Bringing emotional intelligence into the world of work and beyond with Trenton Moss, Founder of Team Sterka

In the second of our episodes with the infatigable Trenton Moss from Team Sterka, Yiuwin Tsang from the Beautiful Business team discovers what emotional intelligence is and why it’s one of the most important skills of business life. Emotional intelligence covers how we understand ourselves and others, what motivates each of us, why we react in different ways and how we learn, collaborate and perform.

Trenton is a business leader, trainer, and coach who inspires everyone around him to achieve more than they think they can.

His best-selling book, Human Powered was published last year. It helps you gain all the people skills and EQ you need to succeed. He's the Founder and Head Coach at Team Sterka, a training and coaching business that supercharges client-facing businesses with people skills. Previously, he spent 15 years as Founder and CEO at one of the UK's first user experience consultancies, Web Credible.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the beautiful business podcast. 

Beautiful businesses a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care, guided by a clear strategy and softly grown. 

Welcome to today's edition of the beautiful business podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang. I'm part of the beautiful business team. And in this episode, I was joined by Trenton Moss. Trenton is a business leader, trainer and coach who inspires everyone around him to achieve more than they think they can. His best selling book human powered was published last year, it helps again, all the people skills and EQ you need to succeed. 

He is the founder and head coach of Team Sterka, a training and coaching business that supercharges client facing businesses with people skills. Previously, he spent 15 years as founder and CEO, one of the UK's first user experience consultancies Web Credible. Hope you enjoy it. 

Yiuwin Tsang: 

Bringing emotional intelligence into the world of work and beyond… Tell us what you mean, when we say emotional intelligence? What is it? And why is it important? 

Trenton Moss: 

Yeah, I mean, for me, emotional intelligence is the number one skill that you need in the workplace. And it's kind of I don't really understand why kids aren't taught it in school, and why it's not integrated into the school curriculum. Imagine if it was and you know, we had generation after generation coming through into the workplace full of emotional intelligence, the working world will be so different. But essentially, what emotional intelligence is, is there's two parts to it, it's all about understanding yourself. And the second part is understanding other people. So understanding yourself in terms of your reactions to things that happen, your values, what drives you forward, what creates negative reactions from your point of view. So understanding why you behave a certain way. But then also the second part, understanding other people. So understanding what motivates them and why they're coming from where they're coming from. And given that the working world has changed from one that historically was quite siloed, through to one that's all about collaboration. 

That's why emotional intelligence is key, because you're much better off having a really high performing team with people full of emotional intelligence, who are all pretty talented, compared to a group of toxic rock stars, who just kind of are amazing by themselves. But they will never create that synergy because they're unable to work well in a team. 

So that's emotional intelligence, what it is, and I think it's incredibly important. And there was a really interesting study by like a joint study by Stanford and Harvard universities and, and they found that 85% of job success comes from having well develop people skills, people skills are just, it's all about emotional intelligence. Yeah. And obviously, the greater your skills and things like leadership and resilience and inspiring others, the more likely you are to succeed in your role and for your business to succeed. That term, toxic rockstars sounds like the worst watsapp group that you could imagine. So listen to what you're saying, That sounds a lot when you talk about understanding yourself, and recognise what your values are, what your purpose is, and then flipping that over and recognising what other people are, what drives them, or what motivates them. It brings one line towards that is a transactional analysis, where you kind of you try and understand how you respond to things to external things. And then how your response affects others in that sense. Is that is that broadly speaking, is linked to or would you say that's linked to emotional intelligence? Yes, because again, it's understanding why someone's communicating in a certain way. So look, if someone behaves in a certain way, or communicates in a certain way that really riles you, right? That upsets you or annoys you or frustrates you, it's really important that you take the time to a understand their intentions and where they're coming from. Because their intention is not to do that. That's not where they're coming from. Yes, they may do it, they may upset you or annoy you or frustrate you. But that's not their intention. So the first thing, understand where they're coming from. And the second thing is, understand why you're having that reaction. You see, there's nobody out there who has a negative impact on everyone they know in their life, right? Everyone has family and friends and people that have connections with so what is it about that person? What is it about the things that they're saying or doing that creates such a negative reaction for you that's triggering you so much. So emotional intelligence, like I'm saying it's about understanding where the other person's coming from assuming the best of intentions, and why am I reacting that way? What is it that's that's triggering me? 

