Are You Emotionally Intelligent?
Emotional Intelligence is natural to all human beings. But, do you know what it is? Dr. Trevor Blattner explores emotional intelligence with me on his podcast The Top One Percent.
Trevor: You also are an expert in emotional intelligence so if you don’t mind I’d like to transition a little bit into talking some about that because I think our listeners would value your input on that a lot. You know, I’ve read Daniel Goldman’s book it’s been a little while back. And he wrote the original emotional intelligence book. He also wrote social intelligence. I think, sort of the science scientists perspective on it. So from a practical standpoint, are there other a few just little things people can be aware of that they can can harness as far as getting better as far as emotional intelligence goes on a daily basis?
Leslie: The first place to start is really how you feel physically. One of my favorite books from a long ago was how to How To Live 365 Days A Year. It was based on some research done in the ’40s and ’50s about the role that hormones play and stress management. As a medical professional yourself, you’ll you’ll know like hormones play a big role and how we perceive pain.
Trevor: Right.
Leslie: And so when people are stressed, we create stress hormones. So when we’re creating these stress hormones were actually shutting off the growth processes and ourselves. So we’re actually self imploding when we’re stressed out. And you can do it for a short amount of time. Because it really if it’s within our fight or flight function, but after a certain period of time, we’re not growing anymore. And we’re actually kind of like collapsing in on ourselves. So it’s to understand that we, we really, truly are these beings that are so intelligent in terms of our actual chemistry that we need to pay attention to how we feel first, physically. So if you have tightness of chest, or your digestions off, you can’t sleep, you get headaches, you can’t focus those are symptoms of an inability to relax, to be happy to degree then just take your time. So that’s the first place that I want people to recognize when when you’re going what is an emotional intelligence? Well, your body will tell you what is emotional intelligence.
So if you recognize those physical symptoms First, you’ll then come to understand that you naturally are an emotionally intelligent person. And you just need to become cognizant of the signs.
Trevor: Hmm. Wow, that’s really good. Yeah. So you’re in your physiology plays into it, then absolutely. Being aware of the way your body feels, and what it means when your body feels a certain way.
Leslie: Yeah, I love especially for men. They usually say I need to sleep on this because they they tap into their own intuition and they tap into their own higher senses when they just go and sleep on it because they’ll get a dream or they’ll process the information and they wake up and they go, Oh, I know what to do. So we’re all naturally emotionally intelligent. We just have to begin to develop the skills and techniques to do that. Which is what I teach professionals is because managing a business and owning a business is very, very stressful and a lot of people don’t understand the stress of entrepreneurs.
And people like yourself, especially working in a medical profession, you’re constantly dealing with people with pain, complaining, and you have to really have good skills to process all of that energy that’s coming through your, your space and in your body. So it is a very important skill. If you really want to free yourself from that type of energy, which is an unavoidable to learn emotional intelligence tools. Yeah, there’s a term called compassion fatigue and for your I’m sure you’re familiar with that.
Trevor: And that’s what I think when you’re describing it that way it is. Yeah, most people in the medical profession or most business leaders, business owners, I think are compassionate people they want the reason they started what they’re doing is because they want to help people you know, at the base level but at some point helping all these people and being responsible for all these people does take a toll.
if you don’t have to deal with it. You don’t have these emotional intelligence skills and I you know, I think that is an issue.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so right it compassion. Fatigue is the operative word, especially for the nurses that I’ve worked with and trained people in human resources.
Leslie: There’s a lot of conflict when we’re managing a lot of conflict. And that’s where people are coming to us. And so as a healer like yourself, it’s, it’s so important for you to have that time to, you know, healer, heal thyself. You know, that’s what we really aim to do is to help people to learn that this these are important skills, just like doing a your checking account and doing, you know, car maintenance, how you take care of yourself, emotionally and psychologically is very important for your performance.
Avoid Business Mistakes Using Emotional Intelligence
Trevor: Yeah, awesome. I really appreciate you helping us with that because I think that’s a big tool that people sort of forget about. Let’s if you don’t mind, let’s talk about some mistakes or failures that you have made along the way and building your business and leading people and those kinds of things. Maybe what you’ve learned from those things. I always think those are important things for the building.
Leslie: First here, yes, yes. Where should we start?
