Developing Emotional Intelligence w/ Robin Hills

Speaker A: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am o' brien mcmahon and this is people business. In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Robin Hills. Dr. Robin Hills is a business psychologist and the director of EI for Change, a uh, company specializing in emotional intelligence training, coaching and personal development. The company was awarded International Impact Company of the Year by Dot com magazine in 2025 with the most comprehensive and detailed courses around the topic of emotional intelligence. Robin has taught and empowered more than 500,000 people across 200 plus countries. I think emotional, uh, intelligence is one of the core skills underpinning any type of success we want to have when dealing with another person, when dealing with other people, or as we talk about in conversation, dealing with ourselves. It really starts with understanding ourselves and our own emotions and then building to have better one on one interactions and building better interactions with our team, which is really what this whole show is about. Every episode of this show is meant to either help you become a better version of yourself, have better interpersonal interactions with other people, or organize and lead people toward achieving some kind of common cause. And all of that sits upon the foundation of strong emotional intelligence. As we get into this conversation, I will give you one warning. It, uh, does end a little bit abruptly. Robin was having some trouble with his power and connectivity right before we started the episode. We had a great conversation. I was just about to put a bow on it and his Internet cut out again. And so it does end a little bit abruptly. But we got the full conversation and just missed maybe one or two closing comments at the end. So there's a bunch here. But I don't want you to be, uh, startled by the abrupt cliffhanger at the end. I hope you enjoy this. I think it'll be really helpful for everyone, whether you are an individual contributor or a manager of one person or leader of an organization or team. There's a ton in here that can help you have better success across anything you're trying to do. So here is Dr. Robin Hills. Robin, welcome to the show. Excited to jump in and talk about, uh, emotional intelligence today. Eq, what is the origin story or background story for you? How did you come to be interested in EQ and decide to build a business around it?

Speaker B: Uh, Brian, it's an interesting question because I started my career in sales back in the 1980s and I was working in the teaching hospitals of London selling to doctors and clinicians within that environment. And I found that some of them were very good at engaging with me and had a lot of good social skills and were quite capable of, uh, holding a sensible discussion with me. And some doctors were just, let's put it bluntly, absolutely horrible. And I couldn't work out because they all had the same level of intelligence. So what was it that made some doctors and some clinicians behave in a certain way towards me, whereas others would behave in a different way towards me? And I was hoping, and I believed I behaved consistently, irrespective as to who I was dealing with. So it was intelligence. It wasn't until the mid-90s, when I read Daniel Goldman's books on emotional intelligence, I realized that was the missing link that, uh, I needed to understand these types of behaviors. So I continued working within the pharmaceutical industry in a variety of roles. Leadership of management roles, went into recruitment in the clinical research industry. And after a few redundancies, I thought, you know, I can make myself redundant here. Let's set up a business and let's set up a business focused on what I'm really keen on, and that's developing people. So that's how I came to be working in the field of emotional intelligence.

Speaker A: Very interesting, very interesting. When you say emotional intelligence, let's just define that term for people. So what is the definition of emotional intelligence?

Speaker B: Emotional intelligence is quite a deep, complex construct. It's very easy to understand, um, but very difficult to apply. It is basically being smart with your feelings. So it's combining your thinking with your emotions in order to make good quality decisions and, um, build up authentic relationships and then to take appropriate action. Now, like I say, very easy to say, very difficult to put into practice.

Speaker A: Yeah. What are the, what are the component pieces, if there are any? I'm a big fan of having frameworks to build on. A lot of the conversations that we have here are around different authors or speakers or coaches or whatever, and they. Everybody's got some kind of framework that you can have as the scaffolding to then build upon. Is there a framework for emotional intelligence? Is there a list of emotions or feelings that we need to master and understand? Is, or is it something different? What would the framework be?

Speaker B: Quite a few of the academics have put together their own frameworks, and a lot of these frameworks are fundamental to the basis of a number of measures of emotional intelligence, which is eq. The framework that I tend to gravitate towards and pull people towards is the Daniel Goldman framework, which looks at the inner world of self. So it involves self awareness and the inner world of self regulation. So it looks at regulating and managing emotions appropriately. Then we've got the outer world of Other people, things, events, situations, and the outer world of awareness is empathy. Um, and none of that will work, of course, unless we have good social skills to put into place and to work with and understand and manage other people's emotions. Now, uh, underpinning, um, all of that is motivation. How do we motivate ourselves to work with our emotional intelligence? And how do we motivate other people to be the best people that they could be in our presence?

Speaker A: So it's, uh, interesting because I've always thought of emotional intelligence as the ability to deal with other people's emotions, but I hear you giving a broader definition that it is both dealing with our own emotions and dealing with others emotions appropriately.

Speaker B: Sure. Unless we can actually understand ourselves and understand our own emotions, how can we engage with other people appropriately? To put it very simply, if I'm experiencing bursts of happiness, how do I know other people are, uh, experiencing bursts of happiness? If I don't know how I experience anger, how can I be aware of and how can I comprehend that other people are experiencing anger? Uh, and these are just two very simple basic emotions.

Speaker A: So let's talk about the individual for a second. Let's talk about ourselves. How do we get a better sense of our own emotions? And how do we get better control? I guess, how do we get better distance from our emotions so that we can see them? And then how do we get better control and understanding of those emotions? What does that practice look like to start with?

Speaker B: O'? Brien? I think it's important for us to have an awareness of what situations and what events lead to what emotions we experience. So it's having an understanding of emotional triggers and then working with those emotional triggers in more appropriate ways. So if I go back to anger, it's a very simple emotion to talk about because it seems to be on and off and it seems to be quite intense or not. What is it that provokes a sense of anger in people more often than not? It's an emotion that we experience when someone has transgressed one of our, uh, core values and we want to right a wrong. So once we have an understanding, it's then a case of saying to ourselves, what choices can I make around this emotion? How do I deal with it? How do I handle it? Do I deal with it or just let it pass? Or do I go into the situation and react? And according to that reaction, how intense should that reaction be? Should I blow my top? Or should I react with the individual? Should I react within a group? So it's about making choices but fundamental to all of that is having a better awareness and understanding of our own emotions and what provokes them.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it. This is Buddhism. This is stoicism. This is meditation. This is. There's so many different cultures and belief systems that all come back to this concept that between stimulus and response, there is a choice. Right. Between something happening to us and us responding to that thing happening to us. There's a little bit of a gap, and we get to choose how we respond or choose not to choose. And we just respond however we respond. And the more that we practice and focus on that space between the stimulus and the response, we can widen that gap and make better choices.

Speaker B: Yes. So if we look at the word that you use there, which is quite an appropriate word there, o', Brien, it's stimulus. So if we look at emotions, what are emotions? Emotions are, uh, physiological and psychological reactions to changes in our environment. And, uh, once we understand that, then is the stimulus. So that then provokes, uh, an emotion. And emotional intelligence is having the intelligence to understand what that emotion is, what it means, where it comes from, and how we're going to work with it in order to build up these authentic relationships and in order to make the best choices. Now, again, very easy for me to say and do, but in the heat of the moment, very difficult to work with.

Speaker A: Do you have any examples of how you built your emotional intelligence? And maybe, like you said, it's difficult to do in practice. Do you have any stories of things that maybe were difficult learning situations for you?

Speaker B: Sure. I think we've all had these difficult learning situations. Take you back to the time when I was selling two doctors. If I experienced a, um, very bad behavior. It took a lot of emotional control not to respond in the same way. And I suppose through that I built up an understanding of my own emotions. And, uh, I knew that it was wholly inappropriate to react to a client in the way in which the client was reacting to me, particularly if they were setting out to be deliberately obnoxious because they felt that they were in a superior position. So to be able to calmly react to that and to walk away and not to say anything, or not to become toxic, but, uh, to continue being professional meant that eventually I came away having the upper hand. Now, how the doctor felt around that was not my intention. My intention was to walk away from that feeling that I had reacted in the most appropriate way. It takes a lot to do that. But I think that's one of the advantages that I've had in terms of working within Sales. Because if I was working within uh, an office environment or I was working with people, the same people day after day, I would probably not have had those lessons and it would have been harder for me to develop my emotional intelligence. And I think I have to say that I don't know whether there's a kind of genetic component here because all the way through my childhood and my early adulthood and even nowadays people have this awareness and they pick up on it very quickly how calm I am and how non reactive I am, um, to certain situations so that I can deal with them in an appropriate way. A lot of people call it resilience. And I don't, I just say that's the way I react. What's the point of overreacting? And why don't I react in a more appropriate way, which gives me a level of calmness and gives me a level of stillness that I uh, think a lot of people value. But I've got to watch for that because when we look at self awareness, there are going to be certain people who say that leads to a lack of urgency and uh, unless you actually demonstrate you've got some level of passion there, you don't care. And I'm well aware of that now. I've had to learn that the hard way. But it's interesting because if people are uh, talking to me about a subject that I don't care about and they expect me to respond, then I just simply don't care. And I have to say, look, I'm interested in hearing your viewpoint and I'm obviously interested in the conversation, but it's not a topic that I've got an opinion on because it's something that really doesn't interest me beyond the discussion we're having at the moment.

Speaker A: So, so let's talk a little bit about that. How have you learned to express passion? Because I think it's one thing to be like, well, I've always been this way and I learned that I could use that to my advantage in these situations. It's another thing entirely to say I'm not that way at all. But I've learned that I need to be a little bit that way. And I think when it comes to strengths and weaknesses, I think we, like you said, we often get in more trouble when our strengths go unchecked, when we don't put some guardrails around our strengths and then we get into a little bit of trouble from weaknesses because there's some gaps there. So I think it's interesting, like how did you harness that strength back in, you can keep that, that disconnect, uh, that allows you to have the superpower of not getting emotional while also bringing the passion to conversations where you need it.

Speaker B: Yes, I suppose I've got my childhood to thank for that. And a lot of people learn these patterns during childhood. And they either have to unlearn the patterns or they don't unlearn the patterns because the patterns have suited them well over the years and leads them to a level of success. I suppose to a certain extent, I. I wouldn't say I've had to, um, unlearn my patterns, but I've had to understand my patterns better and make sure that I utilize them in a more appropriate way. And I have to look at people who get incredibly angry all the time. And they are very senior people within organizations, and they shout and they're generally unpleasant and they're most obnoxious to people because they know that is the way that they get things done, and they are very successful through that. So to go along and talk to them about emotional intelligence, they will tell me that they are extremely emotionally intelligent because they know how to utilize their emotions very well. They may be able to get what they want, but at what cost? And I think that's the difference there. So to go back, uh, yeah, just

Speaker A: to say one thing there, that's a great point, because emotional intelligence is not weaponizing your emotions against other people.

Speaker B: It's not. It's not. And I think the other thing that we've got to say about emotional intelligence is that it can be used to manipulate people. So if you know how to manipulate people's emotions, then you have to stop yourself from doing that if you are being emotionally intelligent. And there are some great examples of people who are brilliant of manipulating people's emotions and doing incredibly well for their own good, but they're not being emotionally intelligent. And without naming any names, some of the senior politicians on, um, the global stage are brilliant at it.

Speaker A: Yeah. So our cult leaders, we won't go down that. We'll leave that door there and walk past it. We've talked a lot about dealing with angry, aggressive people. Where else does emotional intelligence show up?

Speaker B: I think what we've got to do is to look to all of the emotions. Forgive me, there's probably between 7,000 and 35,000 emotions, depending upon what academic paper you read. So what I tend to do is to get people to look at the 6, 7 basic emotions that are experienced by everybody and start to work on those better. And the basic emotions There combine to give more complex emotions. The basic emotions are happiness and anger, which is what we've already talked about. Sadness, fear, disgust, surprise and contempt. So if we look at those emotions and start to recognize how we work with those emotions and develop that level of self awareness, we're in a better position and a better place then to understand and work with those emotions when they, we see them in other people.

Speaker A: And there's a lot of negative emotions.

Speaker B: I wouldn't call them a negative emotions. I think what we've got to do is to go back to my definition of emotions being a physiological and psychological reaction to changes in the environment. If we change the that into data, emotions are uh, data. It's not the emotion itself which is positive or negative. It's the way in which we react and behave around that emotion which leads to them being labeled as negative or positive emotions. I prefer to look at them as being unpleasant, um, or pleasant. Some of these emotions are uh, not particularly pleasant. They're um, unpleasant to experience. But how can I utilize that emotion in a constructive way rather than utilizing it in a destructive way? And then it goes back to the choices that we spoke about earlier. O'. Brien.

Speaker A: So let's walk through that list one more time. You said there's happiness and surprise and then fear, sadness, contempt. What else? Disgust, um, disgust and anger. Okay, I should have known that because I have seen Inside out and Inside out too plenty of times. And disgust and anger are both in there thoughts on that movie. As somebody who specializes in emotional intelligence, that was not a question I had written down. But now that I say it, I'm just curious.

Speaker B: I think it is an absolutely brilliant movie both Inside out one and Inside out two. And the reasons why I say that is because Disney Pixar went along to speak with the world's expert at the time. His name was Paul Ekman. I'm talking about him in the past because unfortunately he died last year. He is an anthropologist and psychologist. He did a lot of groundbreaking work on emotions looking at how emotions are expressed on the face. And he worked with isolated tribes and with blind athletes. And you think they're two very disparate groups. Why should they help people to understand emotions? But if we look at both of these groups, none of these groups had actually experienced outside influence. So they didn't know what these emotions look like when they were expressed on people outside of their group. Obviously blind athletes, blind from birth, couldn't see these emotions. And the isolated tribes were isolated from what we would call western influence. So what Paul Ekman did, as an anthropologist, was to study the expression of these emotions and found through his work there were these seven emotions that we spoke about. And, um, these are experienced universally by everybody. Yeah.

Speaker A: Isn't that like the concept that when somebody celebrates, they throw their arms in the air? Don't blind athletes do that? They've never seen it done, but they do it too. That's just a celebratory thing that we do.

Speaker B: They do and they experience it on their face in the same way the eyes open wide and they have this sparkle in their eyes and the sides of their eyes wrinkle with joy and their mouth opens and the cord, the lips go up. And that is one of those emotions that, like the other six within that group, are experienced universally. Now, Paul Ekman was used as a consultant on Inside out one and two and he was obviously then driving the storyline around the science. So we go back to those movies, we have a look at them, and they are grounded in very good science. So that's why I like them so much.

Speaker A: Yeah, I. Yeah, uh, they're fantastic. Pixar just does such a phenomenal job. All right, let's back to the business world here. Let's get down to brass tacks. So we've talked a lot about emotions. How we get. Can get better at managing our own emotions. What are we looking for? What kind of outcomes does improved emotional intelligence create in a business? Because like you said before, there are plenty of people out there who are like, oh, I have a lot of emotional intelligence. I can manipulate the emotions of others or I can use my anger and power to get what I want. And like, things are working just fine. So what are the benefits of leaning into these more M. Some people might call them soft skills. These more human skills like emotional intelligence. What are the actual positive outcomes we should be looking for?

Speaker B: Well, the. The positive outcomes that you're looking for is greater success. When we're looking at it business perspective, we're looking at, ah, adding to the bottom line and the way in which you do that is by having good people working for you in good ways to develop up, uh, good relationships with everybody that they interact with both inside and outside of the company. And they do it for the right reasons and they do it underpinned by their values which are aligned very much with the company values. So if you get it right, you've got an environment that is conducive to good success and good outcomes and to good business. Now, a lot of people will say that is being soft. It's not. It's around getting people to work for people because they enjoy working for people. They're being developed, they're growing, they're doing something that they're passionate about and they enjoy the social interactions that they have at work as much as they do the technical aspects. And we'll see over the coming years their emotional intelligence will be far more valuable as a really solid business skill with the introduction of artificial intelligence within organizations. Because it's the emotional intelligence components, it's these soft skills. I prefer to call them, um, power skills, but you refer to them as community skills. O' Brien and I think that's brilliant. It really is a case of utilizing those skills and using, uh, artificial intelligence as a tool, but working with people in order to build up those authentic relationships and make better business decisions.

Speaker A: So let's talk a little bit more about the introduction of AI and whether it's like true AI or whether it's just automation technology. The world seems to be changing quite a bit. Uh, everybody is worried. There's a lot of stress out there. Talk a little bit more, if you would, about the value of emotional intelligence and how individuals can use emotional intelligence in their jobs to make themselves more sticky within their organizations.

Speaker B: Sure. This is a fundamental point to moving forward in the future. How do we future proof ourselves when much of our uh, roles will be taken over by AI? I think what we've got to do is to embrace AI and allow it to do the jobs that can be automated. It will make us much more efficient. But what we've then got to do is to look at those skills, those capabilities that, uh, AI cannot never be able to do. A lot of that is around making value laden business decisions. It's around creativity and innovation. It's doing things differently, it's doing things by thinking. I hate the expression, but it works here, uh, outside the box. It's about building up these relationships through empathy. It's about teamwork and it's about answering this fundamental question. Why am I doing this? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my goal? Why am I on this planet doing what I'm doing at this particular moment in time? Now, these are all fundamental questions that AI can't answer. Um, indeed I struggle to answer them. But it gives us the essence of being human and that is what is going to take us forward in the future, not the robots. So if we then define that in one word, it's leadership. So how can leaders become better leaders?

Speaker A: Yeah, how do you think about the value of Leadership skills in non leadership positions.

Speaker B: I was taught way back when in my early career that we are all leaders, irrespective as to whether we have the title or the role that enables us to say that we're leaders. And it was a very difficult concept for me to come to terms with. But then I started to realize that uh, I actually do have influence and a lot of my work is around influencing people, persuading people to do things in a better way, to actually utilize my capabilities and um, working with my skills for the better good. Now once I understand that is leadership, it helps me then to become a better leader. So once I had a role that had leadership in the title, it was easier to settle into the role. It wasn't without its challenges, but it was easier to settle into the role because I knew it wasn't about power, it was about influencing, persuading and being a general all round good human being or as far as I was capable of doing at the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, it just, it occurs to me that leadership is really figuring out the best path forward and that can be applied to an individual doing individual work. Just if you're just doing work on your own, coming up with a vision for that work and figuring out the right path forward and finding the best way to execute that work. But then if you move up and you become the manager of a couple people and you have a few direct reports, then it's okay, what's the best path forward for our team? What does success look like for our team for these individuals? How do we need to work together to create the best path forward? And then you maybe if you're running a department, okay, what's the best path forward for this department and how do we make that easier to achieve and how do we empower the people to go do that? And then if you're running a company, it's the same thing. And so, uh, it really is. As you were saying that, it just occurred to me that we often think about leadership as a person leading a lot of other people. And we think of the captain, the CEO, the general, that like whatever it is, we think of the highest high. But in reality I would bet that the best leaders, when it was just them that they were leading, led themselves pretty well.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: And then, and then just stack those skills over in to what applied those skills to whatever position they started to rise through and the same skills apply. And you have to add skills. Right. The more people you manage and the bigger the volume of that gets. But it to me it's it is different flavors of the same thing.

Speaker B: It is. And I do quite a bit of work with senior leaders across the globe. And one of the things that I have to do with them as um, leaders is to encourage them to understand that the leadership that they have within their roles means that they haven't got the skills of the people that they're leading. And a lot of people will have been promoted up through the ranks, and they get to the point where they think, oh, I can do their job. I can do their job very easily, so I can tell them exactly what to do, and they'll be very successful. That's not leadership. That effectively is being a, uh, manager, and not a very good manager at that. What I have to do with a lot of these leaders is to say to them, you cannot do their role. The environment has changed, the company has changed, the marketplace has changed. The dynamics are very different. You can't step back into that role. And even if you did, you would be a very expensive commodity for the company to perform that role. Your role is very different now. It's getting the best out of the people that are performing those roles, and they are looking to you to unblock, um, and unstick them, to enable them to do the best job that they can do. And I think that's a bit of a revelation for a lot of leaders.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree. I think about. There was a, uh, gentleman who was an admiral in the US Navy. He was a Navy Seal. Admiral William McRaven. Got famous for doing the University of Texas commencement speech, talking about making your bed, which is a great speech. But he was on a podcast that I was listening to, talking about leadership, and he was talking about how it's his job to make it easier for his people to do their job. And I thought it was just like the most simple definition I had ever heard. And it was very powerful. And it's just, yeah, make it easier for them to be great, and you'll be a great leader.

Speaker B: Yeah. Such a simple way to describe it. I'm absolutely delighted to hear your story there, o', Brien, that somebody in a very senior position has come to that conclusion and is espousing that wisdom. I think we ought to take some great store from that and some great comfort if there are people capable of doing that. What we've got to do is to encourage our leaders to be more like those leaders, and we can do that through our own level of leadership.

Speaker A: Yeah. You talked about soft skills earlier, and one of the questions that I've discussed on here with a number of different guests. But I think it's worth coming back to and coming back to, because it's a. Is a hard balance to strike, is how do we find the right path between empathy and performance standards? Like, how do we hold a strong line of. This is what it takes to perform at a high level here, and we will support you as a human being.

Speaker B: I think this is a leadership capability and competency that, uh, needs to be developed further. It's underpinned by emotional intelligence, or let's reframe that. Emotional intelligence is underpinned by empathy, which is one of the major components. Now we're using this word empathy. What do we mean by it? Because a lot of people think, oh, I'm being empathetic towards another person, and I'm not hearing empathy and seeing empathy. I'm seeing and hearing sympathy. What we've got to do is to define empathy. And empathy is all about understanding the perspective of the other person and seeing it from their viewpoint and understanding the emotions that they're going through and to a certain extent, feeling them and feeling them with that intensity. It doesn't mean to say that you have to agree with them. You, um, just have to understand. And by understanding, you're then in a better position to push for the performance that's required.

Speaker A: Do you have an example of what that looks like, something that might make that a little more concrete?

Speaker B: Sure. I think a lot of leaders need to sit down and talk to the people that work for them, particularly their direct reports, and just to say, what's going on in your life? What's going on at home? What are your hopes? What are your fears? What are your aspirations? What's getting in the way at the moment? And a lot of things may come out of a conversation where there is two things, psychological safety and trust. And if those two things are right, then people will open up and they'll say, oh, my mum's very ill at the moment and I have to take her to the hospital every week. My children are in trouble at school. They're not performing particularly well, and I've got to manage that. And I'm also in charge of the local football soccer club and I'm managing that at the moment. And we've got financial issues, and so these are some of the things that I'm having to cope with outside of work. Now, once a leader knows that, uh, a leader still has the goals of the team to perform and to work, uh, with. So there may be times when he can take the pressure or he or she can take the pressure off certain individuals and administer the work in a different way and to manage that outcome and the goals in a different way in order that person can overcome some of the trials and tribulations that are going on outside of their work. Now, if somebody comes along and says, everything's going fine at home, everything is great. I'm, um, particularly fit and healthy. I've got no issues with relationships at home. I'm raring to go. I want to develop my career, I want to grow, I want to take on more. I'm keen, I'm eager. Uh, can you give me some more work? The leader's responsibility then, is to delegate some of their work and to do it in an appropriate way. So it's a case of understanding your people. Where are they at? What help do they need? What support do they need? They're not all there just to get a salary. They're there to do a good job of work. And sometimes other things get in the way, and sometimes other goals and other focuses are, uh, very important, but they may align very closely with what you're trying to do.

Speaker A: So I hear you saying that we can have high standards, but we also have to have a little bit of flexibility. We can't just be managing humans in a very strict box. That's yes or no. You made the widget or you didn't make the widget. There's our lives ebb and flow. And so to be able to have a little bit of leeway and a little bit of agility and flexibility, especially when you're managing a team, that leads to better performance.

Speaker B: It is. And the simple way to help people to understand that is they're managing human beings, they're not managing robots.

Speaker A: Yeah, I understand that. I think some people are like, yeah, but you signed up to do the job, so do the job or don't work here. I think there's that sentiment out there still, too.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I've seen that sentiment, too. And I think the important thing for the people that work for that leader is to say, is this appropriate for me in my career at this particular moment in time? Am I happy here? What is it that I can do to make my work as enjoyable as possible? And, um, if I'm not happy here, then I can make other choices.

Speaker A: Yeah. It also occurs to me that there is benefit to setting the standards from the beginning for what performance looks like on the team. Because if somebody starts to experience something in their lives and their performance starts to slip and you haven't already laid the groundwork for them on what that performance needs to look like. Then you have a very loose foundation when you're starting to criticize them or put them on a performance plan or something like that. It just one, I think from a risk management standpoint, it opens you up to lawsuits and those types of things. But I think it just, it, it is destabilizing or unsteady for everybody to then be able to critique that person and have a real empathetic conversation with them about the performance standards. Whereas if everybody knows the performance standards, then when something starts to slip, you can say, okay, hey, here's the standard, what's going on in your life? And then you can have the appropriate conversation of, okay, is this a short term thing and we just need to let the standard dip a little bit as you recover? Or hey, we need to figure out a way within this scenario that you're facing to continue to hit the standard. Because this is important and we do need to hit these standards. But we'll work with you to be flexible in how you hit the standard. It just, then it just gives you, to me, it gives you a steadier foundation to build on to find the right outcome. Whether that outcome is adjusting some way that person does the job or moving them out of the business in a way that feels human and okay to that other person.