And then it isn't always just about there is a really important part of understanding where people are coming from, as you say, and I love that assume that coming from a position of good, you know, from that kind of position. But the intrinsic look on yourself, Why am I reacting in that way is perhaps do you find in the work that you do? Is that the bit that perhaps people miss the people skip? What do you find? Yeah, to be honest, these people skip both of those. 

So people skip assuming the best of intentions, because if you have to communicate with someone day in day out, and it keeps not working for you, it keeps happening in a way that's negatively impacting you, it can be hard to look beyond that negative impact of that person is just horrible, that person is just rude, or that person is just annoying. And if you can find a couple of colleagues to agree with you, that reinforces your opinion. So it can be hard to look beyond that and to look for the deeper intentions, especially if it's happening day in day out. 

So people can struggle with that, you know, then you get stuck in a in a place of just being the victim, basically. And that's a horrible place to be, because then the emotional burden that puts on you. And the kind of negative energy that sucks up is just not not ideal. So people struggle with that, and they struggle with, you need to go back to your question like, understanding themselves, they equally struggle with both, in my opinion. And ideally, you've got to move on from a position of criticising other people to a more kind of empathetic place. And you've got to look at yourself and understand why, why is it that I'm reacting this way? It's really just having this conversation is making me reflect and look back at different types of work relationships we had. And this, this goes beyond just the leadership and managing people that can account with clients, I guess, in any sort of interaction with other humans. And where you find yourself in almost like a negative spiral of this continuous reinforcement of this isn't working. They're not right. I'm not right. Something's not right. And you keep on getting into this, this void. Yeah. And it's hard to get out of it. And you go into these conversations, and you enjoy the conversation. And the other person says, x, and if you are with someone that you like, and you get on really well with and that other person says X, you'd be like, okay, it's fine. I know that they're really nice. I didn't mean it. Whereas when you're with the person that always does these horrible things, oh, they said it again, they did it again. And it really agitated keeps reinforcing it. And you've got to get out of that cycle. Because the only person that suffers in that cycle, is you. Even though you're in your mind, right, that other person's wrong, they're horrible. They're this, they're that they're not suffering you are. So whilst the way they're communicating may not be working for you. And probably you should do something about it and talk to them about it and try to come to a better outcome. If you just sit there stewing on it and just continually criticise them and making them wrong. You're the one who suffers. 

Yiuwin Tsang: 

So even with that kind of, you know, self preservation view on things, you need to fix it, you need to do anything about it, you need to break that cycle, which takes us quite nicely on to that next question, really, in the world of work? What can founders what can managers do that will improve their emotional intelligence? And I guess kind of breaking that down a little bit? How do you recognise it? How do you argue or just kind of measure it? I'm a big fan of, you know, you can manage what you can measure. So how do you do that with emotional intelligence? What What advice would you give there? 

Trenton Moss: 

Well, it kind of ties back to the things I said before, like, understand yourself and understand other people. So understanding yourself having is quite simple. Just ask the people that work with you and who are in your team. And hopefully, if you've created a culture of psychological safety, and people know that they can be open and honest with you, and you're not going to get defensive. So if you create those that groundwork, you can ask them, you know, what do I do that has a negative impact on you and other people? And what are you valuing me? What do I bring to our relationship, and if you're able to have open and honest conversations with people about that, you will start to learn about yourself. And that's something that I would recommend every leader does on a regular basis to continually understand the things you're doing that are negatively impacting those around you. Another thing to do, if you are a senior leader, I'd always recommend you get coaching, proper kind of executive coaching because that is all about helping you learn about yourself and kind of peeling back the, you know, the layers of the onion, imaginary bodies and onion, and you got all these layers. And you just want to peel those back to just, again to understand yourself and what drives you and what things frustrate and annoy you. But why? Because once you start understanding why these things frustrate, and now you're upset you then you can start recognising when those things happen and knowledge is power because as soon as you realise why you're getting annoyed or frustrated or upset, it's easy to then move on to resolution EQ.

I get it, I understand why I'm feeling this way. Right? Given that that is the issue, what should I do about it, and it helps you kind of move through things. So that's the first part is knowing yourself. And as I said, the other part is about understanding other people. It's about always, always, always assuming the best of intentions. So for anyone in your team, what ever they're doing to frustrate and annoy or upset, you let you down whatever it is they may be doing. They've always always got the best of intentions. And there's about you going into understand. So if you're talking to a team member, and they're not performing well enough of something's not going right, it's not going in to kind of tell them what's gone wrong, and to tell them why it's wrong, and to tell them how they need to improve. It's not about that. It's about saying, right, what's going on? Where are you at with this? Okay, I really need you to be over here. Let's have a chat. What's happening for you? What's holding you back? What can I do to support you? And again, if you've got that psychological safety, you can get someone to hopefully open up and explain what is going on? And it's like, okay, great. You're over here. And you've got this going on. Thank you so much for sharing that. I need you to be over here. How do we resolve this? What is it we're going to do to get to that the outcome that, you know that that's going to be really good for us both. And the key thing is you never ever make the other person wrong, and you never disagree with them. So suddenly that I think, a really interesting thing to think about it. And this is interesting is to understand what the opposite of agreeing is. Because if I said to you was the opposite of agreeing, you're probably gonna say, well disagree. And that's not the case, the opposite of agreeing is not agreeing. So just because you don't agree with the other person. And just because you're not that happy with where they're at, doesn't mean you need to disagree with them.

You can not agree with where they're at. And you can say, here's where I need things to be. So how do we get a win win outcome.

And so as a leader, if you can start empathising with people in your team, really start listening, really understand where they're coming from, and talk about where you need them to get to and what success looks like for you. You can do this in a really enriching, empowering way that helps people to succeed. And I think one more story one more thing, I always like to talk about the bender triad. So the Bemba tribe is a is a tribe in southern Africa, and they got this really unique thing going on. I think it's fantastic. So if you're a member of the Benbow, child, let's say you and you, you commit some sort of crime or some sort of misdemeanour. So what the tribe does is they'll put you in, in the middle of a space, and they'll all former big circle around you, right. But the good news is, they're not going to beat you, and they're not going to shower you, and they're not going to parade you. And instead, what they do is they all take it in turns to tell you about your positive contribution to the tribe and the value that you bring to the community. And every single person in the tribe has to speak. And you have to go into detail, you have to really explain your points. It can't just be Yeah, I think you're great. It's got to be really you do this, you do that you do that. So it takes a really long time. At the end of this, have a big celebration, and then you're kind of welcome back into the tribe. So none of us are assuming bad intentions in you. We've all even though you've done some sort of crime or misdemeanour, we've all assumed the best of intentions and made that so abundantly clear to you to kind of create that psychological safety to make it clear to what you did isn't okay. But we've done it in a way that makes you feel like a hero. Sounds dreamy. And I guess kind of projecting, you know, if I was able to go back in time and replay some, perhaps some performance management conversations that we've had to have with team members, particularly junior team members as well, because arguably, they're the ones that will be most affected by how they are managed. And goodness me their future kind of outcomes even will be heavily influenced by how well or how badly they are managed. But come into those conversations, as you say, assuming with their best intentions really changes the complexion of that conversation. I'm very keen as well. I'm tempted to just explore a little bit more about this concept of psychological safety, because it seems to me to be able to have those really open and really honest conversations where people feel like they can't express themselves in a really open and honest way. The psychologically safe environment, it seems like a prerequisite how, what can managers and leaders do to encourage a psychologically safe environment for their teams? Yeah, I mean, there's so much you can do that. Yeah. So listening and and showing empathy, as I mentioned, but I think the one thing that kind of underpins it all, if you want to create psychological safety, if there's just one thing you remember, it's make them feel like a hero. So like the Berber tribe is just going into all of those conversations with the intention, I want this person to feel awesome. I want them to feel like a total hero. I want them to understand the amazing skills they have and the amazing impact that they can have. And I just want them to feel really great as a result of that. So, yes, there may be an issue around performance. So you've got to kind of stay the outcome where you want them to get to, but you don't focus on what they're doing wrong necessarily. You don't focus on making them feel bad about themselves. You just focus on that's the outcome. Right? Where are you at? Tell me about the things you're doing. Wow, that sounds great. You're really putting massive effort into this? Oh, that looks really difficult. You know, just about let's just say you've got a team member who's just struggling to hit deadlines, right. And sometimes that can be because they're just really into the detail. And they really want to make it perfect. So you could go in and say, you're not hitting your deadlines. That's not acceptable. You've got to sort it out. What are you thinking? What can we do? And immediately, you've told them why they're wrong. So there's no psychological safety. And you're probably not going to get them coming from a place of authenticity so you can understand where they're coming from. And instead, if you go and you say, right, I got to talk to you about deadlines. We're in a place where obviously, we've got to hit these deadlines, it feels like some of them have slipped with you. Yeah, I want to come up with a great solution here was what was going on? And you talk a bit. And then if it if you kind of get to the point where they said, Well, I'm just struggling to get it all done in the time. Okay. Sounds like you really care about doing the best possible work for our clients. Yeah, I really do. I just don't have enough time to make it good enough. Wow. I mean, you're going in there, you're so dedicated. You're so caring, you, like want to do this amazing work so much. You're working these long hours. Yeah, it sounds like you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself, but you just want to do this amazing job. And you say that to the other person. You're just you're making them feel like a hero. You're validating them for how they feel. And you're making them feel good about themselves. And then you can move on and say, Okay, great. I'm so glad that you've told me this stuff that that helps me really understand where you're coming from. Right? How do we get the best of both worlds here? How do we make it so that you can do amazing work that you're really proud of? And that, you know, you think is just absolutely brilliant? And hit the deadlines? What are we doing? How do we get the best of those two worlds? How do we get a win win outcome? It's really interesting trend. Because it sounds like throughout all of this process, and everything that you just described to me, there is that build up, there's that kind of that Hero Piece and making them feel good and keeping them in a place of positivity. Whilst you're assuming best intentions. There's also a part of passing it back over to them, not necessarily giving it to them entirety. But what I mean by that is, how do we fix this? What can we do? And it isn't a kind of like, what am I going to do to make you hit a deadline? It's a How can we do it? Is that right? Is that Is that intentional? Yeah, it's so much better getting them to work it out. Because then they own it. Right? It has two benefits. Number one, if you can encourage them to come up with a solution, then they own it, they buy into it, and they're obviously more likely to be motivated for it. And number two, you avoid learned helplessness. Rather than teaching them or explaining them, you're actually creating the space for them to learn. And