290: Emotional Intelligence Under Pressure, with Dr. Russell Robinson

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Russell Robinson about why the transition into college mirrors what new hires experience in high-pressure environments like healthcare.

We explore how emotional intelligence shapes performance under stress, and how AI coaching can help people build self-awareness, manage pressure, and show up better in real moments.

• first-year transition as a proving ground for emotional intelligence
• a simple framework: results, belonging, and personal wellness
• why leader emotional intelligence drives engagement and culture
• in an AI world, human connection becomes the differentiator
• coaching, trust, and psychological safety as the future of leadership
• AI as a neutral partner to close the self-awareness gap
• real examples of in-the-moment support through prioritization and reflection
• how hiring and onboarding may shift toward emotional intelligence
• leading with curiosity, listening, and meeting people where they are

Connect with Dr. Russell Robinson on LinkedIn [ HERE ]

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Stakes

Dr. Pelè 0:07

Welcome to the human side of leadership in healthcare. I'm Dr. Pillet. On this podcast, we explore how leadership is experienced in real moments, not just defined in theory, especially in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Today we're talking about how emotional intelligence shapes the way people enter and adapt in high-pressure environments. My guest today is Dr. Russell Robinson, program director and professorial lecturer at American University. He's working at the intersection of education and AI using the My PE Coach product that we work with to support students as they transition into university life. I know this is a lot, but I have to say one more thing. There's a powerful parallel here with healthcare and with onboarding. Because success isn't just about what you know when you're coming in, it's about how people show up, especially in those real moments. Dr. Russell, welcome to the show. How are you today, my brother?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And Dr. Pele, I'm around you, my guy. So uh, you know, every time you and I sit, uh I listen and I learn. So uh you think you actually think this is your podcast, this is my podcast. I'm just gonna hang back and uh and and learn from you.

Why First Year Builds Emotional Skills

Dr. Pelè 1:30

Oh no, no, vice versa. I always learn when we talk together. But you know what, to kind of open up this uh conversation where we're sort of looking at new people entering into new environments? When you think about students entering university today, what feels most similar to you when you think about how that might be for any employee or any person who's entering into a new professional environment? What what fears may people be experiencing? What might be going on in their minds and hearts that they're gonna need some help with?

Results Belonging And Personal Wellness

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, so what I have noticed uh in this transition from doing training, learning, and development in the federal government to running an undergraduate leadership program at my alma mater American University. What I've learned is the best sandbox for learning and understanding and strengthening your emotional intelligence muscle is your undergraduate college experience, specifically your first year of college. You've got people who are in a different part of the country or in a new country. Uh they're they've gone from being a high school senior, the big man, the big woman on campus, to being a freshman. And you go, you're going in and you're starting to learn about yourself as an adult and some of the biases and norms you had growing up, you're starting to question them, good or bad. And what we're finding is uh it is a ripe spot for these young adults to learn about emotional, to learn about emotional intelligence, to really take a look at their self-awareness. And you know, we're we're a leadership development program, and and I think the way I look at leadership, on one hand, I try to go where curiosity is, but I also think you can never start too early to learn the skills that are part of your leadership toolbox. So we have a college success framework that we use with our students. Uh, if you imagine a framework of three interwoven circles, uh, the first one is your academic integrity. That's your ability to get results. What type of grades are you looking for? Major things you get, the milestones you get for graduating. The second box is building your tribe, because at the end of the day, uh people want to move in spaces and places where they are seen, they feel like they matter, they are heard, they feel like they belong. But the third circle is your personal wellness. How do you? I mean, I there are students with 4.0 averages who struggle managing uh stress, awareness, imposter syndrome. Conversely, I've got 3.4 or 3.5 students who are managing their self-awareness well. And you put those together and you get to college college success. And lastly, uh, I can take that same framework and take college off and make it leadership, right? So academic integrity becomes delivering results, building your tribe becomes building connections, personal wellness stays personal wellness, but we're very intentional about weaving personal wellness into every aspect of this leadership and young adult journey.

How Low EQ Breaks Culture

Dr. Pelè 5:12

Very interesting. You know, you've you've really, I love the the visual here where you're looking at the intellectual, the tribe, the social, and then of course, well-being. Um, I wonder how you arrived at emotional intelligence as sort of a foundation uh for all of this, you know. Um, you know, what what exactly why does emotional intelligence matter so much at the very beginning of someone's journey? You know, throughout the world.

AI Makes Knowledge Less Powerful

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, so so I would start with the I'm 56. So I would start toward the end of someone's work journey and just seeing um leaders with spans of control who uh have low self-esteem or or ridiculously high self-esteem, uh, no ability to build or desire to build interpersonal relationships, no ability to manage their stress. Uh very good on sunny days, but you put them in darkness and put them in conflict, a totally different person, and that impacts the decisions they make. This is emotional intelligence. And at an individual level, that can have upsides and downsides. But if you've got a span of control for 400 and from the top, the leader cannot is making decisions from a space of I cannot manage my stress, or I only know how to solve a specific kind of problem, that has a bad impact for organizational culture. And and I'm a b I'm a believer of how you treat anybody is how you treat everybody. And if you're exhibiting a lack of emotional intelligence or a lack of self-self-awareness at work, odds are you're doing it at home too. So, you know, I look at uh I look at my research, I look at other research in the employee engagement game. Whenever I talk to people, uh, a group of people, and I'll say, hey, close your if it's a student event and their parents in the room, hey, everybody, close your eyes. Think about your best job and your worst job, right? The research and the data is clear are clear. The difference between a good job and a bad job, the data is most times going to say it's your relationship with your supervisor. The biggest driver of a good and bad relationship with the supervisor is the supervisor's emotional intelligence. And if we understand that, you know, Klaus Schwab, uh former CEO of the World Economic Forum and the book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, came out about 2015, 2016, still good today. But basically, he says that the goal for organizations, and I was in the federal government and agencies, is the goals are to empower your customers and empower your employees. And I can go down a different route on why that's important, but the common denominator, the special ingredient to empowering your customers and empowering your employees are having emotionally intelligent leaders.

Dr. Pelè 8:23

Wow. Wow, you know, and it's funny because it's a little counterintuitive in a world where knowledge itself by itself seems to have such fame and priority with people.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Uh what that's getting scary, right? That's getting scary, polite, Dr. Pale. That's getting scary because in an AI world, you're taking knowledge out, right? And uh, you know, I guess I guess I'm throwing book titles out now. So my guy, Rick Rubin, for the for the people my age, Def Jam Rick Rubin, you know, public enemy, LL Cool J, but also Johnny Cash, he was talking about this aspect of AI is a beautiful thing if you're a creative, right? If if you know how to think outside the box, if you know how to answer questions that aren't asked, if you know how to build connections and have relationships, AI is great. If you are the knowledge is power person, I have all the answers, I have the knowledge, it could be a scary place.

Coaching Trust And Psychological Safety

Dr. Pelè 9:26

Yeah, yeah. And you know, in fact, I one of the one of my favorite things that I feel about AI is that it has sort of democratized knowledge. So that's no longer the point. The point now is your emotional intelligence and your inner personal connection with people. But on that, on that point, um, it almost seems as though we are at a point where you're suggesting that people need support in the moment. They need coaching in the moment about these emotional intelligence things. It's not enough to just know these things. You're suggesting that you, your students and people in general need these things with them to get that support. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Um what I mean by that is okay, Gallup, McKenzie, the the people in the Josh Burson, the people in the talent management, ODL, IO Psychology Field talk about this need for leadership. The future of leadership is the leader has to be a coach, right? Um, and what that gets to is to be a coach, there's an underlying aspect of, well, you need to have trust. But to be a coach, you have to create a culture, a space where there is psychological safety, where there is vulnerability, where if I am feeling stressed out over X, Y, or Z, there is this assumption, and let's say you're my supervisor, we're doing check-ins, we become psychologically safe, we're becoming vulnerable. Um, you've created this coaching relationship where I can say, Hey, I've kind of got this going on. Help me navigate this, or in this certain situation, I can only bring you a five out of 10 from my presence. There's also this aspect where if you're doing check-ins as a leader, you're like, Well, I know what's going on with this work project. I also know, I also know Russ is stressed out because his son's getting married in a couple of weeks. How can I be the better person and understand this wellness is playing a role in how he is presenting himself in work. But if you're the supervisor, how is your wellness impacting yourself at work? 56 years old. I got out, I tell my students, 1991, when I got out of college, the assumption was what goes on in life, you know, doesn't change for anybody. The assumption in 1991, 1992, when I entered the work world, was whatever's going on and impacting you at home, you check that at the door when you walk in and you give me your best. And I think with these Gen Z, and I believe the Gen Alphas come come after that, we've raised these kids where you create these safe spaces where they can talk about the good and bad aspects of them from a mental health and well-being standpoint. And at the end of the day, uh a leader, a really good leader, finds a way to be accountable, deliver results, but also meet people where they are and understand how they are presenting themselves that day in that moment in the workplace.

