Emotional Intelligence for Effective Leadership with Sarah Mueller

Unlock the secrets to leading with authenticity, courage, and joy with Sarah Mueller, a Harvard-trained expert in emotional intelligence (EQ) and success coaching. Sarah guides us through the four pillars of EQ: self-awareness, self-management, others' awareness, and relationship management, showing how mastering these can transform personal and professional effectiveness.

Learn how emotional intelligence can enhance communication and decision-making. Sarah highlights the importance of emotional balance through sleep, nutrition, exercise, and mindfulness. Discover strategies for understanding team motivations, fostering a valued and heard environment, and navigating change and conflicts smoothly.

Explore how these skills improve team cohesion and productivity, and the exceptional training programs offered by JoyDiscovered. Don't miss this enriching episode to lead more effectively and joyfully. 

Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Our guest today is Sarah Mueller. She's a Harvard-trained emotional intelligence expert, an international award-winning success coach and the author of the Balanced Life Blueprint. She works with service-driven organizations around the country to help leaders increase staff engagement, promote well-being and enhance the customer experience. In her earlier career, she developed service training programs for Fortune Global 500 executives and taught mindfulness to clients like the NFL and helped them combine behavioral health centers. She's committed to creating a role where people live and lead with authenticity, courage and joy. Please welcome Sarah Mueller.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Thank you. Thank you Welcome, I know.

Speaker 1: 1:23

It's so good to be here with you. It is awesome having you back. We had you on last season and the season before. We're in our third season of this podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Congratulations, that's awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:33

And I want to talk about a subject that I'm so interested in, because when I say emotional intelligence to people, I think I'm using it incorrectly. I want to know, and I want our listeners to really understand, what emotional intelligence is, because we hear emotional intelligence all the time, I'm reading about it, but yet I still I really can't just get a handle on what is emotional intelligence.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Well, I would love to answer that question, because that is my thing.

Speaker 1: 2:05

I know it's your thing, she's lighting up. She's lighting up.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Well, it's such a great tool for both our personal and our professional lives and having success and the way that I define emotional intelligence is the ability to influence and communicate with other people, and so obviously that's important whether we're at work, we're a leader or we're an employee, and also with any of the relationships that we have in our personal life, and so, if you want me to, I can go a little bit deeper into yeah, because I mean, here's how I was telling people.

Speaker 1: 2:38

So you've got an individual right that can't read the room, or an individual that feels something but has no idea, or they don't have the wherewithal to say, hey, I feel this way. Instead, they act out in another way. Is that lack of emotional intelligence?

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yes, is that lack of emotional intelligence? That is lack of emotional intelligence. So if we aren't recognizing our feelings and the data or the message that they have for us, or if we aren't able to understand the feelings and the drivers of other people, we aren't practicing emotional intelligence, and then oftentimes, our feelings cause us to react in a habitual way that doesn't always serve us, and then we end up having to spend time and energy cleaning up our mess. And so, really, emotional intelligence is better managing our emotions so that we can take intentional action toward whatever it is that we want to create.

Speaker 1: 3:36

So go into depth a little bit more. I want a little bit more of a deep understanding.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Okay, so the way that emotional intelligence can be understood is there are four pillars of it, and these pillars are linear, meaning we have to start at the first one in order to build up to the final pillar and the first pillar of EQ, which is EQ and EI are some of the abbreviations that people use for emotional intelligence. The first pillar is self-awareness, so it's about understanding your strengths, your values, your weaknesses, your patterns and your triggers, and having an accurate perception of yourself so that you view yourself the same way that others that you're relating with view you, and it's also about having an emotional vocabulary so that you can use your emotions as data.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Oh, I see that yes.

Speaker 2: 4:29

So we start there, because we have to first know and understand ourselves before we can then move into the second pillar of EQ, which is self-management, and so this is being able to pause before responding. This is about taking actions that are productive and in line with our aspirational self. This is where we create balance. This is where we have resilience when life hands us adversity, which is going to happen all the time.

Speaker 2: 4:51

Yeah, so it's practicing those habits that allow us to really show up and have high performance and maximize our potential. So we understand ourselves, so that we can better manage ourselves. And then we move into the third pillar of EQ, which is others' awareness, or sometimes called social awareness. It's simply understanding other people. Is that reading the room? That's reading the room, right? And another way, if we were to just simplify others' awareness, it would be empathy, being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes to understand what they might be excited about or concerned about what they might be fearing. Understanding what is motivating them so that you can help to influence them with whatever your outcome that you're desiring is for work or for home. And essentially, then we know and understand ourselves so we can manage ourselves. That helps us to better understand others.

Speaker 2: 5:40

And then we move into the fourth and final pillar of EQ, which is called relationship management, which is essentially leadership. Right? This is where you are being an influential leader. You're leading from inspiration versus leading from fear, sort of that old school 20th century style of leadership that was very authoritative. And you know, do what I said, because I said so, and just come to work and get your paycheck and be happy. Well, we know that and I'm sure you experience a lot with the businesses that you run that the workforce of today no longer wants that style of leadership. They really want to be involved in a mission or a purpose that's bigger than themselves. Very much so, yes, and so this final pillar is being able to draw that out of people, drawing the greatness out of others so that they are having high performance. Very much so the person that's working with you. So that all made it pretty clear for me to understand it.

Speaker 1: 6:42

I really do think I get it, but how can business leaders? Now, I understand the concept, but really, when it gets down to it, how can business leaders use this to increase their leadership? How can they use emotional intelligence?

Speaker 2: 6:59

to increase their leadership? How can they use emotional intelligence to increase their leadership effectiveness? Correct, so it would start with understanding. Let's start with the first pillar of self-awareness. We first of all want to find out if we have any blind spots, because if no one's giving us feedback, that even something like having a resting bitch face you know the RBF, right If we don't recognize that we have that, we could be in a meeting and someone on our team might see us doing that and they're going to think, oh, they don't like my idea and they're going to shut down, right? So to get some feedback from someone that you, you know you have an RBF or you know, hey, what you're, you're not allowing everyone to contribute in the meeting or when you say something this way, it makes others not want to be involved. So part of that self-awareness is getting feedback from other people so that we can see what our blind spots are and become a better leader. So it really just starts with being humble and asking for that feedback and creating a culture that really embraces that.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Yeah, and if you don't know, you don't know. You didn't tell your face that you're feeling happy, yeah, so other people are going to take it as you know. Stay away, or, like you said, she doesn't like my idea.

Speaker 2: 8:11

And so that's what I had to do. Even with my husband, I would stop and think he was not liking what I said, and now I have the emotional intelligence myself to say well, are you, are you not agreeing with me, or is this just the way that you're thinking about things and that's you know? That was, that was a way for us to communicate. And then the second piece that we can really do so that we are leading better is to take care of ourselves, because if we aren't practicing those elements that add to self-management and these are things that everyone knows they should be doing these are things like getting a good night's sleep, eating food that nourishes you, exercising regularly, practicing some form of meditation or mindfulness so that you're disconnecting from work when you're not enduring work hours. That allows us to be more present at work and make better choices, versus reacting habitually when something comes up where we might say something and then take it back. So practicing that allows us to just make better decisions in the moment.

Speaker 1: 9:08

And I would agree. If we're not aware, we just go on the regular cause and effect. I guess, oh, this happened before, so I did this and you just do it without being completely conscious, and it's probably not. It's not going to be a cookie cutter answer to every situation that you're in.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Yes, absolutely, and so what we know from neuroscience is that we are spending about 95% of the time in our what is called either the subconscious or the unconscious.

Speaker 2: 9:39

Essentially, our brain is making patterns or categorizing information so that it can conserve metabolic energy and be on the lookout for danger. So we don't have as much danger in our current state and age, but in our earliest ancestors we did, and so our brain has evolved from that point and the brain structure hasn't really changed much. So we need to, as you said, step into our conscious brain and choose a way to communicate with, to impact that's actually going to fit the situation that's right in front of us, the person that's right in front of us, and a lot of us communicate with our teams the same way that our parents may have communicated with us in childhood, or our early bosses may have communicated with us, even if we didn't like that boss. We pick up on their ways of communicating and trying to motivate, and so it's absolutely being conscious. Okay, is this how I want to speak and influence, or is there a better way, right?

Speaker 1: 10:36

Because I grew up in the age of, because I said so it's done this way and so if you're not careful, you can fall into that trap, like you said, of leading the way that you were led. And I look at my team and my management team and I'm like wow, and I've learned so much from them, because they are leading with emotional intelligence, they're leading with okay well, I know this person and they're not going to go for that. That's not going to resonate well for them and they are in touch.

Speaker 2: 11:18

That's great, and it really does take knowing every single person that reports to you and understanding what's the best way to communicate with them. What are they driven by? Because, yes, we all get a paycheck and we enjoy our paycheck, but what is it beyond the paycheck? What does that paycheck do for us? What is it by you, what is it by me? What do I want to use it for? And also, what kind of purpose do I get from work? Is it social interactions? Is it growing and learning? Is it, you know, I just want to get the paycheck so that I can go home and have a nice weekend. Everyone has a different motivation, so our job is to really understand that for each and every one of those that we lead, so that we can speak to the work and the projects that they're doing in a way that's going to inspire them, and it makes a big difference.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Absolutely, it certainly does. Yeah, all right, when we come back, we are going to talk about how emotional intelligence can help us navigate change and resolve conflict. Is your consulate overflowing, or maybe your kids' closets are as well, or maybe you just want to redecorate your house? If you're wondering what to do with all that stuff that you've accumulated, bring it all to True Fashionistas, or even ship it to them for free. They'll sell your unwanted items for you. Take away all the hassle by doing all the work, and all you have to do is sit back and collect your money. You can reach out to them online, come into the store or check them out on Facebook or Instagram, and that's truefashionistascom. All right, friends, we are back in studio with Sarah Mueller and we are talking about emotional intelligence and how you can harness that in your business and change. Change is inevitable, like taxes. Change, and taxes are always going to be something that's a constant.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Yes, yes absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:01

But how can we harness emotional intelligence to resolve workplace or even just personal conflict, and how can we use that to navigate change?

Speaker 2: 13:14

Yes. So let's speak a little bit about change and conflict. I'll address them a little differently. So one of the things that we Actually they can be addressed in the same way as I'm thinking about it One of the things that we want to think about when we're communicating and using emotional intelligence is what is the shared purpose that we have. So if you and I are going through change together or we have a conflict, my job as the leader is for me to understand well, what is it that Jennifer and I both care about, and let me wrap the conversation around that so that she can understand that I'm on her side, I'm on her team. It's her and I against the problem versus me against her, like a common ground, a common ground.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Okay.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Yeah, so we're looking for a shared purpose. Sometimes that shared purpose might be something like okay, we all want to get our quarterly bonus, so let's make sure we get these numbers met. Or we all want to get the store put together and cleaned up so that we can all leave at five o'clock today, and any kind of example like that where there's a shared purpose. And that's how we want to frame the communication, because when there's any kind of conflict or even with change, a lot of times the receiving end person is defensive.

Speaker 2: 14:20

They don't want to hear it. Our guard goes up, you hear I want to speak to you in my office and immediately we're blinded and we're not listening and there's no way that we can influence someone or communicate with them if their guard is up. So that's an approach of sort of lowering the guard and letting them know I'm on your side. If we look at change, one of the aspects that we can bring in of emotional intelligence is that of resilience, because whether we're changing a new kind of software or we're changing roles at our job or we have a major change like the hurricane, that we've experienced here, living in Florida.

Speaker 2: 14:56

We have to practice resilience, and so it's a lot of those things of let me take care of myself, the sleep, the meditation, the exercise, because I'm better able to handle the stress of change. And also let me remember when I've been successful changing in the past, when I've been successful overcoming adversity in the past. Our job as leader is to help our team recognize their resilience. And okay, so maybe they hadn't learned that same exact new software that you're using, but they've adopted new technology in the past, and so when we remind them of that, it helps to make it not seem so overwhelming and so hard to make a change.

Speaker 1: 15:34

It's funny that you say that, because we actually did have a software change or a process change a while back and I remember rolling it out and people going, oh no, we can't do that, and I mean all these things. And I think I came about it the wrong way. Right, I didn't do the emotional, intelligent way of doing it, I just said this is what we're doing. Here we go, blah, blah, blah the end.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Yeah, and a lot of that is really that third pillar of EQ. The other's awareness, it's okay. What might be the concerns of the staff rolling out this new process or this new technology? What do they really desire? So that shared purpose that we talked about. But let me address their concerns and let them know that I'm aware of them and you might not know all of them.

Speaker 1: 16:24

You could also ask what they're scared of, what they're resistant to, but that others awareness piece is really important for the change process, but bring that in that conversation so that it's not like well, this is what we're doing, there's no choice, this is it. We're doing this so that we can be more productive and be able to leave on time. Yes, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 16:47

And also you sort of get their buy-in, because we know that from human behavior that people support what they build, what they co-create. So if you could invite your team into saying hey, we have this new software, this new process. Let's have a brainstorm session to think about how best we can implement this, or what stages we should do this in, or how we should optimize this process. When we get our team involved, they're going to be more bought in and we're going to understand their concerns along the way. That absolutely makes sense. And then do you mind if I speak to the conflict piece of it as well.

Speaker 1: 17:17

The second part of that question Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 17:19

So I look at that a little bit different, being really what we have to understand with addressing conflict using emotional intelligence is that the data shows that most of the time, most managers are avoiding conflict, almost all the time I mean there's lots of different studies out there, but it seems that even executive level leaders are not comfortable having tough love conversations and addressing conflict with their team, and so what the data has found is that we are wasting 2.8 hours per week per employee by avoiding conflict or those tough love conversations that I talk about, because, instead of actually addressing what needs to be addressed, people are working more to make up for the fact of the person that's not doing what they're supposed to be doing, or the meeting after the meeting is happening, or someone's ruminating about it, and so really, the easiest or the most straightforward way to enhance our EQ and be more productive at work is just to have those conversations and address it, and there's a lot of different frameworks that can be taught to give us the scripts, because I think that we, as leaders, just expect our team to know how to do it, or we feel like, well gosh, I'm a leader, I should know how to address this with my team, but if we don't have a framework, it's hard to, and so I would definitely recommend reaching out and getting those frameworks, because it's like a script that kind of makes it a little bit easier as we're building our muscle.

Speaker 1: 18:44

You know, as I'm listening to you, this should be taught everywhere. I mean every company out there should learn how their management should learn, and I mean not even just management. Everybody needs to know how this works.

Speaker 2: 19:05

And I'm assuming you offer training in that. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 19:29

It's such an important piece of productivity and high performance in teams and so, yes, I work with a lot of leadership teams to help really their managers. Like are there books or what other ways can leadership teams start understanding and learning about emotional intelligence?

Speaker 2: 19:40

Yes, absolutely so. My website is joydiscoveredcom that's joydiscovered with an ed at the endcom, and I put out a newsletter every single week with different tips on how to increase our emotional intelligence, to have more success at both work and home. And there are a lot of great books out there as well. So Daniel Goleman was the person who really coined this term decades ago. He's got the book titled Emotional Intelligence. And then I think about people like Adam Grant and Brene Brown. A lot of their books, a lot of their podcasts address these types of things, and they're two of my favorite people who I go to for information on this subject. So I would start there Fabulous.

Speaker 1: 20:24

I've really thoroughly enjoyed. I want to know more. I want in-depth. I might need to take your training. If our listeners are interested in the training portion of your business or they just want to get in touch with you, how can they get a hold of you?

Speaker 2: 20:38

So my email is sarah at joydiscoveredcom, so it's S-A-R-A at joydiscoveredcom and I would love to be in touch.

Speaker 1: 20:48

Fabulous. Thank you so much for being on. I learned a lot.