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How to Build Emotional Intelligence as a Leader · Business for Humans

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I'm Jaime Gennaro, business coach, consultant, and founder of Practica Consulting.
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Today I'm talking about why emotional intelligence is the secret weapon of great
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leaders, and why ignoring it could be costing your business more than you think.
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From disengaged teams to high turnover and lost revenue, leadership without
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emotional intelligence could be a ticking time bomb. Enjoy.
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Today, we're talking about leaders leveraging emotional intelligence.
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And I know this is one of those terms that kind of got thrown around for a while
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and we all lobbed on to it and then people started resisting it.
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But I have recently been trying to crack this nut.
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Again, you've probably heard me trying to crack it over and over in the last few podcasts,
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but cracking this nut around leaders who are not using emotional intelligence
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and are not regulating their own emotions at work,
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and they're not recognizing the impact on their teams.
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So I mentioned in a podcast recently about some executive coaching that I'm doing,
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and then the leadership team is not really on board with executive coaching
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and the team really needs it.
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The leadership team maybe recognizes that they should be filling that gap,
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but they're not because they don't have the training, but they're not open to
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the training because they don't think that it affects productivity or that it's good for retention.
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They don't see the connection to profits and bottom line, so they don't invest in it.
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And now this one particular team, they're losing the budget for executive coaching
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and they're not happy about it.
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And I'm trying to crack this nut of like, why doesn't their leadership team see the value?
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Like, what is the disconnect? Why aren't they understanding the connection between
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employee engagement, culture, you know, conflict?
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Poor team collaboration? Why aren't they seeing how these things are affecting their business?
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It's just an interesting conundrum for me because I'm both a coach and a consultant.
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So I work with people around mindset and how to show up as a leader and some
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of this emotional intelligence work.
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I help individuals through their own personal roadblocks.
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And then I also help organizations with change management and process and just
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overall organizational improvements.
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And it's all a domino. This is why I do both kinds of work,
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because you can't start suggesting change in
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an organization organizational change process
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change operational change without recognizing
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how that change affects the team and you also can't create change in a silo
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you can't create change from the top and then have it trickle down to a team
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without getting that team engaged in the solutions.
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They know better than anyone what needs to be fixed for things to go more smoothly.
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But there's this silo in a lot of corporations where the leadership team doesn't
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really have that open communication with the, let's call it the production team, right?
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The team on the ground, the team that's really
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engaged potentially with clients or with
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product creation or you know
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whatever the the case may be but
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that but that ground floor team that's doing the work is often very disconnected
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from the team that's making the business decisions this is such a miss and i
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don't understand culturally how we got there i don't understand why these silos are so deep.
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And how organizations don't recognize what they're missing by engaging more
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people in the conversation.
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It doesn't mean it has to be democratic. It doesn't mean it has to be this kumbaya,
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like let's sit around a circle and hold hands and talk about our ideas.
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That is not what emotional intelligence is.
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And when i talk about strong leaders and
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when i talk about shifting management styles to to
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have employees feel more engaged and and
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all of that it's not because we're trying
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we're all hippies and we just want to like kumbaya and love each other although
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that would be great it's really at the end of the day we're talking about business
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and we're talking about developing products that are going to be more effective, make more impact,
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sell more of those products, have more of a connection to our clients.
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Whatever our business is, whatever that thing is that we're selling,
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we need people to create it.
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And when your employees are not engaged, They're going to lean out, period.
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And when the culture is not giving them a space to collaborate or have these
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open conversations, and I'm not talking about open conversations about feelings.
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I'm talking about open conversations about solutions and problem solving and
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efficiencies and ways to increase productivity.
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When you don't open the door to having those conversations with your team,
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they're not going to stay engaged.
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We're human. We all have this brain that wants to solve problems.
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Every one of us at every level of the organization.
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And if we're not giving space for those ideas to come forward,
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number one, we're not nurturing our team to be able to elevate.
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And number two, they're going to be bored and not interested.
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And I know that the market is tough right now. And I know that employees who
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have really toxic workplace cultures bank on that. Well, people aren't going to leave.
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They're not going to leave because it's really hard to get a job right now in this market.
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And that may be true. But you know what they are going to do?
