EQ Pt. 7

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens and today we'll discuss why building empathy and connection is intentional, why in difficult times leaders must manage their emotions, and why we often listen to respond rather than

to understand. Enjoy the show.

Another part of this is a focus on building empathy and connection. Right? Because when you become aware of your emotions and you can regulate those now, you know, your goal is to see from the other person's perspective and with that information try to make a connection with the way you deliver your communication. Yep. Right.

You know, any any thoughts on that too?

Yeah. It's important, man. The words you use, again, understanding your tone is important. Understanding your audience, right? Understanding who are you representing?

Yeah, it's all of those things are key. And again, right, what I wanna encourage is that each opportunity is a lesson and a,

you know,

know, it's an opportunity for you to practice, right? We just we have to look at it like that. Not gonna be you just get it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah and I think one good important point about this too is that building empathy and connection needs to be something that's intentional. So many times, again, you'll start to develop this as you really focus on emotional intelligence, but so many times we get into these conversations where we're just so focused on making our point and being right Yep. That we're completely disconnected from the other person's point of view. And our intention is not to try to connect with them, but it's trying to win over them. Right?

What we're saying is point. Yeah. What we're saying is utilize empathy by seeing it the other from the other person's perspective to try to be intentional about making a connection with them by managing your emotions and your delivery in the way that you do that. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And because here's the thing, right? Less collaborate. Right?

Let let us come to an agreement. On how we move forward. Present the data, you can present your heartfelt intent. But I think to your point, Ralph, I think the most effective way to exercise that empathy is to listen, is to listen. And I'm just speaking from personal experience.

I come from a big family and my wife tells me all the time, I believe you coming from a big family, sometimes you don't understand, you may just be jumping in and not letting someone complete with their thought. And so I try to be very cognizant of that and just sit and let people have complete thoughts, right? Let them share their complete idea and not, here's the

one thing too, Ralph, I

think we've talked about this before. We're looking to respond, right? We're looking for a moment to respond, worsening, listening to comprehend.

Right.

Right, you're taking in all the information and everything you hear, you're building a rebuttal versus listening in a way that says, okay, let me, I wanna understand this. I wanna, I want to really digest it. Let me take it in. Mhmm. Right?

Mhmm. And don't listen for debate sake. Mhmm. Right? And I think that's what a lot of us do because we have an idea or an opinion and a strong opinion about something.

Yeah. Yeah. And and typically that behavior comes because we wanna win. It's me against you. I'm gonna take everything anything that you give me that I could turn around and use it to win against you instead of having empathy to try and an intention to build a connection so that we can have an outcome where we both win.

That's good. That's good.

Yeah. And then, there's also a focus for emotional intelligence in the workspace, right? So, using EQ in leadership is going to basically help you to lead people and get them to move in a certain direction. Right? When you understand, from their point of view, when you can, and as a leader remembering that, you know, we all have a role to to accomplish the goals of the company and you have to unify people in that direction where everybody has their own, what am I trying to say?

Everybody may have their own ideas and thoughts about how you get there, but being able to unify people in one direction to achieve one goal is the whole purpose of leadership. Right? And you do that through serving. Well, the best way to serve is to be, empathetic and build connection with people. Right?

So that you can tie them to the vision and move them forward. So it helps with your teamwork, and it eventually helps with your career success as well. Any thoughts on that too?

No. Ralph, spot on, man. Yeah. I I wouldn't I wouldn't change a thing. Your ability to influence is going to highly depend on your ability to you know, really stay even keel.

I think that's what EQ does. It allows you to, manage in the difficult times, right? And I also think it allows you to, because in the difficult times, right, your team wants your input and they wanna know that they can rely on it, that it's not selfish, that it's not, know, one of the things that I love about, and I heard Bill George on a podcast years ago, years, years, years ago. And what drove me to get this book is he said, look, I've seen leaders where things are going bad and those leaders would do anything to save themselves and they'll let the whole ship go down. They're gonna let you, everybody's going, if they're going down, they're gonna let everyone go down.

And so one of the critical things that he brought out in that is, is because a lot of these guys have never, or even ladies, have never experienced failure before. So they don't know how to deal with it.

That's good.

So when they have a challenge, they don't have the emotional intelligence to deal with it. So all they're doing is all that blood is going to their legs, man and they're trying to get out of there. They're trying to save themselves however they can and if that means sacrificing you Alright. You up next.

Yeah. And that's a tip for everybody out there. If you are serving under a leader who has displayed that type of behavior before in the past, it's probably not gonna be too long before you see it again. So keep that in mind. Keep that in mind.

Alright.

And that's that's yeah. But that's it. That's that's, you know, that's really what I see. The ability in difficult times to lead and then here's the thing, in times when it's great, they allow you to be free and go execute, go find your true north, right? Because those leaders aren't going to micromanage you.

They're going to trust what they hired you for.

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.