Leadership Series: Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace (TRN4-V25)

Transcript: Leadership Series: Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

[White words on a purple background read "Webcast Webdiffusion" To their left is a logo that resembles an open book with a maple leaf in the centre of it.

A chyron reads France (pronounced "Fronce") Hutchison. Canada School of Public Service. Ecole de la fonction publique du Canada.

France is a young adult woman with shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair. She wears a cream-coloured blazer over a blue flowered blouse. She wears a headset.]

France Hutchison: Welcome everyone. My name is France Hutchison. I am a Coach and Learning Specialist in the Transferable Skills Faculty of Canada School of Public Service. I will be your session moderator this afternoon. Thank you for being with us. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that the land on which many of us are viewing this event is unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin people. I recognize that some of our participants are joining from other parts of the country, and you may be on a different indigenous territory. I encourage you to take a moment to think about the territory that you occupy. Thank you. I would like to share some administrative details to support your experience during this event. To optimize your viewing experience, we recommend that you disconnect from your VPN and use a personal device to watch the session when possible. Please note that we have simultaneous translation or interpretation and card services available to you for this event. Please refer to the reminder email you received from the school on how to access these features. Throughout the event, we will be using a dynamic tool called Wooclap. For participation and getting your questions, please feel free to use your Wooclap and you'll receive more instructions as we are moving into the presentation. You may want to have another screen or device handy so you can use your Wooclap. We will offer you the access code shortly. Don't worry. Please feel free to use the official language of your choice, specifically when asking your questions or interacting with us. The event is part of the Leadership series, which features learning events for leaders at all levels across the Public Service of Canada. It is also part of the Coaching Summit, our Coaching Summit 2021. Now in today's session, we will tap into concrete, evidence-based models of emotional intelligence competency levels and explain how coaching can support you and your team in developing these competencies. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce you to David Cory, president and founder of the Emotional Intelligence Training Company and Certified Master Trainer in Emotional Intelligence, a well-known topic in the public service, specifically in the Coaching Summit. So David has worked with leaders and progressive public and private sector organizations, post-secondary institutions and governments around the world. And I must say that I've met David a long time ago at the Canada School of Public Service. Well, you offered us an amazing training on emotional intelligence, so it's my pleasure to welcome you, David. And back to you, David.

[Slide: Text on a white background. Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace. Canada School of Public Service. Ecole de la fonction publique du Canada. May 21, 2021 with David Cory, B.Ed., M.A., C.P.C.C. The Emotional Intelligence Training Company Inc. Know. Engage. Lead.

David is a silver-haired, middle-aged man with square-rimmed glasses. He wears a navy-blue blazer over a light-blue shirt. Later, a chyron reads "David Cory, Emotional Intelligence Training Company".]

David Cory: Thank you so much, France. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today and to dive into this fascinating topic of emotional intelligence. When I first heard that as the title of a breakout session at a conference, I had to sign up for that. I had to go and hear what being intelligent about emotions might be all about, and that completely changed my career. I was teaching leadership courses, and when I heard about what emotional intelligence was, I thought, "Wow," what it seemed to me was like a set of foundational skills upon which everything else is built for us human beings. And the more I thought about it, the more I got into it, and the more I researched it, the more I wanted to make sure that everybody knew about emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence skills. So we're here in part because we human beings are evolving. We're evolving away from a more hierarchical kind of arrangement where you may have experienced in your career more of an autocratic or authoritarian leadership style where people told you what to do. And you need to tell people what to do in an emergency situation or maybe on the battlefield, but not in everyday interactions. We human beings don't really like to be told what to do. It's called the terrible twos for a reason. That's the age that we learn that we don't like to be told what to do, and so we would much rather be consulted. We would much rather be engaged in conversation and dialogue. And in order to switch from a hierarchical leadership arrangement to a more collaborative or participative leadership arrangement, that requires different skills of all of us. And so we're going to look at what those skills are today and understand more about what we mean when we talk about being intelligent about emotions. So as France mentioned, we've got this cool new tool called Wooclap, and—well, new to me—it may not be new to you, but it's new to me. And so, France is going to remind you of the instructions for using Wooclap. We're going to get you set up on it, and then I'm going to introduce you to an exercise which really makes this concept of emotional intelligence come alive. So I'm going to turn it over to you now, France, to remind people of the instructions for how to get set up using Wooclap.

[Slide: Text on a white background. Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace. Canada School of Public Service. Ecole de la fonction publique du Canada. May 21, 2021 with David Cory, B.Ed., M.A., C.P.C.C. The Emotional Intelligence Training Company Inc. Know. Engage. Lead.

Slide: Words on a blue background and a large QR code. The title reads "How to participate?" Smaller text reads "1) Connect to www.wooclap.com/INTELLIGENCE21. 2) You can participate."]

France Hutchison: Yes, so I think we have a slide on that. So I don't know if we can switch—oh, exactly. So you see on the screen there are either two ways to do this. You either take a picture with your phone of that square and it will lead you directly to the questions and even more the presentation of David's. And so you don't need to have a code specifically, if you're using this image, it will bring you directly there. If you decide, although, to use your computer, you need to type in the information that is right beside the number 1, connect to, and that's the link: wooclap.com/ and then you have the word "Intelligence" and the number 21, and this will lead you directly to our activities and even a section for asking your questions. Because, yes, there will be a segment after David's presentation where you'll be asked to ask questions.

[Slide: Words on a white background. The title reads "Word Cloud." The text underneath reads "What are the qualities of the best leader?" Under it is a photo of someone climbing the side of a rounded rocky ledge. A person on the ledge has a hold of their hand.]

David Cory: Great, thanks France. OK, so shall we give this a try? Hopefully, everybody's had a chance to take a picture of the QR code and get set up and so. So what we're going to do is we're going to create a word cloud together. And I don't know how many people are on the call, but you know, there is a huge response to it through signing up for and registering for this session. So I'm really hoping that we get a good group of people and we're going to talk about the qualities of the best leader you ever had in your career. I want you to go back or maybe you've got that best leader right now, but just think about what that best leader is like.

[The word EMPATHY appears in block letters on a blue background. The letters flicker between different colours. Around it, other words appear and disappear in smaller text.]

And I want you to type in some words or phrases that really describe the qualities of that best leader. And I see you're doing it now. That's awesome. That's fantastic. This is as cool as it looked. I've not used it before, so I was so, so happy and encouraged that the Canada School was able to introduce me to this tool. OK, so—

France Hutchison: I think, David, we'll need a bit of time because there's so many participants, like you said. There were more than 4,000 people registered for your event.

David Cory: Wow!

France Hutchison: So it might just bring a lot of activity in that Wooclap. So give it a chance for words to just pop in, and at one point it will probably settle in and we'll be able to read what's happening.

David Cory: Fantastic. I'm just going to read some of the words because I just love what's happening here.

[An excel spreadsheet.]

So, of course, we've got empathy, we've got trust, we've got compassionate, we've got integrity, we've got inspiration and transparency, and resourceful and listening skills and respect and humility. And this is fantastic. And why do we ask about leaders? Is it always a leadership course? Is it always about developing leadership? And we kind of think that it is, but that may be different than what your traditional idea or notion of leadership is. We believe that everybody leads their own life first and foremost. So we are all leaders of our own lives. And as you know, some people lead their lives really well and some people struggle to lead the kind of life that they want to lead. And so this is really what we're talking about. So why do we ask people about the best leaders they ever had? The reason is that everybody's had a leader. Everybody that's been in a workplace has had a leader or a significant person in their life who has influenced them. And this is why we do this, to really have you know that you've all experienced emotional intelligence, sometimes referred to as EQ. Although EQ, emotional quotient, is really a measure of emotional intelligence, we sometimes use those terms interchangeably. So, OK, are we—we must be close to being done, this exercise.

France Hutchison: No, it keeps growing.

David Cory: It keeps morphing and growing and changing, which is so cool and we're going to have some way of capturing this, correct? We'll be able to take a closer look at this at some later...

France Hutchison: Yes.

[Eventually the word cloud stops moving. It displays many words, including Patience. Compassionate. Cool. Trust. Authenticity. Understanding. Communication. Accountable. Fair. Generous. Respect. Good Communication. Listener. Motivating. Fair. Authentic.]

David Cory: Approachable, led by example. Ah, this is just so fantastic. I just love this. And then, of course, what you can think about is you can think about the impact on you. When we did our workshops, live and in-person pre-COVID, we would get people in a room, put flip charts up around the wall, get them working in small groups and getting them asking and then talking about what was the impact on you of these things. So what was the impact on someone—what is the impact on you as an employee of your leader being approachable? Well, it feels like—you feel supported, right? You feel like you can go and get what you need and you feel supported in your work. Or what was the impact of someone who was a good listener? It was like you mattered. You had value to that person and they valued you. And empathy; paying attention to what's going on for you as a human being and knowing that you could be stressed or you could be concerned about something and then being there for you in a more human kind of way. And many of the words that you used to describe these best leaders you ever had are really the kinds of things that we admire in people, the kinds of things that we aspire to do and the kinds of things that we aspire to be. But that the difficult question becomes, how do we actually get there? Now, if we looked at the worst leaders you ever had—can we do that? Can we do the same word cloud activity for the worst leaders that people ever had?

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title reads: "Word Cloud." The text underneath reads: "What are the qualities of the worst leader?"
The Wooclap screen appears. It's navy blue with a small window in the centre that reads "Let's Vote!" A title at the top reads "What are the qualities of the worst leader?"]

These are the things that—and I want you to think about your actual experience now. And please don't type in any names; we don't want to embarrass the guilty.

[Different coloured words once again fly around the screen, popping in and out.]

In any case—oh, yeah. You know it. You know it. There's bad listener, egotistical, arrogant, dismissive, ego, absolutely selfish. All these things. Micromanagement—you know micromanagement is one of the top errors that leaders make around the world? I think they think they're doing us a favour, right? Sort of hanging over our shoulder and watching everything we do, but they really don't realize the impact on us is to really shut down our creativity and cause us to be more worried and concerned about the work we do, et cetera. Yeah. So micromanaging appears more than once—egocentric, egotistical, close-minded, bullying. Now, bullying is a pretty extreme kind of thing and, of course, is kind of in a class all on its own. And aggressive, uses people, authoritarian—yeah, authoritarian when really we're moving away from authoritarian everywhere—and snob—that's a good one—untrustful, closed-minded, coward. Yeah. You absolutely get the idea of the exercise, and it's fantastic to just get it out there and see that you're not the only one who's had these kinds of people—inflexible, absent, people-pleaser, a narcissist. Absolutely. These are all the kinds of words that people use to describe the worst leader they ever had. So it's really interesting to think, how did these people get to get to be the way that they are? And of course, when we think about our socialization, we think about what we learned, what we systematically learned, what you systematically learned were your technical skills, what you systematically learned in our public school systems was mostly reading, writing and arithmetic. There was not, I would guess, a class for you in the primary grades which was all about how to understand your own emotions. My guess is that that probably did not happen.

France Hutchison: David?

David Cory: Yes?

France Hutchison: I just must stop you because if some people don't see the screen, they probably need to just refresh the screen. So if they don't see what we see now or what we're talking about, just refresh your screen, please. Thank you.

David Cory: Great. Thanks, France. So we do this exercise to let you know once again that you have experienced healthy emotional intelligence, people who are using their emotions in an intelligent way and the emotions of others, or people who don't—who don't realize the importance of emotions, don't understand their impact on others, don't understand their own emotions. And so they come across as not being guided by their own emotions and what their values might be. So, OK, this is fantastic and it's still going, actually. But we should wrap it up in the interest of time and move on and talk about, "OK, so what was that all about?"

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The slide is titled "Best Leader/Worst Leader". It has the same photo of the climbers. A small chart with two columns is titled "Best or Worst". The left column is titled "Qualities" and the right is titled "Impact". There are two examples. The one on the left reads "open door policy". The one on the right reads "made me feel supported in my work".]

Well, when we do this exercise, once again, possibly post-COVID we'll be in classrooms again and we'll have pieces of flip chart paper up around the room and we'll be creating these kinds of grids. But when we create them, we look at the quality and then we look immediately at the impact. And you can imagine what those lists look like now that you've seen all those words used and the things that you know about some of the best leaders and worst leaders that you ever had, the best leaders who demonstrate those wonderful things that you wrote into the word cloud, the impact on you is better work, ultimately. And yes, you felt valued. You felt like your leader maybe treated you as a human being. You felt like they included you. They valued you. They challenged you. They believed in you, maybe more than you believed in yourself at times—many of these kinds of things. And of course, the impact is growth and development and higher discretionary effort and better work product and more productivity, higher morale, higher engagement, higher retention. These are the leaders you want to stay with and work for the rest of your career. And then you look at the worst leaders and you look at the havoc that they wreak on workplaces. They drive morale down. They drive disengagement. They cause people to feel devalued, to feel disorganized, to feel directionless, to feel chaotic at times. And imagine the work product is driven down and people feel like quitting and leaving. And there are limited choices, so you start coming in later and leaving early and doing all kinds of things to try to take back your power because you feel powerless. And when we think about how this is or why this is, we think about a very simple idea that you all know about, and that is how people get promoted into positions of management where they have the accountability and the power and authority over the work that you do, and it's by mostly by technical skills. It could be that they've been promoted by virtue of their seniority; that happens. And it could also be that they are promoted into a position of management by virtue of their relationship with a decision maker, and in the case of family relations, that's nepotism, of course, as you all know. OK. So the fact that you had one of these best leaders, how did they get to be a best leader? Well, what we know is that they probably didn't take a course on how to be supportive and honest and have integrity and all these things that you wrote into the word cloud—where did they learn them? And of course, they probably learned them because they had significant others in their life when they were growing up that role modelled and demonstrated these kinds of ways of being in the world. And what about the worst leaders? Why did the worst leaders do such horrible things? Are they not aware that they're—imagine this. Imagine someone on their way to work in the morning thinking, "How can I drive productivity down today? How can I cause people to feel devalued? How can I cause people to feel terrible about themselves? How can I cause people to be looking online for another job when they're supposed to be working?" I don't think anybody thinks like that. It's not in their best interests. So what I think is that people get promoted, once again, based on their technical skills and then they're in survival mode. They may have never supervised people before or been accountable for the performance of others before. And so what they do is they do maybe what was done to them, and that is they may be forceful or aggressive about demanding a high level of work. They may be autocratic and authoritarian, and they may not think to be transparent or include you in decisions, et cetera. And so they drive behaviour, they drive work performance down without that realization. They caused people to quit and leave without that realization of their impact on others. OK, so what are we going to do about this? How are we going to actually, you know, get involved in changing this horrible situation which affects organizations globally? Where's the intervention? And part of it comes with the understanding of the image on the next slide.

[Slide: A side view transparent 3D image of a head. The brain is highlighted in different colours- pink, yellow, purple, green, and blue. The pink region, which is at the front of the brain, has an arrow pointing to it labelled "logic". Text beside it reads "'Intelligent' part of the brain." The blue region, which is at the base of the skull near the brain stem, has an arrow pointing to it that reads "Emotion". Text beside it reads "'Emotional' part of the brain."]

So if we look at the next slide, what we see there is this attempt at trying to understand what these complex wonderful brains of ours actually do. And what we know after three decades of the use of the functional magnetic resonance imaging process of looking at brains and understanding brains is we know so much more now about how they actually operate. And we know that there's the part of the brain that is responsible for intelligence; that's the part of the brain that is responsible for applying logic and reason. And then we know that there's a part of the brain that is responsible for emotion, and those two parts of the brain always work together. So our brains are constantly scanning, constantly taking in perceptions of our environment, of what's going on around us and giving us data. So it's whether you understand that data, whether you are able to process that data and know how that data can inform you and help you to make better decisions, to see yourself in a positive light, to connect well with others, to communicate clearly and directly—whether you have the skills to be able to use that data in that way is another question. And we don't systematically teach that in our schools, but my prediction is that in the future, we will. In fact, right now, the busiest group of people studying this concept is the Yale Centre for the Study of Emotional Intelligence, where 47 PhDs, at last count, are all working on primary education—on educating people in the primary, the smallest people in our societies, how to deal with their emotions, how to understand their emotions, how to recognize emotions, understand what they're connected to and what about their environment is causing that emotional response in them. What are emotions? Emotions are simply biochemical reactions in response to stimuli. And of course, those biochemical reactions cause sensations in us, and we refer to those sensations as feelings. It's a little bit about the difference between the word emotions, which is about the concept, and we use the word emotion conceptually, and the word feeling, which is about the sensation. What does that actually feel like? And of course, there are utilitarian purposes for feelings and emotions. These emotions kept us alive when we were primitive human beings. Fear caused us to, you know, not step over that cliff or confront that beast or whatever we were doing back in our primitive times. But really, one of my missions in life is to move away from the idea of emotional intelligence as a thing to emotional intelligence as the thing. Now that's kind of a provocative statement. How can I possibly say that emotional intelligence is it? Well, I believe that emotional intelligence is life. I believe that emotions are life. I believe that we human beings swim in a sea of emotions, whether we are aware of it, whether we acknowledge it or not. And I believe that a session like this is a little bit like fish learning about water. This happens without our conscious attention, these emotional responses that we have to life. And if we are unskilled, we end up doing things that signal a lack of emotional intelligence and you're all familiar with these two. I've created these situations myself. But symptoms of a lack of emotional intelligence skills are mistrust, misunderstanding, dysfunctional relationships, unclear communication, lack of communication—you know when you really want something from your friend and you hope they get all the clues and all the hints that you keep dropping, but they don't seem to get it, that's a lack of emotional intelligence, the lack of understanding that you need to come out and say what it is that you need and want. And we do that all the time. At the extreme ends of a lack of emotional intelligence, and it absolutely breaks my heart, is what's been happening in the Middle East just up until this most recent cease-fire. That's a lack of ability to be able to have dialogue, to have forgiveness. There was someone who was saying that the Middle East needs a Nelson Mandela. And one of the most incredible things Nelson Mandela did was to forgive. And so, you know, we need to get to that place with respect to our emotional intelligence skills because violence is probably the extreme in terms of evidence of lack of emotional intelligence skills. We have no other way to relate with each other but to use violence. That's a pretty low bar. OK. You know, you've probably heard there's multiple intelligences and maybe there are better, but from my 23 years of experience of working with leaders and organizations all over the world, I counted it up the other day: 18 government departments that we've worked with over the years. And my conclusion is that there's one intelligence and it happens to be emotional. Jill Bolte Taylor said this beautifully in her really dramatic TED Talk where she, as a brain anatomist, talks about her experience of having a stroke. She knew exactly which parts of her brain were shutting down and described what that experience was like. And she said, "Based on all the neuroscience data that we have now, we've changed our minds in terms of what we think about us human beings." She said,"We used to think before fMRI that we were thinking creatures who felt; now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are feeling creatures who think." She was talking about the importance of that emotional part of our brain, how critical and important it is and how we've kind of learned in our societies and through our socialization to disregard the data that comes from our emotions. But just imagine how much better a world it would be to have more of those best leaders. You all know what makes those best leaders. How do we train them? How do we develop them? How do we help them to be those best leaders? And that's where our next slide comes in. So, we need a model. We need a model of what do we do to be emotionally intelligent. So if we look at the next slide, you see a wheel model or a circle—if we could have the next slide, please.

[Slide: A multi-coloured circle is split into five sections, with a blue circle in the centre that reads "Emotional Intelligence". The outside of the red section reads "Emotional and Social Function", under it reads "Self-Perception". Smaller text underneath that reads "Self-Regard, Self- Actualization, Emotional Self-Awareness."

The outside of the blue section reads "Performance" and "Well-Being", under it reads "Stress Management". Smaller text underneath that reads "Flexibility, Stress Tolerance, and Optimism."

The outside of the green section reads "Emotional and Social Functioning" and "Well-Being", the section reads "Decision Making". Smaller text reads "Problem Solving, Reality Testing, and Impulse Control."

The outside of the yellow section reads "Emotional and Social Functioning" and "Well-Being", the section reads "Interpersonal". Smaller text reads "Interpersonal Relationships, Empathy, and Social Responsibility."

The outside of the brown section reads "Performance" and "Well-Being", the section reads "Self-Expression". Smaller text reads "Emotional Expression, Assertiveness, Independence."

Black text to the side of the circle reads "EQ-I 2.0. Model of Emotional Intelligence. *15 measurable EQ Competencies"

Text at the bottom of the slide reads "Copyright 2011 Multi-Health Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Based on the original BarOn EQ-I authored by Reuven Bar-On. Copyright 1997"]

We'll see that at the centre of the model is the concept of emotional intelligence, which really is the acknowledgement that these wonderful brains of ours process emotions and emotional information in addition to all the other things that they do. By the way, whenever I mention this, I'm thinking of all those incredibly smart people who are working in the field of artificial intelligence. A big thing in artificial intelligence research right now is to develop a computer that can have an emotional response, and they can't do it. They can't do it because they don't have the computing power, which is probably found—the answer is probably found in quantum computing. However, what they can do and what artificial intelligence is working on right now is amazing and fascinating, and this idea of artificial emotional intelligence is kind of like the holy grail. People are rallying around in companies in the northeast, in New England and in Silicon Valley as well. So, back to this model. All right. So at the centre of the model, we've got this concept or this idea that it's critical and important to combine emotions and intelligence into being intelligent in the world. By the way, David Wechsler defined intelligence in 1940 as the capacity for purposive behaviour. So just think about that for a moment—the capacity for purposive behaviour—so basically acting on purpose. And really, the other thing he said that you cannot disregard the ability of the brain to process emotions in that. So he was paving the way, opening the door for this concept of emotional intelligence, which as some of you may know, there are many theories. There are many approaches, many definitions of emotional intelligence throughout the entire 20th century, starting in the '20s and probably earlier than that. But in the '20s, I think it was Edward Thorndyke, a psychologist who coined the term social intelligence. So that was his kind of gift to the psychological world, and people have been working on this concept ever since that time. And then Daniel Goleman made the concept famous in his book in 1995, and that's been translated into many languages and gone around the world. And then people have been looking for a great model of what to do to be emotionally intelligent, and that was created by Reuven Bar-On in the early 1980s. His model is the basis for an assessment tool called the Emotional Quotient Inventory, which was first published in 1997. And that's when I met the publisher of the tool, and we've partnered. They create these wonderful tools and we've been providing the services to organizations to help people develop their EQ since 1998. So we've got this wonderful model. And in it, you can see the five categories. And the five categories are, "How do you perceive yourself? How do you express yourself? How do you connect interpersonally with others? How do you combine emotions and logic in decision-making? And how do you manage stress?" Because stress is so incredibly important and impactful, and affects workplaces all over the world. We need to develop our skills to manage stress. So let's take a bit of a deeper dive into each of these areas and look at what we really mean by this.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Self-Perception". The text reads "The ability to know yourself and your emotions, accept yourself the way you are and have self-confidence. Evidence: You do what you love, you are confident and live 'on-purpose'." Tip: Choose to focus on your strengths. Beside it is an image of a boy in a blue collared shirt smiling broadly and giving two thumbs up.]

So if we go to the next slide, you'll see this little guy and I like this little guy because it's interesting to imagine what you think that his parents—by the way, I completely forgot to tell you that if you have questions, and I hope you do, that you send those in and you can do that through the Wooclap app, is that correct, France?

France Hutchison: Yes. Yes, and just don't forget the code. It's Intelligence21. Or you can still take that picture if we can see it on the screen.

David Cory: Great.

France Hutchison: I'm not sure if it's available on the screen. Right now, there are questions arriving, but not there yet, David.

David Cory: OK. OK, great.

France Hutchison: Let's just go back to the image again—so people if they lost the link, I'd like to have maybe just the Wooclap.

[Words on a blue background and a large QR code. Words read "How to participate? 1) Connect to www.wooclap.com/INTELLIGENCE21. 2) You can participate."]

David Cory: Oh, OK. Great.

France Hutchison: I'm making our group and team work. There's that QR code that we need on the screen.

David Cory: Beautiful.

France Hutchison: Hopefully we can see it. Yay! There we go.

David Cory: Excellent.

France Hutchison: We'll have it on the screen. Just give us a few seconds, David. Here you go. So if you want to ask your questions to David, take a picture of that QR code with your phone or connect to the wooclap.com/ and the code is Intelligence21. Thank you, David.

David Cory: Excellent. Thank you. You know, we were just zipping past that word cloud and at the centre of the worst leader word cloud, I saw the word selfish. And wow, does that ever encapsulate a lot, right? When people are in it for themselves, you know it. And it speaks a bit about the interesting balance that we've got here in the model, which is self and others. And so we're all trying to strike the optimal balance between self and our needs and our desires and our wants and our dreams, and others and their wants, needs, desires, dreams. And how do we make that? How do we get the right balance for us? And of course, that is part of being intelligent about emotions. One aspect of the model is self-perception. I think about this little guy, and he reminds me that we all—well, I mean, certainly not all of us, but just imagine this little guy. Let's take him and imagine what his parents say to him. His parents might say, "You are awesome. You can do anything you want. You can be anything you want. You can do anything. The world is your oyster," kind of idea for this little guy. And he gets that in all of his early years prior to going out into the world and maybe he goes to daycare, maybe he goes to kindergarten or something like that where there are other kids, and he walks in and he's looking like this, dressed like this, and other kids are mean. And other kids might say something to him like, "Dude, why do you have that shirt done up all the way to the top? We don't dress like that, like open up that collar. And why do you have those long sleeves anyway? You should be wearing T-shirts like we have. And why is your hair so short? What's with the goofy grin?" And kids say what they think, and there's no filter and they can be mean. So he goes home at the end of the day and he's got this different set of messages about who he is in the world and what his value is. Now he's got to try to make sense of that. So he's trying to make sense between what his peers are telling him—and peers are pretty important in our world—and what his parents say to him. And he's got to somehow decide which of those messages he's going to accept and which ones he's going to allow to inform his self-perception and which ones he's not. And that is a tall order in the absence of assistance in processing that information. And just imagine what we could do and how we could impact—I'm not an early childhood educator. I mean, that's not my field. And I know that it's part of what early educators try to do to help children with their growing self-perception. So we work with adults and a lot of what we do as remedial. So how do you help someone who doesn't have a very healthy self-perception? Well, what you do is you look at the beliefs that people have about themselves and you identify those beliefs and you try to determine where did those beliefs come from. And what is the current evidence? What is a better belief? What is a belief that could actually serve you better at this time? You know, people ask me all the time, what is the best way to improve your emotional intelligence skills? And the answer is coaching. It's no accident that I was invited this week during International Coaching Week to talk about emotional intelligence because coaching is the answer. So having a regular meeting with someone with whom you are going to talk about some of these issues and some of these challenges is critical and important in terms of changing some of those beliefs about yourself, to adopting more beliefs that serve you better in the world. And how do we ultimately come to accept ourself? I see this idea and think of Brené Brown and the wonderful work that she's done in the world. She has written that wonderful book, The Gifts of Imperfection. Wow, the gift of imperfection? Really—it really grabs you. You mean there are gifts in my imperfections? When we come to accept that perfection is not a reasonable goal for us human beings, and to understand that there are things that we're good at and there are things that we're not good at. It's like the day my spouse came to me and said, "You are a pretty good trainer, but you're a terrible accountant. And if you don't hire an accountant, this business is not going to succeed." When I had to acknowledge that perhaps that was a good idea. So we acknowledge that there are things that we're not good at and we have to find a way to accept ourself the way we are. Ultimately, this is about self-confidence, and you know people who come across with great self-confidence and you know people who struggle. The people who struggle with their confidence—it's harder to really trust them if they're in a position of leadership. Remember, leadership is my specialty area. That's what we focus on. But again, we think that everybody is a leader because everybody leads their own life. So we're talking about these as being important for you, no matter where you are in the organization, and to be confident, to feel that you are confident and competent enough to do what you want, to be on purpose. That's intelligent—to do what you love. Part of self-perception is—you may have seen it in the model—self-actualization. You may have learned about that from Maslow. Maslow had many great things to say, one of which is that this idea of fulfillment is available to you. Of course, it's at the top of the hierarchy of needs, so if you're struggling for food and shelter, fulfillment is not on your list. You have to get those things first. So it is about following the hierarchy of needs, getting to self-actualization, getting that sense of fulfillment and then later on in the model, I'm going to come back to this idea because Maslow didn't stop there. He said, "It's not really all about you ultimately." So I'm going to talk about that momentarily. Do what you love, because the world needs more people who do what they love, who are fulfilled and self-actualized and reach their potential. Of course, we can have a life that we love by incorporating work aspects or if that option is not available at work, and if we can't make that something that we love and make that fulfilling, then we find fulfillment outside of work. But ultimately, it is about finding that fulfillment, being involved in what is fulfilling for us. A tip for you here. One tip. A quick presentation. Quick tips. Focus on your strengths. Yeah, there are things you don't do well. Don't worry about those. Forget about those. Focus on what you do well. What is that? And do more of that and feel good about that and have some pride that you do that thing well. Let's go to our next slide.

[Slide: A painting of an iceberg, viewed from the side. Two small peaks of the iceberg poke out of the water, while a vastly larger portion of the iceberg (at least 80% of it) is below the waterline. The portion below the water is blue and gleaming.]

France Hutchison: David?

David Cory: Yes, France?

France Hutchison: Can I just throw in a question here?

David Cory: Sure, absolutely. Yes, yes.

[David sips from a travel mug.]

France Hutchison: I saw one question and it links also with your strength and do the things that you love. There is a question about hiring leaders and how we can measure maybe their emotional intelligence as part of a hiring process. So is there a way we can choose the right people in the right position? And if you're not in the right position, how do you kind of use EI to reorient yourself or hire the right people?

David Cory: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question, France. And when I first started years ago, I got invited in to speak to a lot of federal hiring groups and staffing groups. People loved what they heard about the EQI, but nobody wanted to defend it in the case of an appeal. And I get that. Really, using a psychometric like the EQI does have some challenges in using it for hiring. But I encourage people to think about using it or even the model using it as in an exploratory way versus a predictive way. Because the best use of the EQI is in development, but it can be used in recruiting and screening and again, in an exploratory way. I'm happy to speak with anybody offline about the details of how to do that in a way that is ethical and appropriate. I kept getting asked, and so I came up with 15 questions, one for each of the 15 skills of this model to use in an interview, and it turns out it's our most popular blog post of all blog posts that we've done over the years. Because people are looking for tools, they're looking for ways of how can we be better at trying to hire more emotionally intelligent people into our positions, particularly of leadership. And there are ways; it's more of an understanding of this model, understanding of how to create great questions. And there's more, but we don't really have time to go into it in detail.

France Hutchison: Yes. I know you need to move into the other categories of the EI. Is there a way we can improve our EI, David?

David Cory: Yeah, absolutely. You know, some people look at this model and think, how is self-regard a competency? How can I improve that? And my response to that is that there are ways that we regard ourselves that support the achievement of our goals, and there are ways we regard ourselves that hinder the achievement of our goals. So in that way, you can do—it's not grammatically correct—but you can do self-regard well or you can do self-regard poorly. It is—those are possibilities. So what we say in coaching is that—by the way, coaches don't tell people what to do. What we coaches do is we make you more aware of the options available to you, and the more we learn about where you are currently and the more we understand what might have to change in order for you to move forward and the greater awareness you have of your current situation, the more options you have and then you choose. We don't choose for you, we coaches, but we do help you to see things differently, to get gain more awareness, to gain new perspectives and new understandings of your current situation so that you can pave your own way forward.

France Hutchison: Thanks, David. There's a few more questions, but I'll leave it after the few more segments that you have to present.

David Cory: Oh, OK. OK, great. Yeah, so all right. We're looking at the picture of the iceberg because we use the iceberg image frequently in our training. We human beings are like the proverbial iceberg, right? There's this image, this way that we dress, this way that our facial expressions look, the way we do our hair or whatever, that gives a certain—communicates something—and then there's all of which is beneath the surface. That doesn't get really known unless we choose to show it or share it. It does leak out when we think we're not sharing it. But then again, when you gain the skills to be able to share more from what's beneath your surface, you are choosing courage over comfort. And this was originally said by Abraham Maslow, made more famously—made famous more recently by Brené Brown. But choosing courage over comfort leads to greater relationships, deeper relationships of higher quality with those people that we work with, with those people that we live with, with everybody. So the more you let people know what's going on beneath your surface, the more you are known, the more people trust you. We don't trust what we don't know. And if you're a leader who plays their cards close to their chest and doesn't let on what you're thinking and feeling about things, people can't trust you. You're not creating the breeding ground for trust. So this is where this becomes so critical and important.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Self-Expression". The text reads "The ability to express your feelings, wants, and needs. Evidence: Others know you (no guesswork); they know your boundaries; you create the foundation for trust and great relationships. Tip: Choose to be known"

Next to the text is a series of nine images of adult men arranged in a grid.

Top row from left to right: A man with grey hair has his hands clasped in front of his face and his eyes closed. An older man with puffy grey hair and a beard rests his cheek on his hand and stares towards us. A young man with dark hair stares off to the side pensively.

Middle row: A middle-aged man with brown hair stares down, the corners of his mouth downturned. An older balding man sits with his eyes downcast. A middle-aged bald man turns away from us, face contorted.

Bottom row: A middle-aged man with sandy coloured hair leans forward, his mouth on the back of his hand. A middle-aged man stares downward, his mouth resting on his left hand. His eyes are half open. A middle-aged man buries part of his face in his hand.]

If we go to the next slide now, we'll look at the next category, and this is self-expression. So we saw self-perception—how do you perceive yourself? How do you express yourself in the world? And this ability to express your feelings, wants and needs is critical and important. Now the reason that those are images of men is not a mistake. What are men told? When we're very young, what do we men get told about emotions? Big boys don't—and I can let you finish the sentence. You know what that last part is. Big boys don't cry. That's what we learned about expressing our emotions. And so whatever we're feeling, you don't let on. To let on, to let others know what's going on inside us is a show of weakness, vulnerability. The literal definition of vulnerability is opening oneself up to harm. Who wants to do that? No one. So we have to understand that that old traditional notion of vulnerability is outdated. Opening ourselves up now, being vulnerable now means a better relationship with others. That's where we have to get to. When you are open, there's no guesswork, right? You all know those people who keep their cards close to their chest and you're always guessing. And when we guess what's going on for people, we get it wrong because we're not mind readers. We don't know that. So to be able to express yourself is to have boundaries, to say what's OK and not OK for others to do. And you can see the connection between some of these parts of the model. You have to have a healthy self-perception before you have healthy boundaries and then creating the foundation for trust and great relationships. So the tip is to choose to be known. Let people know more about what's going on inside you. There's a risk-reward equation there and the greater you risk, the greater the rewards. All right, let's—oh, there are probably lots of questions now for us. Is there anything that bubbles up that might be relevant and appropriate to ask now?

France Hutchison: There are so many great comments. I think it's worth sharing. You see this, David? It's awesome.

[The Wooclap screen is full of white squares. Each has a heart with a number and a green dot in the bottom left corner.]

David Cory: Yeah!

France Hutchison: A lot of stuff happening in Wooclap, and I think it triggers a lot of questions about how to develop the EI. How do you also promote but also—how do you change the culture around the emotions in the workplace? There seems to be a taboo around emotions.

David Cory: Yeah. Oh, wow. So many great questions, so many great questions. So much traditional thinking that we have to challenge, right? The notion that men are bad at emotional intelligence; we have to challenge it. Men have the capacity; they've just been socialized away from it. In fact, we as a society have been socialized away from embracing our emotions, from encouraging expressions of emotion and various cultures do this to varying extents as well. So again, culture plays an important role. It's knowing what's emotionally intelligent in a particular culture, knowing and understanding how things go. I saw a quick comment—I didn't even see the whole question, but something about people being born leaders. This notion that people are born leaders? It's false. There's no truth to it. Now, emotional intelligence—how do we get our emotional intelligence? There is probably part nature and part nurture. There is some genetic predisposition there and then we learn everything else. So if you are emotional—if emotions were taboo for you and the expression of emotion was completely out of the picture for you, consider bringing it into the picture. Consider changing. People say, "But it's just the way I am!" And I remind people, "That's the way you choose to be." Nobody is just the way they are; it's the way they choose to be. Now it's understanding the factors and influences that led to you being the way you are—that's critical and important, and that's where coaching comes in. That's where you can get with your coach and you can talk about the fact that you are the way you are because you believe and assume certain things to be true. And then you can challenge those and say, "What if those weren't true? What is another way of thinking and believing?" All right.

France Hutchison: There's two votes here on the screen because you can see how many people put a heart behind one question they really liked.

David Cory: Yeah.

France Hutchison: So I'd like to read you two here.

David Cory: Sure, great.

France Hutchison: Why do we tend to judge ourselves so hard or very hard? And the second question is, how do mental illness such as anxiety or depression factor into EI? Can you address those two, please?

David Cory: Oh, fantastic questions. I love these questions. These are great questions, France. So let's start with the one about judging ourselves harshly. So we got that belief somewhere—where we set the bar for ourselves, we got that somewhere. So where do we get it from? Is it our parents? Is it our family? I have that. My family set the bar pretty high. I'm unconsciously, subconsciously measuring myself against that invisible bar. And again, you know, we put unnecessary stress on ourselves by doing that. The reason why some people's self-regard scores are low on the EQI is because they do have really high expectations of themselves and they've not met their own expectations. So it's about being more realistic and other aspects of our model come into play like reality testing. What is realistic for us? What is an acceptable level for us? And then there was that other question for us—connected to mental health. So this model was originally a model for mental health. These are things that—these are skills and tools that you will need in order to be mentally healthy. What is mentally healthy? Mentally healthy is being able to cope with and address and deal with environmental challenges. From waking up in the morning, to getting to work, to whatever your boss drops on your desk, to whatever your colleague brings in to talk to you about; we have to have the ability to cope. And this is no surprise to any of you, but I actually had the guy who was responsible for tracking these stats for the Federal Civil Service, and he told me that it was a huge, huge high number—maybe it was around 80% of all the people off on leave were off on stress leave. So that means that there's a huge high number of people, and this is not uncommon—it's not just government, it's everywhere in the world where people are off on stress leave. This means that people don't have the skills to deal with what comes at them. Now you can say that what comes at them is unfair, or you can turn the blame to the other side, but what are those skills and what are those tools? And these are the ones that we're talking about right now. If there's a model of skills that you need to develop in order to be emotionally intelligent, this is it. In fact, I like to brag about the fact that companies like Google, Nike, Amazon and Microsoft, with virtually unlimited resources to research and look at tools, they pick this one. And of course, this tool is widely used throughout every type and kind of organization that you can imagine all over the world. OK. So here we are at self-expression and men. We've got this socialization that says to men, "Don't express your emotions." And we have managers telling us in their coaching, "Why do I have to share my emotions with my team?" And the reason, again, is to offer transparency. When you offer people transparency, they feel honoured. They feel like they've been let in. They feel like, "Wow! My leader just shared something real with me, something honest, something authentic and genuine." And again, just laying that groundwork for trust and great relationships. So choose to be known. Let's go on to our—

France Hutchison: David?

David Cory: Yes, France?

France Hutchison: Just before you move, because there's a question here.

David Cory: Sure. Yeah, yeah.

France Hutchison: What's the recipe for balancing too much sharing versus not enough? Because...

David Cory: Yeah, great question. We're getting there. We're going to get there shortly. So hang on to that question; I'm going to answer it.

France Hutchison: OK.

David Cory: But next, we're going to look at this whole area—if we can have the next slide, please.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Interpersonal". The text reads "The ability to have meaningful connections. Evidence: trust, loyalty, commitment, connection, shared understanding, effective teamwork. Tip: Choose courage over comfort."

Below the text are two more copies of the iceberg image next to each other. White text appears on a red bar across them, reading "Connection happens beneath the surface"]

France Hutchison: Yes. And just before you start here, there are a lot of questions about your deck. People are so interested in it.

David Cory: Oh, absolutely. We're going to share the deck. Absolutely.

France Hutchison: Yeah. We will share it, French and English. Don't worry. After the event—we'll have a copy.

David Cory: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And we want you to share it with everyone you know! We're so committed and dedicated to getting this information out into the world. So let's talk about the connections that you have in your life.

Harvard longevity study—they looked at Harvard grads over their entire lives. Now, they were all men because they started in the '30s where there was only Harvard grads who were men. And the single biggest factor to longevity? Relationships. So knowing who's in your corner, who's got your back? Who's there to share your secrets with, to share your hopes and dreams with? And the men who got together frequently with other colleagues and had those kinds of great relationships with other people lived longer than the ones who did not. Of course, we understand this from a commonsensical point of view, but it's nice to have research. Once again, when we choose courage over comfort, we are choosing to risk the possibility of a relationship getting better. So we all know how to shut down relationships, right? That's easy. We just shut up. We stop talking. We don't say anything more. And that relationship will wither and die. Now, if that's an important relationship to you because you work with that person and you're not likely to go anywhere and they're not likely to go anywhere, then you can choose to suffer—that's a choice you have—or you can choose to do something about it. And really, that's a great definition of leadership, isn't it? Choosing to suffer with something versus actually stepping up and doing what's possible, what can be done. And what's possible and can be done in those relationships that you've let wither is for you to say something, right? It's to talk about the elephant in the room; that's leadership, too. Leaders bring up the elephant in the room. They're not afraid to face reality and face what's honest and what's real. Connection happens beneath the surface. You may need to talk about the budget, but what you really want to know is how does that person actually feel about the budget. I'm not talking about the national budget, I'm talking about any piece of business that you have to discuss with your colleagues. You share what you think about it, what you feel about it. Say, "This is my worry. This is my concern. This is what I'm excited about. I'm so happy that we did this!" Share all of that. It will bring you closer and create greater trust and a greater, better working relationship with everybody. OK, in the interest of time, let's move on. Well, maybe we'll take some questions. France, are there some questions that kind of stand out for you?

France Hutchison: I think there's a clarity question about when you're referring to coaching—are you referring to a specific category like psychologist, or what are you referring to?

David Cory: Yeah, great question. Thank you for that question. And really, coaching, as you may know, is one of the fastest growing professions that there is and there are all kinds of wonderful coach training. There's an international federation, the International Coaches Federation, that will accredit you and make sure that you are coaching at a particular standard. So in general, I'm talking about those coaches, but it could be a leader who's developed coaching skills. The great thing about coaching skills is it's respectful; it gives people dignity when you approach a situation with an employee and you know what the right way is out of this particular dilemma, offer them the opportunity to figure it out first. That's coaching. It's like asking a good question. What's another way that you could do this? What's another way to think about this? And coaching begins with the idea that people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole. So every one of us kind of knows what we need to do. We just might not be thinking about it yet or have the right next step just yet, but when we talk it over, when we bounce ideas off people, those things become clear to us and we understand them at a greater level. So I'm talking about all kinds of coaching, the kind of informal coaching that you might do with a friend. When you say, "Hey, would you like some coaching around that?" Then you start asking questions; you don't give advice. Giving advice is not coaching. Giving advice is consulting, which some of us are happy to do as well. If we have particular expertise in that area, we'll do that too. But really, it's about offering people a way out with dignity and respect.

France Hutchison: Thank you. And there's another question if you allow me to ask it.

David Cory: Sure. Go ahead, France.

France Hutchison: In the managerial training, there seems to be an encouragement where people need to distance themselves from the employees. So how do you really establish the boundaries, David, specifically when you have to evaluate and assess performance, delegate and then you have to encourage a coaching relationship? So how do you balance all that?

David Cory: Yeah, great question. And the answer is that what you've—some of the things that you've just mentioned are kind of traditional notions of how management and employees should be with each other. Once again, that's evolving and changing with the younger generations that are coming into the workplace now. They don't want that same sort of distance between them and their manager. They want to get to know you as a person. They want to have a better relationship. And there's no reason why you can't. People say, "Oh, but what happens when I have to discipline them?" Then, discipline them. We can discipline our friends. We simply have to say, "Listen, you know, I have this responsibility and part of that responsibility it means that we have to talk about the fact that you're not meeting the standard," or whatever it is, and we teach people how to do that in ways that are actually much more humane. It's like, start out with, "I'm concerned about your performance. I'm worried about you because this needs to happen and you're not there yet." And we encourage assertive conversations far before performance management every time. And this idea about going for social events with employees—we're all adults. We can differentiate between when we can be friends and when we have to be in positions of authority over another. And again, workplaces are becoming flatter. There's not the rigid hierarchy that there was in the past. And I would encourage you to challenge some of your beliefs around those outdated notions of you having to maintain some sort of distance or have to keep people at arm's length. When you keep people at arm's length, you're keeping them from trusting you as well. You're keeping them from, you know, having your back when you need them to have your back. What you want is a much more deeply connected relationship. And just think about those best leaders you ever had; I bet they had no trouble being the authority figure when they needed to be, and they did it in a way that respected you and offered you your dignity as a human being. And it can be done. So, out with the old; in with the new. That's my answer.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. We can continue.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Decision Making". The text reads "The ability to combine emotions and logic. Evidence: You minimize unconscious bias and avoid unnecessary delays. Tip: Choose to be aware of your biases."

Next to it is an image of a blackboard. The words "Decision Making" are written in chalk in capital letters. Lines snakes from the words to a row of five differently coloured sticky notes. They read: "Alternatives, Uncertainty, High

Risk Consequences, Interpersonal Issues, Complexity"]

David Cory: All right. Let's go to the next slide and take a look at our next category of EQ skills. This is where the model specifically talks about the combination of logic and emotion. So what we've got here is we've got a problem solving. Problem solving as an EQ competency is all—it's not about your technical skills, it's not about whether you have the technical skills to solve the problems you need to solve in the workplace. But it's all about whether you take action right away, whether you avoid versus approaching, whether you worry versus getting down to problem solving, whether you struggle with the problems that you have versus finding the right people, talking to the right people, getting the right information and moving forward in a smooth fashion. Now, what's interesting about this is that Mr. Spock from Star Trek would probably score high on our problem solving, but that's because he doesn't have any emotions. So that's problematic. If you go about solving your problems with no emotion, that's a problem. So you do want to consider the people involved. You do want to consider the impact on the organization. And then another part of decision-making is reality testing. This is where unconscious bias comes in. And if you've never taken the Implicit Association Test, you might want to look that up—the Harvard Implicit Association Test—which actually tests how biased you are. And when you take the test, it doesn't seem like that's what it does. Then you find out that actually, your perceptions of reality were biased and they're biased by our socialization, by our gender, they're biased by our culture, they're biased by the type of work that we've done, et cetera. The best argument for diversity out there is to make sure that you have diverse perspectives working on any particular problem. You want to bring in that diversity, and that's going to help you to mitigate against this concept of unconscious bias. So the tip here is to choose to be more aware of your biases. The next time you have a group problem solving session, just be up front with your biases. "Hey, I'm an old white guy. I'm biased by that." So, you know, that means that I grew up in a certain era. I was influenced and impacted by certain cultural events, et cetera. And my skin is white; that also biases me towards the world. I've never actually—I've never been sort of discriminated against because of the colour of my skin. So that means that I haven't had experiences that others are having. And we really have to talk about those topics which are difficult to talk about, like anti-Black racism and other kinds of discrimination in the workplace. We have to talk about it, even though it makes us squirm and feel uncomfortable. Once again, leaders wade into what is uncomfortable and they talk about it. They choose courage over comfort and they choose to try to know better so that we can all do better. And that's critical and important. All right. So that's that piece there—the decision-making. Let's maybe... Well, France, are there some questions jumping off the screen for you that we should probably take right now?

France Hutchison: Well, we can look at the screen. But in the meantime, there's a lot of comments about relationship between an abusive, aggressive boss, a lack of trust and you as an employee.

David Cory: Ahh, yes.

France Hutchison: So, how do you navigate the whole thing and how do you raise the awareness bar of everybody, specifically in a conflict situation? So I'm integrating a lot of comments here in one sentence.

[The Wooclap screen is full of white squares. Each has a heart with a number and a green dot in the bottom left corner.]

David Cory: Sure. Yeah, yeah. You know, we frequently get these kinds of questions. My spouse who now works in our company with me as a coach and a trainer in the area of emotional intelligence—her entire career was dedicated to supporting women who were experiencing violence in their intimate partner relationships. She wrote a book which is used in women's shelters all over North America called When Love Hurts. And she talks about the fact that being assertive against abuse is dangerous. We talk about developing these skills so that you can be better at coping with and dealing with and addressing this kind of treatment—you can learn about drawing boundaries, but abusive people, bullies will just break through those boundaries. You know, that's why people make jokes about restraining orders because people don't—abusive and bullies don't respect restraining orders. They don't respect boundaries. So it's a very difficult and challenging situation that you're in. The way that we address it, because that's not our specific target area, is we talk about the creation of psychological safety using these skills. In fact, Amy Edmondson, the woman who coined the term—excuse me—psychological safety, said that many managers don't have the emotional intelligence to create psychological safety. So we come at it from that point of view and help people to understand what is abuse and what is bad treatment or what is ineffective leadership and what is effective leadership. So when you're confronted by a situation like that, get help—really is the answer. Go through the EAP program, look up and understand what can be done according to the policies and guidelines that govern your workplace to see what can be done about that. And of course, any HR professional will tell you to document, document, document. So you are tracking all of the instances and the types of things that people have done, with dates and times and all of that, and really get help.

France Hutchison: Is there such a thing, David, as no emotional intelligence? Because we seem to perceive there are a lot of people having no emotional intelligence or a lack of emotional intelligence. So is there such a thing as no emotional intelligence?

David Cory: I hear it all the time, France, and it makes me laugh. I know exactly what they mean, right? And it's not possible. We all have emotional intelligence; our emotions guide and direct our lives. Someone who appears to not be very intelligent about emotions, what that looks like is that—and it was right at the centre of the word cloud—selfish. When we're only thinking about ourselves, we come across as aggressive to others. When we're only thinking about ourselves, we don't—empathy is not on our radar screen. We're not paying attention to what's going on for others. When we're only thinking about ourselves, we are an ineffective leader.

France Hutchison: Hmm. Thank you, David. And there are a lot of questions about resources, books. I know you've mentioned quite a few. Can you just repeat a few and we'll ask the team to write it in Wooclap?

David Cory: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get a list together for you. The one that we highly recommend in all of our courses and programs is The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success. And the reason we recommend it is about this particular model. So it's got one chapter on each of the 15 different EQ competencies. Other great books include Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry. It's a short little book; great stories, illustrations of emotional intelligence. Most recently, my new favourite is Susan David's book Emotional Agility, with lots of great tips and suggestions and stories and examples. And there's more, yeah.

France Hutchison: Thank you. We'll put a list together. I'm inviting people as well in the audience. If you know great books on emotional intelligence you want to share on Wooclap, please do so. We love to learn from you guys as well.

David Cory: Awesome.

France Hutchison: Thank you.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Stress Management". The text reads "The ability to cope with the pressures of work and life. Evidence: You can adjust your sails to suit the wind, even in a storm. Tip: Choose self-care."

Below it is a multi-coloured curved chart titled "Stress Curve". The x-axis is labelled "Stress Level", the y-axis is labelled  "Performance". The curve is divided into four quadrants. The first quadrant on the left is green, with a label under the x-axis that reads "Too little stress (Underload)". The lowest part of the curve is labelled  "Inactive" and higher up the curve, "Laid Back".

The next section of the curve is yellow and is labelled  "Optimum Stress" on the x-axis and "Fatigue" at the crest of the curve.

The next section of the curve is orange and is labelled  "Too Much Stress (Overload)" on the x-axis and "Exhaustion" on falling part of the curve.

The next section of the curve is red and is labelled  "Burn-Out" on the x-axis and "Anxiety/Panic/Anger" on the falling part of the curve. The lowest part of the curve on the far-right side is labelled  "Breakdown".]

David Cory: Excellent. OK, so let's go on. We're on to our last category of emotional intelligence skills here. And this, of course, is stress management. Once again, I mentioned that there's a lot of people off on stress leave all over the world. And really, that's just the inability to cope with the pressures of work and life together. And it's about developing skills, tactics, strategies. The evidence for this is that you can adjust your sales to suit the wind even in a storm. You know, no matter what the winds, you can become a more skilled sailor and that's really what stress management is all about. This curve—we use this curve a lot in our training. It's the Yerkes-Dodson stress law, or the Yerkes-Dodson stress performance curve of 1908. And it's funny to think about that it was created in 1908 because we often think that stress is a modern day phenomenon, and they even had stress back then. What's interesting is they identified this part of the curve, which is too little stress—they called it underload. Then they talked about this good stress, which we call U stress, and that is in the yellow area of optimum stress. That's where we like to be. You know, we all think that we'd love to have no stress. But interestingly, in situations of no stress, we get bored. So imagine, you have absolutely no stress, then it's how long can you have absolutely no stress before you start looking for something to do. And then as soon as you start looking for something to do, you're creating some stress for yourself. And then when it's optimum, it's doing something that's enjoyable or fulfilling or it's what we want to be involved in and what we want to do. And then if we keep trying to do more and more and more, we get to that fatigue part of the curve, and then we can easily fall into exhaustion and then anxiety, panic, anger and break down, which we call burnout. And we don't want to get there. We want to recognize where we are in the curve and then take measures to address our situation. And quite frequently, that involves self-care. So are you getting enough exercise? Are you eating right? Are you sleeping? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you doing things that you enjoy, hobbies, reading, et cetera? So, that's the tip there. Of course, it's much more complex, and there are some really great EQ competencies found within stress management like flexibility. Can you flex and adapt to things that are beyond your control? And then there's optimism. How is your outlook on the world? And some people think that you either are optimistic or you are not optimistic. And in fact, Martin Seligman, the guy who's credited with being the father of positive psychology, wrote a book called Learned Optimism, where he broke down optimism and looked at what you need to improve in order to be optimistic, that there are various aspects of thinking about yourself in the world that can help with that. So you can learn and you can be better at any of these if you choose to be. There are lots of help and support out there in order to do that. So let's just review the five tips again, France, and then we'll look at all those great questions that people have until we run out of time.

[Slide: Black text on a white background. The title of the slide reads "Five Tips to Improve EQ". The text reads "1. Choose to focus on your strengths. 2. Choose to be known. 3. Choose courage over comfort. 4. Choose to be aware of how emotion hinders your decision making, e.g. procrastination, avoidance, etc. 5. Choose self-care."

Below the text is an image of the Canadian parliament buildings from a low angle. In the foreground a broad strip of red and white tulips in full bloom and other shrubs are in front of the buildings.]

So, the final slides—the next-to-last slide here are the five tips to improve EQ. So number 1, in terms of your self-perception, focus on your strengths and look at all the things you do well and choose to look for ways to leverage those and focus on those. Tip number 2—and these are not comprehensive and these are not a long-term plan or strategy. These are quick tips. Two: choose to be known. Let others know more about what's going on inside you. You know, I used to think that when my partner asked where I wanted to go to eat, and I said, "Oh, it doesn't matter to me. Anywhere. You choose." I thought I was being easygoing and flexible. I didn't realize I was not being a contributing member of that relationship. So when I realized that, now, when she asks me, "Where do you want to go for dinner?" I think, "Yeah, that's a good question. Where do I want to go for dinner?" I take some time. I think about what that is. I check in with my body and then I contribute to the relationship. So choose to be known. Number 3, choose courage over comfort. Yeah, you can stay up near the surface if you want and have relationships that are superficial and not characterized by deep connection and affection—affection is a bad word in the workplace. And I think it's a great word. Affection is just communicating how you feel about someone; you don't have to hug. In fact, don't hug people, please. Particularly right now during COVID. But tell people how you feel about them. Tell people that you appreciate them. Reach out and share with them how you feel about them and maybe how much they've impacted your life and maybe inspired you and challenged you, et cetera. So number 4 is choose to be aware of how emotion hinders your decision-making. Are you a procrastinator? Are you an avoider? Are you a worrier? And take some steps to do something about that. Work with a coach. Take a look at—what do you procrastinate about? What's that all about anyway? And really come up with some better strategies for you so that you make better decisions and you acknowledge all the emotions that are involved in those decisions that you make. And finally, choose self-care. Take care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. You need to stay in top physical condition. You need to stay in top mental, spiritual, emotional condition so that you can be of use to others. That's where the Maslow pyramid is turned upside down in the area of social responsibility. Maslow said, "It's not enough for you to develop yourself." Stephen Covey said it's not enough to develop yourself using the seven habits. He wrote the 8th Habit, which is all about making the world a better place, serving other people. Maslow said unless you're involved in the self-actualization of other people, you can't get to the next level after the self-actualization part of his original pyramid, which is transcendence. And then Martin Seligman wrote Authentic Happiness, where you can't be authentically happy unless you're involved in the happiness of others. So much, much brighter people than me came up with these things. And of course, it's the basis for a lot of wonderful and helpful philosophies and religions over time. This whole idea of we develop our skills and then we develop the skills of others. So, all right, that's where I wanted to end. Maybe we could have the last question up there—the last slide there, and then we'll take questions. Really, I want to tell you just quickly about this last slide.

[Slide: The background of the slide is a photo of a beach at sunset, taken from a low angle, with logs of driftwood piled in the foreground. In the background many boats are out on the water, and behind them are mountains. The sky is streaked yellow and purple.

At the top of the slide is blue text that reads "EITC The Emotional Intelligence Training Company Inc. Know. Engage. Lead." Below it, white text reads "Questions? Thank you! www.eitrainingcompany.com david@eitrainingcompany.com Mobile: 604-218-4777]

This is a photo from where I used to live. I just, in December, moved over from Vancouver. Some of you will recognize this photo to North Saanich on Vancouver Island. So this is where I used to live. Beautiful spot. Moved to another beautiful spot. And I'm happy to take questions or talk about any of this with any of you at any time offline, so jot down that those numbers there. We have all kinds of resources, free resources that we make available to people, too, like webinars. Our next one is on toxic masculinity, which you might want to check out. OK, let's take those questions now.

France Hutchison: Yes. And David, I just want to highlight maybe something that you just did. You see, you shared something about yourself. You did not just use a random picture in your PowerPoint. You shared something that brought us closer to who you are as a leader, as a trainer, as a speaker. So that's maybe one way that leaders can start is start putting pictures about your environment, what you do in life, and not just take your random pictures. So just highlighting that.

David Cory: One of the things, France, that I loved when COVID happened, everybody started working from home. All these news anchors—all of a sudden you were in their homes and it was so wonderful. It was like,"Wow, I feel so much closer to that person who just read the news before. Now I feel like I know them a little bit, right?" You know, that's their kitchen in the background and just those kinds of things are wonderful.

France Hutchison: Well, it's amazing. You might see it this way, and you might see it in other ways. Well, my gosh, I'm being seen at home and now you see boxes behind me because I'm moving soon. And then it's like,"Oh my gosh, they know things about me that normally they wouldn't know."

David Cory: Yes. Yes, and it's a frequent question that we get, France, and someone might have even asked it. How do you maintain these kinds of relationships virtually? And one of the things is you insist on cameras being on, you know? When people are having a meeting and people have their cameras off, it's like, why do you have your camera off? You know, we can't get together in person, but we can approximate that when you have your camera on and I can see you and I can see your facial expression, I could know how engaged you are. And then there are other little tips and tricks like going around the room and getting input from everyone at the start of the meeting. Just a quick little check in. And then at the end of the meeting, a quick little check out, you know? What are you taking away from this meeting? These kinds of quick little check in, check out, and lots of opportunities for contribution during the meeting. These are ways that you can make virtual meetings much better. People complain about virtual meetings. I have great virtual meetings with everybody and I love them.

France Hutchison: Well, this is maybe something we need to grasp on is the coaching techniques as well, the kinds of questions that will bring people more visible and more engaged in the virtual space.

David Cory: Yes.

France Hutchison: So, let's move to the questions, David.

David Cory: Great!

France Hutchison: I really want to make sure we address the people's questions. Can we show on the screen maybe the questions? I have a few in my back pocket for you, David, while we're seeing on the screen.

David Cory: Great. Wonderful, wonderful.

[The Wooclap screen is full of white squares. Each has a heart with a number and a green dot in the bottom left corner.]

France Hutchison: If you are an employee with a high work ethic and suddenly have a new manager with low ethic, how do you use EI to interact with the struggling manager? It seems to always be because of others. It's not us; it's always others.

David Cory: It's a great question. And you know, there's no one right answer to this. But here's a suggestion: what's it like from their perspective? You know, put yourself in their shoes. What are their goals? What are their dreams? What do they want for themselves in that role? And maybe ask them some of those kinds of questions like, "What do you really hope for our department or our team? Help me understand more about how you're setting those goals." Really get into that and just sort of wonder to yourself about whether just by virtue of your asking those questions and maybe sharing your own goals and aspirations for that team or that department or that group. You know, people don't have the right conversations with the right people at the right time. And if we only did more of that, imagine how much better things would be. So really, try to have that kind of honest and admittedly difficult conversation. Maybe get some coaching first, be with a coach and talk about how you could better address that situation and deal with that situation.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. There's also a question about—we've heard the term quite a bit: narcissistic personalities.

David Cory: Yes.

France Hutchison: How do you deal? And how do you increase the EI of those people?

David Cory: Yeah, that's a difficult one. You know, I'm not a psychologist or a counsellor. So, when people use words that I'm pretty sure are in the DSM, whatever version they're on now—that diagnostic manual for psychologists—I can only speak from my expertise and my knowledge. I know that people are generally doing their own armchair psychologist diagnosis when they use the word narcissist, but really, it's helping people to understand more about their impact. And really, that's what we teach people how to do, to share the fact that that behaviour that the person had had a particular impact on them. And that's really learning more about being in touch with your own emotions and being able to speak about your emotions. So to say to someone, "I am feeling so left out here because you've gone ahead and made all these plans without me. I don't see myself in there and it takes the wind out of my sails. I don't feel as motivated or inspired to work. And I'm pretty sure that's not your intention to cause us to feel demotivated, but I'm sharing with you now that that's the impact." And in light of that information, some people actually change. Some people don't. And you know, we don't have control over whether people change or not. That's up to them. But we need them to have all the information. You need to go home at the end of the day and say, "Hey, I did everything I can do. I communicated everything and I did everything I think I can do. And now the rest, I just have to find a way to accept," or leave. It's another option.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. If we can ask the team as well to share again the screen while I'm reading, maybe one that really triggered my attention is: are women better leaders than men?

[The Wooclap screen is full of white squares. Each has a heart with a number and a green dot in the bottom left corner.]

David Cory: Yeah, great question. And there are lots of studies out there about this and there are several studies—recent studies that I've read where employees actually prefer women. But if you think about that, you know, you think that—again, you have to go back to our gender socialization. And what you and I know is there are women who have adapted their styles to fit into the workplace culture where they are. So there are women who can be just as authoritarian or just as autocratic, et cetera. However, all leadership is moving towards a participative, inclusive, collaborative workplace where people are supportive of each other and developing great relationships. So despite whether it's a woman or a man, we're moving towards that more partnership relationship where leaders partner with their employees to get work done. So really that's where we need to shift our focus from the dominance model to the partnership model and less about whether it's a woman or a man, and understand that our societies have kind of contributed to the way that women and men are with each other and to the extent with which they believe emotional intelligence to be important because that's one part and whether they've developed skills in that area.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. Which leads to maybe that important question: how do you give managers feedback that they might need kind of an EI assessment or an EQI test without offending them?

David Cory: Yeah.

France Hutchison: So how do you address the whole emotional intelligence at work, bring people to increase their awareness? So how would you address this?

David Cory: Yeah. Yeah, so let me just say you can't guarantee that you won't offend them. What you can do is you can increase the likelihood that you won't offend them by being as objective as possible. So you're talking about specific behaviours, specific circumstances, specific emotional responses to said behaviours, and you're being as objective as possible. There's no guarantee that that person won't be offended. And you can suggest that actually, you know, there are lots of great resources out there to help people to improve, to become more aware of their impact on others, more aware of their own emotions and better able to communicate and develop relationships with others. So why not leverage that and take advantage of those resources?

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. And maybe in addition to what you're saying, I know that within government we have those 360 feedback—I know there's also in the private sector. So how do you use this information from the 360 in order to leverage that awareness and maybe improve EI with maybe another tool that would measure EQI or the EI? So what would be the flow that you would recommend?

David Cory: Yeah, yeah. So a typical approach for us is that we frequently start with the self-report assessment. That's the EQI, the Emotional Quotient Inventory. You respond to a series of statements and then you get a detailed report and you review that with your coach to understand more about where you are currently. While that's going on for more senior leaders, then we start the 360 process or the multi-raider process, where we ask others to rate you on the exact same scale. So they're answering the exact same questions about you that you answered about yourself. And then we look at all that data together and sometimes—excuse me—when a senior leader sees the impact that they're having on others, they make dramatic changes. I've seen people say this is not—they say to themselves, "This is not acceptable for me. I do not want to be that person who's impacted people in that way," and they change. And then with coaching and support to make that change, they make dramatic turnarounds.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. There are only a few minutes left and I feel that we can continue this conversation.

David Cory: Absolutely.

France Hutchison: You use the word coaching quite a lot. So coaching as a tool for people to raise awareness, improve their level of awareness about their competency in emotional intelligence and et cetera. Any last word, any other recommendations you would like to leave participants with?

David Cory: Well, it's kind of like a priority list of impacts to improve your EQ. Coaching is at the top. No question. If coaching is for some reason not available to you through your workplace or personally—and by the way, it's an investment in yourself—then you're looking at books, you're looking at training courses, you're looking at websites and other resources. And again, I'll put together a resource list to share with those of you who've registered for the webinar today.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. And I really love the fact that you can also measure through a self-assessment your level of emotional intelligence because you can measure with time how you also improve your emotional intelligence.

David Cory: Yes. And by the way, France, it's an inventory. It's not a test.

France Hutchison: OK.

David Cory: Not that you said that word, I'm just highlighting the idea that we're taking stock. We're trying to figure out, you know, where are we with respect to our level of functioning with respect to these skills that are so critical and important to leadership, leading one's own life. And I love that part of my job. You know, we help people to be more effective at work, and it ultimately ends up being that they are more effective outside of work with their families and in their communities, et cetera.

France Hutchison: Thank you, David. So I'd like to thank you again for being with us today, sharing your knowledge, your expertise and your passion and your mission to increase the level of emotional intelligence in the world. I would also like to thank participants. It was an amazing participation today. I just felt that people were connected. They had lots to share and it's just the beginning of all this. I'd like to also invite participants—there's a coaching summit. There's still next week happening. There's going to be a lot of events happening and you can see this on GCcollab page, our GCcollab coaching page. You can see all the information there, what's happening ahead. The school has more events to offer you and encourage you to visit their website. So you'll see that on June 3rd, there will be part of the Leadership Series. We're hosting a session on leadership with the heart. What an amazing follow-up to today's session with David. So the title is Leadership with Heart–Being a More Compassionate Leader. We invite you to learn more and register on the CSPS, Canada School Public Service website. And don't forget to leave us with your feedback. We encourage you to complete the electronic evaluation that you will receive in the upcoming days. So again, David, thank you so much. It's just the beginning of future actions within the public service. Well, we're just continuing the amazing work that you started. What year again? 1998 I've heard?

David Cory: 1998, yeah. Yeah.

France Hutchison: So thank you again and thank you, everyone. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

David Cory: Thank you, everyone. Thanks for being here. Bye for now.

[A white symbol resembling a book is silhouetted against a purple background. In the center of it is a maple leaf. Animation plays of it closing and disappearing.]

[The word "Canada" appears against a white background in black letters. Above the last A is a small Canadian flag.]