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They're going to lean out and they're going to keep leaning out. And
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it's going to take you a while to figure out that they're leaning out
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and then they're going to lean out so far that their
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job is going to start falling through the cracks and then that's going to start
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really affecting productivity and revenue and it's going to take you even longer
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to recognize that because you're super disconnected from that team you're not
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opening up the conversation,
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So again, trying to find a way to crack this nut, how do we get in front of these egotistical.
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Narcissistic leaders and let them know that if what they want at the end of
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the day is a successful business, they need to change their approach.
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This old way of working, this old style of, you know, leading with authority
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and control and, you know, not showing emotion and not showing,
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I don't even want to say emotion because I think we get into trouble when we
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give too much room for too much emotion.
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It's not about necessarily like feelings or emotions.
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It's about open communication
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when i have check-ins with
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teams or i'm in a coaching session i don't
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start every conversation with how are you feeling i
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start it with tell me all the things i
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mean that's usually how i start to be honest tell me all the things tell
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me the all the things that are happening what's going
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on what what's you know going on in projects what's
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going on in you know relationships with
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colleagues like what are all the things because if you start with the feelings
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it goes into a direction that is not always going to produce solutions i think
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sometimes people get trapped in this like venting space where they just want
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to vent vent vent and there's room for that.
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But I think what we want to do at work is try to put those emotions into an action.
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So emotional intelligence isn't just this idea of I have emotions and I have
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to be able to have a space for those emotions.
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It's really about integrating this awareness.
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Integrating this awareness of the way I show up, the way I manage my emotions, the way I'm able to,
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mediate conversations between people that might be passionate conversations
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or there might be high levels of emotion.
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As a leader, I want to read the room. I want to see that that emotion is going
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on and I want to be able to diffuse it and give space for it,
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but not let it continue to grow and bubble and turn into something that isn't
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going to be effective or helpful or.
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Going to help move anyone forward. Because a lot of times when we dwell in this
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emotional space, we just spin and spin and spin until we've convinced ourselves
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that our stories are true, because we want to validate those emotions.
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And so we create these stories and we just perpetuate the story,
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story, story, because I need to make an excuse for the way I'm feeling.
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This is why people get defensive, right?
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I need to defend this emotion.
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Whether or not the emotion is appropriate, there's this defense mechanism.
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So when we talk about emotional intelligence and
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i know i use parenting metaphors a lot so if
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you're not a parent then think about
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maybe relationships with other people that you're you
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know you're in maybe in a situation with your own
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parents or with siblings or just these these closer more intimate relationships
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we have a responsibility in any relationship when we're kind of taking a leadership
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role to regulate our emotions as we're connecting with those people.
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And as a parent, you are the ultimate leader.
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And if you're coming into a situation or a conversation with dysregulated emotions,
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if you haven't gotten your own emotions under control,
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you're not modeling the kind of emotional regulation that you want from your
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child, You're not modeling it.
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You're intensifying any kind of overactive emotional situation.
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And you're not going to get to a solution because the emotions are going to
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continue to get heightened.
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And I understand that as leaders and as parents, we're under pressure, right?
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We're under pressure as leaders in a business to deliver results.
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We're under pressure by clients. We're in these high stress,
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quick deadline environments.
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And this idea of like emotions or emotional regulation, we just don't want to
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work at that because we'd rather work at the task, right?
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We'd rather work at our, you know, creative chops or our strategy chops or our
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financial systems, the things that feel more tactical and tangible,
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this emotional stuff feels like a waste of time, right?
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It feels like a nice to have, but it doesn't feel essential.
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And what I would say is in any moment as a parent or in any kind of relationship
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or as a leader of a business,
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this is actually the most important I can tell you that in 10 years after having
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been a parent of my child,
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when they're, you know, in a place in their adulthood where their frontal lobe
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is fully formed and they're making more adult rational decisions about things.
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They're not going to remember any of the tactical things that we talked about.
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What they will remember is whether I was flying off the handle,
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super emotional, crying all the time, or whether things felt calm and safe.
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It's a general sense that you have of things. And it's the same in a business.
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It's not that we need our employees to reflect back on their time. our time.
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We need to be reflecting on it on a daily basis because a company is an evolving
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organism where we have to shift and meet the needs of our clients,
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of our audiences, of our marketing strategy, of the changing world at large,
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of inflation and tariffs.
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We have to be agile and flexible. And
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if we're creating an environment that is chaotic and
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emotional and there's dysregulation and there's
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stress and pressure which is always there
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to perform on top of these you know situations that we get into where there's
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conflict and there's not good collaboration and there's not open communication
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and there's there's it's just stunting the workflow.
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And as we know, you can, in a house when there's conflict and someone gets in
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a fight, you can go on and sweep that thing under the rug.
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But like the vibe is always there.
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Until you resolve the conflict, there's always a tension. And it's no different at work.
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If there's no emotional regulation, if there's conflict, if there's,
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you know, all these situations where there's not open communication and people
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are being closed off, there's disrespect,
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there's disparaging in front of co-workers and colleagues, then that will be there.
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That resonates. That sits there in the ether so that when people sit down to do their next task,
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They're still feeling the pain of that moment or the pressure of that moment
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or the conflict or whatever they leave that moment with stays with them until it's resolved.
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So if you're in an environment where the leadership team is not trained to regulate
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and to develop this emotional intelligence approach,
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that lingering tension is going to affect the way people work and the efficiencies
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and the well-oiled workflow and process because it sits on people.
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And what happens most of the time is people just go, fuck it. Nobody cares.
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Nobody cares about my opinion. I get treated poorly in meetings.
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People disrespect me. Usually it's one person. I get disrespected.
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Nobody's listening. so hey job market's bad can't quit so i'm just gonna do
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the minimum that i have to do to get paid and then little by little the minimum
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becomes the minimum becomes the minimum until finally,
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they might need to get dismissed for performance but it's gonna take so long
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for the company to figure that out and the bigger the company the longer it's
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gonna take and that money is just basically going to be going into the toilet
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because that person isn't doing their job. And then guess what happens?
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The high achievers on the team, the people who are really always leaning in
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and your best A team, they're going to take on the extra work.
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They're going to lean in. They're going to lean in harder. They're going to get burned out.
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They're going to tell you that we know why this is happening.
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We need to fix it. You're going to ignore them.
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And then now we're two layers deep.
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So what do we do?
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This is the question I've been asking. How do we influence these leaders who
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can't see it, who don't understand it, who can't hear it, who aren't emotionally regulated?
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This is why they can't see it or hear it because they're emotional regulation.
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They're probably in some form of burnout.
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They're so dysregulated that they can't even hear when they're rude,
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when they're disrespectful, they can't hear it. So what do we do?
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So as a team working under those people, it's about modeling.
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You have to model emotional regulation. And when someone above you or below
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you or on the same level as you is having these emotional outbursts or they're
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saying things that are inappropriate, saying things that are like,
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you are making me feel X,
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right? Like you are the reason this is happening.
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Like whatever these things are that sometimes come out of people's mouths
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and they don't mean it and at home it's one thing
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but when it happens in the workplace it's like another level of
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emotional dysregulation because typically at
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the workplace that's when we're on our best behavior so if you're
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seeing this dysregulation it's you know
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it means that there's like
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a severe level and and number one
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like you want to start with ultra compassion so
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if they're not showing compassion for other people then
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you need to have you need to like double down on that
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so you want to come forward with an
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open mind because that's what we're trying to teach people you want to be you
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want to give space for it but you want to make sure that that space isn't in
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an in an appropriate place so the middle of a meeting in the middle of a room
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with a bunch of people these are not the places to try to, you know.
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Quell someone who's dysregulated.
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So you want to find a time and a space to give them that moment to kind of talk
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through what's going on with them. Is it recent? Is it new?
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Or is this, you know, kind of a chronic behavior?
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I think it's always good to make sure that you have HR in the room for any conversation like that.
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And then if you're in a situation where that's happening in a meeting or,
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you know, where someone's disparaging or disrespecting someone and you don't
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agree with the behavior, again, you don't want to necessarily call them out.
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But depending on how chronic the issue is with this leader who is,
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you know, acting this way, you can model to the team. If they say something
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disparaging to the team, you can sort of counter with something very encouraging.
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Right. So you're diffusing. not in a combative way at all, but just like a diffusing
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the energy kind of in the room.
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So acknowledging, but then diffusing.
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And a lot of times people who have a lot of dysregulation just want to be heard.
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So if they don't feel validated, they're going to keep pushing and pushing.
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And so you want to, again, just keep diffusing the situation when you're in a group.
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So diffuse I had a I
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was coaching someone recently about a
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situation this exact situation that happened and basically there was you know
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kind of a conflict between two people in this meeting and then someone else
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this it was a meeting in person and then someone was calling in and that person
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who was calling in asked this very innocent question and because they weren't in the room,
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it was easy for somebody in the room to basically disparage them behind their
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back because they're just on a screen and they couldn't see them.