You know, the thing is, is that in my work, talking about failure is second nature. Because if somebody comes to see me and they haven’t made mistakes, then I’m the wrong person for them. But one of the mistakes I probably have made is hiring incompetent people and, and allowing them to work for much longer than necessary and that it becomes expensive as a business owner to hire somebody who’s incompetent, but it also becomes very frustrating because we find ourselves micromanaging. That’s that’s one of the big ones that I’ve made before I made that same mistake myself.
Trevor: Hey, it’s hard not to you know, because you’ll you like I said, most people are compassionate that lead a business and to hurt someone is hard You know, but so then you end up hurting yourself by hanging on to that that particular person. Is there anything along that line that you that you would advise people that are in that situation? Or that you that you teach people that maybe are in that situation when they ask you, what’s the type of person that they know needs to go?
Leslie: Well, when I work with businesses and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, especially small business owners, we’re so dynamic and we know how to do a lot of things. And when we we think about hiring someone, we’re like, Okay, well, we do everything so fast. Let me hire someone fast. The age old adage is really about higher slow fire fast. Take your time. And in terms of performance, it’s kind of like what Google says In God We Trust all others bring data. And, if you hire someone first and foremost make sure that they show you their track record of success and that you can verify that that data so important to help you really know whether this person is competent knows what they’re doing, because a lot of people talk about accomplishments, but they don’t know how to back it up with data. And as someone who’s written resumes professionally for a very, very, very long time, that data is everything and being able to quantify your experience and someone who is hiring to be able to demand that they couldn’t quantify that experience and show step by step in their performance. That’s a key skill to avoiding incompetent people and paying a very, very big price.
Trevor: Hmm, great advice. Yeah. quantified, quantified results. Yeah, big time. All right. How about somebody that is an up and coming leader or up and coming business owner? What are a few habits that you’ve adopted along the way in your own life 1 to 3 habits that you would advise them to implement into their life right off the bat to get where they want to go as quickly as possible.
Emotional Intelligence Through A Higher Intelligence
Leslie: The first thing that I would say is get a handle on your emotions, you know, Warren Buffett specifically said that you should approach things with with a logic rather than emotions. And then I feel like that’s kind of a misnomer. I think that we should look at things from a perspective of like, our higher our higher guidance. You know, it depends on what you believe in, if you believe in God, or if you believe in the universe, or spirit or whatever, flying spaghetti monster, you know, tap into that first and say, Well, how would How would God look at this?. You know, how would Jesus look at this or, you know, how would somebody that you admire. How would Warren Buffett or how it is so and so look at this situation and look at it from an outside point of view rather from that quick like reactive emotional point of view and and take that step that’s the first one.
The second point is that if you’re having strong emotions, don’t avoid them. A lot of people think being an effective leaders constantly being happy and feeling good and all this stuff. That’s not the whole point. There’s a lot of situations in which is appropriate to feel this doesn’t feel good or I feel stressed or (this) scares me but understanding the information that that emotion contains and being able to act on that wisely is a huge, huge skill it keeps us from being reactive and then it helps us to become responsive. So I really do think that if we don’t take control of our emotions then those emotions are going to take control of us and then then our business decisions are not done tactically and strategically then they’re done emotionally and irrationally and then we’ve got a problem. So that’s that’s really the big habit that I think people should train themselves into learning as a leader.
Trevor: Yeah, that’s all encompassing. I think that, in and of itself, if you can master that. That it’s always a lot of problems right there. Also like the fact that you pointed out and kind of the spiritual aspect of it whatever your belief system, I mean I think that having faith, you know, in some in some level does help a lot. And so I can go into that place initially to get your emotions under control. I think that’s really good advice. Thank you.
Leslie: Thank you. I appreciate that. A lot of us want to pretend like it’s like there’s, I think there was a book called Atheist In The Workplace or something like that.
Trevor: That sounds familiar.
Leslie: And, you know, we go into the business situation, we just kind of like completely bypass our, our faith. And it’s good that we live in a world where everyone has freedom and freedom from religion. I think it’s great, but it’s important to tap into what you truly believe in and who you are and go there because even me, I’ll go into business situations are going to meeting with my team and they’re like, okay, we need to make a decision on this and I want to like just jump and say something and then I’ll usually do you know what, let me just see what Spirit says and kind of figure out that kind of way and then there’s nothing weird or creepy about that. It’s just really going like Well, let’s see what my higher guidance has to say rather than let me just jump into it and be reactive.
Emotional Intelligence Through Learning
Trevor: Man, couldn’t agree more. For sure. I know you read a lot, a lot of books, I read a lot of books. Are there any particular books that you’ve read over the years that you feel like have made a major impact on you either personally or, or from a business standpoint? And would you mind to share those?
