EQ. Pt. 3

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty the Podcast. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens and today we'll discuss the key component social awareness in relationship to our impact on others, how intentionality in our interactions lead to better outcomes, and how our responses in social settings reflect our self perception. Enjoy the show.

So self awareness, self regulation, the third key component of emotional intelligence, social awareness. Understanding the emotions, perspectives, and needs of others. And, I'll also tag to that understanding how you are causing other people to feel in real time. Right? So it kinda that that social awareness is more about external, the other person.

The first two self awareness and self regulation was more about the internal. Right? Social awareness is how am I making other people feel in this moment and how do I self regulate myself and my emotions in the way that I'm I'm coming across to produce a better outcome when it comes to others. Well, mean, what are your thoughts on that Terry?

Ralph, those are great points. You know, understanding how we are impacting others is a crucial aspect of communication, right? A lot of times we say you gotta be able to read the room, right? And your ability to read the room really is going to depend on how you've been honing your senses, right? How you've been honing your listening skills, how you've been honing seeing nonverbal communication, right?

And I don't want to get too far off into a rabbit hole here but here's what I do know. We are always conditioning our senses, right? We're always conditioning our eye gate. We're always conditioning our ear gate, right? And what we're taking in, impacts our ability to be able to get outside of ourselves, right?

Is my whole purpose in life geared towards satisfying my needs? Right? So man, this

is

a huge question in that how are you, you know curating the information that you're taking in on a daily basis. Here's the thing really, honestly how we are reacting in these rooms are really an aspect of how we see ourselves. So think of it this way, you know you're in a room and you can assign a few different personas in the room, right? You have the person who is the negotiator in the room, right? You have the person who is the antagonizer in the room.

You have the person who is the listener in the room, you have the person who's the bully in the room. Again we can and I'm just kind of you know making these up right but in any setting that we're in we can assign who's playing these roles and so because of how we see ourselves right, it is dictating how we are interacting while sitting in these rooms, right. Sometimes we go in these rooms and we may see ourselves as inferior so that's going to dictate how you interact. Sometimes you've been in a room and you see yourself as the superior one in the room and then that causes you to be a little bit more dominant right but the true sense and true vigor of your EQ is really going into the room with a mindset of I'm gonna serve, I'm gonna bring the best version of myself into the room and my information is purely going to be a tool for service Right, we've seen many times when we go into rooms and because someone has a title, right, they believe that that title in essence entitles them to be the one to really dictate how the outcome is going to occur.

Although their idea or suggestion may not be the best one. Again, I would share that that person doesn't have a lot of awareness on how their interactions are impacting the room because in those kind of scenarios we're not getting the very best outcome. We're getting a outcome, an outcome that may work, an outcome that, you know, may deliver 50%, 70%. It could possibly be a 100%, right of what the business outcome is desired. My question is, is that the only outcome that matters?

Or do you want coming out of this session for everyone to feel that there's been contribution do you want to ensure that coming out of the session that everyone felt a level of value right So I believe that is the essence of that social interaction and being aware, right? Ralph, I really believe this goes really ties directly back into TED, right? The empowerment dynamic. The question really is who do you want to be? Let's have some intentionality, right?

About how we're socially interacting, how the words we're using, our body language, how it's impacting the room and are we getting the best out of everyone around the table. I really believe that's what our ultimate goal should be but again that first starts with yourself. Who are you? Right? Who are you?

What persona are you exercising when you walk into the room? I want to challenge everyone to really you know take an assessment right write down a few notes about yourself how you felt while being in the room. I guarantee this is an exercise that many haven't done. Right? I mean, I've taken the exercise, know, and thought, how did I perform?

I remember one particular meeting I was in and this was at a previous company and I remember sitting around the table and there was, you know, lawyers around the table, there were VPs, directors. I was the director of IT at the time and I recognized that I was just sitting and listening, not really interacting, really just kind of taking it all in. And the thought that I had in that moment is if I don't contribute to this meeting, I may not be in the next one. And it was a pretty high profile meeting, right? It was about, two organizations, coming together and building the framework and this particular meeting was about protecting the, entity that I was working for basically, you know making sure that you know when these two entities join or merge that our interests aren't lost.

So it was a pretty high profile meeting and I'll say it was the first time really for me that I recognized socially how I was impacting a meeting and yeah it was pretty impactful and from that moment on I definitely went in with intentionality, with a goal to just make sure that I was involved and engaged. So yep, it's a big deal. We cannot overlook it. Spend some time on it. I want to encourage everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. That social awareness thing, man, is huge. I remember when I first learned of this concept and I started to look at my interactions differently with people.

Right. I started to do things like, okay, when I'm in a room talking, what are what's the impact of my conversation to the other people? Are they really listening to me? Are they tuning out? You know, are they backing up?

You know, I got bad breath. I mean, like, literally understanding on the external how what you're communicating is affecting them and being able to change that in real time based on the feedback that you're getting from the contextual signals that you receive. Right?

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.