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And so what happened immediately was that someone else in the room kind of sent
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them a message and said, hey, that question was totally valid.
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Like, good job. They didn't throw the other, you know, person under the table that disparaged them.
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They just said, hey, you know, let's leave questions till the end.
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Let's not ask any more questions. It was a totally valid question.
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Good job, but let's hold questions till then.
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And that's a great way to diffuse because you're not calling anyone out exclusively,
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but you want to make sure that that person who disparaged, the person who's
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on video but can't see them,
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you want to make sure that the disparaging party knows that you're going to
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make it clear that we're not going to do this right now.
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And we're going to table it because we're polite, but we're not going to do
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this right now. And I think there are really, you know, kind ways to be able to do that.
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But if you're a leader and this person's on your same level,
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you have a responsibility as a leader to make sure to call that moment out in
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a really nice, gentle way, you know, diffuse.
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But you don't want to brush it under the rug or allow that kind of behavior, right?
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So it's very important if you're in a leadership
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role that you make some kind of acknowledgement of
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it but diffuse if you're not at
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the same level as that person i would
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recommend that you either pull
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them to the side afterwards and or you just talk directly to hr whatever your
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comfort level is i wouldn't call a boss out in front of a group of people but
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you can always Anyone can take that diffusing place and you can be in that moment of like diffusing,
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but somebody needs to address the behavior after the fact that always has to be done.
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So again, when we're working in an environment where there's a lot of emotional
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dysregulation and we want to get everyone back to this place where there's open
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collaboration, open communication.
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There's a space for emotions, but we want to be proactive and action-oriented with those emotions.
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We don't want to give people too much space to
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just vent and complain because that develops a
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culture of back talking and gossip
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too much venting is not appropriate
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so because most of the venting is about
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specific people right oh this person dropped the ball oh that person oh this
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person there's one thing when you're talking about performance related issues
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you know there's a performance related issue we're discussing here versus this
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person oh i can't stand how they do that.
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And I don't like how they ask so many questions.
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And there's a personality kind of venting that happens sometimes.
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And that is not helping anyone. That is not regulating emotion.
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That is getting into the emotion of frustration or anger or whatever you're
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feeling towards that person and just perpetuating it.
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Not healthy emotional intelligence, emotional regulation. You want to have a space for that, right?
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If you're really angry about someone, if they're doing you harm or you really
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need to talk through that, there's a space with HR.
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Sometimes with your direct manager. But if you're really getting to a space
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where you're venting about someone's personality, we want to be careful about
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taking that path too far.
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Okay, a little bit is fine, but we want to be action-oriented.
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That's what we're talking about when we want to come through as a leader,
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as someone who's regulated their own emotions before going into a situation,
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as a model, managing their own stress,
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being really thoughtful about, you know, what the challenges are in front of everyone,
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holding their composure under pressure, cultivating a stable,
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positive work environment.
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That's emotional regulation. That's being a leader who is using emotional intelligence.
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There are leaders who use emotions to manipulate people,
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very unhealthy right so
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so generally we want to lead with
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compassion we want to lead with empathy we want to make space for people to
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have feelings but we don't want to take that rabbit hole too far down we want
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to direct it to something that is helpful and problem solving we want to promote
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open communication, collaboration,
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get ideas from all parts of the business.
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Have leaders, as you're training them through these models, kind of reflect
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back and even maybe give each other.
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Feedback on how they've shown up in different meetings, in different spaces with teams.
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This is the part that particularly, like I think in corporate environments,
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leadership teams have a really hard time with because it's vulnerable.
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Getting feedback from people puts you in a very vulnerable position.
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This is why a lot of leadership teams don't solicit feedback.
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They provide a lot of feedback, but they don't solicit it. I think this is a a mistake, too.
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We need to be open about, you know, what we can be working on and own it and.
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Continue to develop, right?
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We want to have these feedback cycles so that we know where we can be improving.
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Because I think what happens a lot of times, especially on these leadership
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teams, is that we have these high-pressure, high-stakes meetings where emotions are high,
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and then we don't go back and say hey did
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we did we really handle that
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in the way that's best for the business best
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for the team like did we do
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our best work in that meeting where the stakes were high and pressure
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was on and listen i mean i'm not
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saying that there aren't that there's not a time and
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a place to be firm right sometimes you have
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to be firm you have to let the team know like this is
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the deadline we can't fuck around but that
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is different than pointing a finger at someone and saying you're a problem you
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know or i don't like your idea right or i'm so frustrated with you you know
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in a meeting with a bunch of other people it's a lot different to be like okay,
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dudes we got to get our shit together you know there's like a coachy i'm regulated
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i'm not going to get emotional here versus...
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I don't have myself together, but I expect you to get yourself together.
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It just heightens the emotions in an environment.
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So solicit feedback if you're on a leadership team.
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Keep communication open, collaboration open, approach your team with composure.
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Keep yourself, like find places where you can vent those emotions that are potentially not at work.
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Stay focused on what is the problem we're trying to solve and don't get caught
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up in the gossipy, venty rabbit hole.
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In conclusion, if you ignore,
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if you decide not to work on this, which is the case for many leaders,
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and again, i'm trying to crack the code of
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the most toxic most egotistical narcissistic leaders
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how do i get them to care this is
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the big question if you ignore
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this way of managing if
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you keep managing with authority with being pissed off and angry and demeaning
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people and disrespecting them in an era where well-being and engagement and culture are,
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and I know there's some parts of the world that are saying, you know.
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DEI and well-being is a bunch of bullshit, but if you ignore it,
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you are going to see retention decrease.
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You're going to see people leave.
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You're going to have to pay costly fees for hiring, training,
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getting people up to speed.
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You're going to lose client relationships because they can tell.
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They can sniff out chaos, and they're not going to want to work with a company
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that they think is under duress.
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And also, if leadership teams are not emotionally regulated when they're in front of their own team,
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they're likely going to lose their shit in front of clients too
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so if you
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are not paying attention or
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training your leaders and your managers to be
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more effective and less less dysregulated i don't want to say emotional i think
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there are emotions that are 100 appropriate they need to be regulated you need
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to come to your teams composed.
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They need to know that you can lead no matter what level of pressure is placed on you.
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They need to trust you to carry the weight of that and the ship on their behalf.
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That's why you get paid the big bucks.
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If you ignore it, you will see the consequences on the back end.
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And you might not see it tomorrow.
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It's the same thing I talk about with burnout. It's a cumulative decrease in
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productivity, in engagement, and then in revenue, in client relationships.
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It will all start to crumble.
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And the bigger you are, the longer that might take.
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But it will happen. And you will get called out for bad behavior.
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And that's a different mark on the reputation of the company.
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So the best thing you can do for your teams
31:45
and if you're at a mid-tier level the best thing you can do
31:48
is suggest training suggest training
31:51
for and go to the hr team and suggest training
31:55
for the upper level management teams if you
31:58
think that they are not paying attention
32:02
to fostering teams
32:05
fostering their well-being fostering
32:09
their ability to be challenged at
32:13
work bring ideas to work have you know
32:16
independence potentially autonomy if
32:20
you're not seeing the leadership team at your organization
32:23
embracing some of these ideas of
32:26
open collaboration and ideas from anywhere and
32:30
having open communication with their
32:33
teams and finding opportunities for growth if you're not seeing that take the
32:38
reins and suggest leadership training they won't all go for it but the best
32:45
thing you can do is model the kind of behavior you'd like to see and then keep
32:50
pushing for the training,
32:52
And work with HR if there are other things that are happening in meetings that
32:58
you really want to discourage because it's not right.
33:04
You don't have to deal with it, basically, is what I'm saying.
33:08
If you're seeing leaders disrespect people in meetings and disparage people,
33:14
that is a form of harassment.
33:17
And you do not have to sit idly by just because you can't lose your job.
33:23
Don't allow that. Don't allow yourself to be treated that way. You don't need to.
33:29
That's why HR is there to support you. and again
33:33
you can show up as
33:36
the leader that you'd like to see
33:39
model it model the empathy
33:42
model the open communication model the solutions forward kind of thinking and
33:51
we'll get there guys we're in this together and we will we are going to make
33:56
change we are going to do it and we're going to keep being nice about it.
34:00
We're going to keep making jokes, but we are going to get there because there's nowhere else to go.
34:07
We can't work in these toxic environments anymore.
34:10
So let's work together to make the change.
34:13
And I am here to support you.
34:16
And I will leave it at that. Talk to you next week.
34:19
Music.