Leslie: Okay, so one that I really like for smaller business owners or people who are in creative, who have to kind of pitch creative ideas or consulting is Win Without Pitching. And that one’s written by Blair Enns. And this book is really great because it’s it’s short too and it’s about knowing your worth and being an expert in your field and perfecting your processes. So, that way, when somebody approaches you for a service or a product of yours, you know exactly how to enter that conversation without feeling like they’ve taken control from your process. And then you feel like you’re desperate for their business and it’s really about taking control. How you feel about yourself and your pitching process. So that one’s a really good one
I like Badass Your Brand by Pia Silva. I’ve had her on my podcast on the State of Happiness podcast. And I interviewed her. And her book really changed my business. And a lot of ways I went from having like 30 clients a month to only having three and making the same amount of money.
Trevor: Wow.
Thanks to her help. She just wrote about me in a Forbes article. So that was really cool. I really like Pia’s book Badass Your Brand. And then the last one I think is great is One Week Marketing Plan by Mark Satterfield. And this one is about using emails to really automate your communications processes and converting people and it really relies on direct response marketing and doing it in a way that is calculated. Because a lot of people think marketing and advertising is just throwing your money right into the wind. And people give you a lot of like fluff on how they’re going to market your business. And then like I said, In God We Trust, In All Others Bring Data. So Mark Satterfield really outlines a step by step process that for me really works. I’ve gotten a lot of sales just through email marketing alone.
Leslie: I’m gonna read that book. Because that I mean, email marketing is a fine art. Yeah. And people need to know how to use it, for sure. Yeah. All right. How would you define success? How would I define success? For me, it’s kind of knowing what makes you happy, really.
Emotional Intelligence For Success
Leslie: And everybody has their own definition of happiness, right? Everybody has their own relationship with money and that’s what I talk in The Money Formula about is really knowing what makes you happy, but you can’t be happy if you don’t have purpose and if you don’t understand why you were born on this Earth. If you’re kind of just looking for material fulfillment, and you’re not really here to serve and to maximize the gifts that you were born with and that you were given, you find people very unhappy because they’re not fulfilling that purpose. So for me, success is really doing me and feeling like I’m getting paid for it, and bringing that abundance to the world. That’s really what I feel is success. It’s a beautiful place to be when you can be the person you want to be, and feel good about it and make money doing that.
Trevor: Mm hmm. That’s a big that’s a life changing position to be in. A divine purpose and meaning and that before you before you can get to that stage, I think All right. Then how how about in your business or just personally what are what are a couple of things that you want to leave as your sort of legacy or your impact through what you what you’re teaching and and how you’re helping people?
Emotional Intelligence For The Future
Leslie: This dream, a vision some time ago, that 300 years in the future, after I’m dead and gone, that there will be no prisons. Because we will see that people who are stealing and who were hurting, and who are killing. This is emotional and mental imbalance. And by that point, I dream and I hope that we have the resources we have the healing institutions, we have the educational places to help empower people to find what I call perfect alignment and and remember who they are. I am a huge believer of Christ and God and that Christ consciousness and I feel like if we can help people align themselves to their Creator, whatever you want to call it, you can align yourself to your Creator and and realize that if you’re feeling unwell or if you’re mentally unbalanced, or if you feel compelled to steal or hurt something not right and we want to turn that imbalance until we healing opportunity. Rather than a penalty or a punishment. So that’s, that’s what I hope 300 years in the future that happens on Earth as a result of my work.
Trevor: Wow, that’s really good vision. Did that actually happen as a dream? Or is that? Is that something you’ve been working on as a dream? Or did you have a dream like that?
Leslie: Well, actually, I did this in hypnosis. I was with a hypnotherapist. And and I wanted to understand, you know, why was I here? And what am I doing with all the stuff that I’m doing? Because some days you know, you you know how you are your your healer, and you’re in your practice and you helping people and you just get so caught up in the business to forget to be about your business. And so I was like, What am I doing all this for? So I wanted to kind of reconnect with that. And in that in that vision, I saw that that that’s what I was working for. It’s kind of like some people before slavery was completely outlawed. You know, there were so many people who work towards that, but never got to live to see it. And I hope that we don’t have to have a penal system because we have a healing system.
Trevor: I love that that’s that’s a worthwhile type of an impact that you’re that you’re making on the world.
Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash