Emotional Intelligence LP

The speaker suggests that practicing self-awareness is essential for developing emotional intelligence. They propose a learning project called "listening chats" where individuals seek feedback from others about their strengths and areas for improvement. By creating a safe environment and using phrases like "where I can raise my game," people become more receptive to feedback. Engaging in listening chats regularly can enhance self-awareness and self-regulation. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of looking inward and encourages the use of structured feedback to promote respectful communication. Once you're coaching to emotional intelligence, and again, let's go back to self-awareness, becoming self-aware. I think one of the greatest learning projects you can do with emotional intelligence, at least initially starting with self-awareness, because it will spread to empathy, self-regulation, it will touch on social skills and motivation, is something called listening chats. Have people seek feedback from other people once or twice a week as a learning project. Let me demonstrate. Gary, next week, I want you to come in with two examples of where you ask people for feedback, and you're just going to listen, you're just going to say thank you, you're going to potentially hear something you don't like. Ask people where are two areas that you serve them well as teammates, and what's that one area of opportunity where you can raise your game? Notice my language. I stay away from constructive feedback. So we call that structured feedback. Don't just pair people up or have people do activities and say, you know, get some feedback from your teammates, because people will gravitate to the negative quickly. You want to create a safe environment so they can learn. One of the greatest things you can do is to use phrases such as where I can raise my game. Now what that person's going to do is hear, here's where I can raise my game. And oh, by the way, I'm the one asking. They tend to receive it more openly and diplomatically. When you have people performing one or two listening chats weekly over the course of, let's say, four to six weeks, it cannot help but improve self-awareness. It cannot help but improve someone's self-regulation. See, when people look inward, and they practice things inward, we tend to look outward less. I had someone do something in a session. I'll never forget it. And I had never seen someone do this. And he said, you know why people point? I said, why? And I had heard this before. He said, when you point, and he put his finger up, he said, you point away from yourself. And he said, what people who point have to remember is there's one finger pointing, but there's three fingers pointing back at themselves. And I love that. And what it shows is when we don't want to look at ourself, remember what I said in the overview, looking in the mirror is tough. So create a learning project, use the listening chats, takes two or three minutes, and it creates an environment of thoughtful, respectful dissemination of feedback. And what you're also doing is making it easy for other people to communicate because you're asking for the feedback or you're asking your people to ask for the feedback. Thank you.