related content. You can also join our global community on Slack and can find the link to that on the CSC website. But until then, see you next time.