as a leader and a manager, like like, like nice leaders and management with good intentions can often inadvertently create learn helplessness, because we're so keen to help them to support them, we don't have much time. So it's like I just come in, I'll tell you what the solution is, and you can crack on. And the person is like, Oh, wow, you're so helpful. Thank you so much, what a great manager you are. And actually, you know, you've got great intentions, and you really want to help, but because you've got the ideas in your head, and all because your time poor, you just go in and tell them what to do. And actually long term, that's not the best thing to do. Because they can't learn and develop in a way they would otherwise and stand on their own two feet. And be you get that learned helplessness, they start to rely on you for solutions. And overtime that then builds resentment. There are plenty of leaders I worked with, who had that resentment of like, everyone just looks to me for the solution. And it's like a que not that I would say this to them got to make them feel like a hero. But in my mind, I'm like, well, you're probably part of the problem that's gone in to create this situation. And so it's helping them kind of realise how their behaviour has made that happen. Again, it's that self awareness, isn't it? Because I think certainly from a founders perspective, and certainly from you know, business leaders perspective, more often than not, they want to be you know, that kind of hero role. Almost Don't worry, I'm here, you know, and in the step with their Cape flapping in the wind, and it is this first part is awareness. I suppose that they're doing it and then to stop themselves from holding back I guess in many ways. It reminds me of that I forget what the model is but where you've got those different states where you've got the adult state, which is where you want to be at or you have the parental state, you have the child state, you know, and if your forever, don't worry, I'll take care of it for you did it, then you're encouraging that child state because you're assuming the parental state. Yeah, exactly. Right. And it's the transactional analysis. Indeed, yeah. Right. Yeah. So flipping the overnight, so what what's been the, I suppose one of the biggest lessons that you've kind of seen working with high performance teams over the years over the 15 years or so and that you've been in the space when it comes to using that emotional intelligence successfully. I mean, it all comes down to culture, ultimately, and the culture comes down to predominantly the behaviour of the leader. So if you've got a leader, who generally scores high for emotional intelligence, who generally assumes the best of intentions with other people, who generally has that growth mindset of wanting to like, develop yourself, learn new things, understand why you're behaving a certain way, be very open to feedback, then that just trickles through to the team. And the people that you recruit. And the culture that then develops and becomes almost like creates keeps itself going, is generally one of high emotional intelligence. And then usually, it's quite a high performing team. And obviously, the opposite happens when you have a leader who doesn't behave in a way that demonstrates high emotional intelligence, and you get potentially then a low, lower performing team, and then things don't necessarily go Wow. So yeah, the thing I've learned is, it's all about the leader. It's just all about that person who's running the team. Sounds really good. So the last last question this bit, then Trenton, how can managers use emotional intelligence beyond work? Because I feel like there's, there's something here like that whole outlook of, you know, assuming best intentions, it sounds like just a lovely way to live your life, let alone you know, yeah, you're gonna do it with family, with friends with everyone, you know, the hardest people, the hardest times to assume the best of intention is when emotions are raised. So, yes, showing high levels of emotional intelligence can at times be difficult with family members. And like my wife once joked with me that, you know, I post on LinkedIn, you know, various things around emotional intelligence, people skills. And she was, I think this was a joke. I've heard this was a joke, because she once said to me, next time you post on LinkedIn, I'm going to post a comment to say, let me tell you how it really is with Trenton. But yeah, all this stuff we're talking about, it applies to every aspect of your life. And if you're able to keep on top of your emotions, and you're not too tired, when you're with family members, kids, partners, and so on, then you can do all of this stuff as well. I think you do have that you just meet the meet people in life generally, don't you who you just think there's a universally held view that are that yeah, that fella, he's really nice. He's just always really, you know, it's really chipper and he just gets on and you got people who just seem to get on with everyone. And I guess this goes beyond just getting on with people. But it's just understanding, as you say, how people work, what goes through their minds, and how they interact with their friends and with their associates with their colleagues and things like this. They just, they have this connection. And I feel like that's very much down to, as you say, emotional intelligence. Yeah, that's exactly it, like emotional intelligence and an empathy. So, you know, we all like to be listened to, it feels good when someone is genuinely listening to. But it feels even better when you feel like the other person understands you. And that's a really amazing thing. And there's a famous quote from Maya Angelou that I always use, which is, no one remembers what you say, but they do you remember how you made them feel. So if you're with someone, and you're demonstrating that empathy, empathy just means, you know, I get you, I get where you're coming from. So if someone's talking to you, and you just reflect back to them, the things that they said, and how that made them feel like, oh, wow, this person gets me, they've listened. And they understood, there's a quite interesting thing that goes on in your brain when that happens. So the parts of your brain that are responsible for talking about yourself, they're also responsible, believe it or not, for the thrills of food, sex, money and drug addiction. So it just feels good. When you're able to talk about your beliefs or your or something around you, around yourself, and the other person can see.

Yiuwin Tsang

I love that and I'm gonna steal that quote, and Trenton because that's all your favourite things in life basically. Thank you to Trenton Moss from Team Sterka for sharing that wonderful advice, sharing those stories and being so candid and telling them. Thank you for joining us for this week's beautiful business podcast.