Speaker B: Yes, I think within what you just described there, o', Brien, you need to have good, appropriate leadership. And good, appropriate leadership is not setting the boundaries so tight that people are constricted. It's explaining to people, this is what we're trying to do. This is what good looks like. These are the outcomes that we're working towards. I'm not going to measure you in terms of the inputs. That's up to you to determine. If you want to spend all day in bed every day, that's fine as long as the outputs are achieved. Now, if most of the outputs are challenging and they're rewarding for people will know that in order to deliver those outputs, they have to put in certain amounts of effort and energy. And if they are recognizing, not capable of hitting those targets, those outputs, this is where the psychological safety and trust comes in that the leader has created. They can then go along to the leader and say to the leader, look, I've got a little bit of a problem coming up over the next few weeks. Can you help me to work my way through this? And if that is the conversation that is occurring, that is good leadership, rather than the leader going along to the person and saying, you're falling behind, why are you falling behind? That conversation shouldn't be happening, but we know it does. And if it does happen from time to time, then it's a case of doing it with empathy, not sympathy, and helping the person to adjust appropriately. Now, by, uh, being empathetic doesn't mean to say that you never use anger. Uh, yes, anger may be appropriate at certain times. And this is where the emotional intelligence component comes in to say, look, you said you were going to do this. You didn't. For some reason, it is making me feel quite angry. What is it that we need to do in order to help you perform? So it's not overreacting, it's actually sharing the feeling. People will then understand, oh dear, I'm letting myself down, I'm letting the team down, I'm letting the leader down. And they will then work around that to improve their performance, one hopes, with good supportive leadership or not.

Speaker A: And then you help them find their next role.

Speaker B: Yes, and I think that's very important. O'. Brien. I think we've got to say to that if somebody is performing in a role that they're not happy with and it's dragging the team down, the leader down, it's recognizing that and saying, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you to find your next role, be it within the organization or outside of the organization. How's that person going to feel? They're going to feel well supported, helped, and they'll put in as good a job as they possibly can until they leave. And after they leave, they will say, do you know, I really enjoyed working for that leader. She or he was absolutely brilliant. They helped me onto the path to move my career onwards.

Speaker A: I do have one more question for you. This goes back to the concept of our business is working as it is. I don't know that we need to invest in all this woo, woo, touchy feely stuff. What are some of the signs that emotional intelligence might not be there? What are some of the things that might be the leading indicators that something is broken and that there's trouble on the horizon?

Speaker B: People are taking time off, sick, they're stressed, performance is under par, and they're, uh, finding it very difficult to stay focused on the job. You've also got teams of people which are continually changing because people are leaving the organization. People don't leave an organization because of jobs. They leave an organization because of managers and leaders. Yeah.

Speaker A: So it amazes me. My job is to go in and meet with different businesses and talk about their human capital strategy and how they're attracting, retaining talent to achieve their business goals. That is my job. And it is amazing how many organizations out there are just piecemeal together. It's. I think dysfunction is the standard, not the, the outlier. Uh, so it's amazing how successful an organization can get while still having a lot of problems under the hood. But so I think it's good to understand, oh, if we're starting to see some of these things, if we have chronically high turnover, if we are having our surveys come back with high levels of stress, like some of the things you just talked about, I think that's a good pause for people to go like, are we really treating people the right way? Or do we have emotional intelligence? Do our leaders have emotional intelligence? Do I have emotional intelligence to be managing this effectively? So people feel good here and want to come and stay here versus just coming here for the paycheck and for maybe the name on the door, that

Speaker B: kind of a thing.

Speaker A: And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I think we are done a little bit of an abrupt ending here, but there, uh, were some power issues with Robin's house earlier today where he lives, and we just lost connection with him. But, uh, we were about to wrap up the conversation anyway, and so I think that is probably as good a stopping spot as we were ever going to get. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I do think there's a lot here. This is a whole field that you can go into and learn about and unpack and it just never ends. You know, dealing with other human beings is messy. Heck, dealing with ourselves is pretty messy. I hope this is helpful for you. I hope you've enjoyed the conversation, I hope you've learned something and I hope it sparks you to go learn even more. This has been another episode of People Business and I wish you all the best with your business and the people the in it. Take care. M. Hey folks, one last thing before you go. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to hit subscribe so you can stay up to date with future guests. That's it. Thanks for coming. Go make the most of your business and the people in it.

Speaker B: Sam. Mhm.