Closing The Self-Awareness Gap

Dr. Pelè 12:54

Yeah, you make a really good, you know, picture, uh, image in my mind, anyway, um, of how a coach can do such a great job with an individual when it's a human coach, right? Um, and you know, one of the things I know you're very excited about, I'm excited about, is the fact that with an AI coach, not only can you approximate some of those kinds of connections and conversational realities, but now you can scale that to, you know, how many students are we talking about here? 50, 100, 1000, right? That's gotta be the real power here is the ability to scale.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Um, so there's one, one you can scale. Uh two, I think where where I think the sweet sauce is, is the role cognitive dissonance plays in this. And here's what I mean. Um I'm three times the age of my students. If you ask me if I'm self-aware when I was 18, I'd be like, yeah. Scale of 1 to 10, I'm a nine out of 10. And then I get to 30 and be like, you know, 18, I was maybe like a five out of ten, but I'm a nine out of ten now. And then at 40, the pattern continues. So what ends up happening is people tend to believe they are self-aware, right? Oh, God bless the person who comes up and says, I'm not self-aware, right? But most people tend to believe they're self-aware. What AI has the ability to do is to close that gap. But if if if you're willing to go there, it has the ability to be this independent third independent third party to help close the gap where you can say, uh, right, all of my work was done. I got A's on all my papers, I'm only sleeping two hours a night. Uh, I I can't stand my roommate. Give me some, or, or I've got uh an outstanding tuition bill, how to, or I've got I've somehow I'm a part of eight different clubs. How do I manage my time? So you get this opportunity to close the gap between how self-aware I think I am and how self-aware my data tends to say that I am. Um from a scaling standpoint, listen, if you're a CLO, this is this is magical, right? If you're a CLO, uh if you're a CLO, you can literally uh you know our format, Dr. Pillet, right? We you take your assessment, we give you a couple hours of coaching with an executive coach, you can take that data and then feed that into your AI tool, and it can say, hey, Russ, you're really good at self-perception. Here's what's happening when you're overusing that muscle, right? Here's some things you need to be on alert about. Russ, uh here's some things you can do to work on your stress management. And as your AI tool starts to become more personal with you, then in essence, how do I say this? Uh the way you see yourself is what you see in the room, right? So I'm looking to the I'm looking at the corner of my office here. That's all I can see. The AI tool opens up the aperture to everything, and that can make you a a a more rounded person in the space I am, a more rounded leader, more rounded student. And going forward, these are this the students who go into the workplace and they're looking for they're they're starting to ask the questions to understand whether their supervisor is really a coach or whether they're just saying that, or what type how what role does culture play? And then they're gonna be. I remember when I first started supervising at 27, and I got my first leadership book at 30. So, you know, you you don't really know what you're doing, but this is starting to build the leadership muscle earlier and earlier in someone's journey.

Real-Time Support For Stress And Time

Dr. Pelè 17:20

I love your uh the the aperture thing. You know, this is your world, your emotional intelligence, your awareness is here. All of a sudden, when you have an AI as a coach or partner, you're looking at this because it can bring other things. You know, one thing I wanted to to kind of focus us, uh, our conversation in on is this idea of in-the-moment support. So, for example, if you think about leadership anywhere or even in healthcare, again, it's not what you know, it's what you do under stress. It's what you do when things are are real and they're happening. Give us an example, like paint us a picture how your students, for example, um, might need like what exam put us in a place where a real example of where students are experiencing something where they need that in-the-moment support.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yeah, so uh so I think what I see from an EI standpoint is uh a lot of a lot of students are overscheduled. Overscheduled. Um and you're coming from the high school rubric where it was an assembly line, right? Every moment of every day was pretty much mapped out, and now you may just have two hours of class and you may overschedule yourself, and you may have assignments. We've had students who can feed into AI, feed into the AI tool. Hey, help me prioritize, right? I had a student who talked about his AI session with the coach, the AI tool helped them help him come up with lists. I have lists so I can knock things out. What we do focus in the emotional intelligence is emotional intelligence in is now the AI tool is like, here are the things you can do to also manage your stress. So let's make sure you are carving out that time to sleep. Or we actually had where the AI recommended to a student, uh, the student shared their their journal because we we have our students do journaling. Key, you know, reflection is big for leadership. Um, but what the AI tool noticed was the student's journaling was always veered toward being in stress or being negative. So the AI tool actually said, hey, add a prompt where you just say who or what you're grateful for, right? And this this starts to work toward this optimism, right? If you're looking, let's go back to emotional intelligence, your stress management gets into it's either exacerbated or skewed positively or negatively by are you a glass half full person or are you a glass half-empty person? In the workplace, uh who would you rather work for somebody where at any point of uncertainty they are the sky is falling, gloom and doom, or that person who is like, Yeah, you know, we we've never seen a problem like this before, but we've encountered new problems and we know how to get through it. So it's getting it's working at a level that not a lot of leadership is happening. Um most leader, I mean, later on in life, like mid-career, where you're getting into reflection and people have achieved the milestones that they had put out early in their life, and they're finding I'm not as happy as I thought I would be, or my relationships are not as solid as I thought I would be, or for all of my intelligence, I am tripping my career up for some reason. Yeah, these are the things that bringing this uh awareness and EI early, and and here's the deal great in the early stages of the adulting journey, right? Yeah, this aspect of young adults, it's self-awareness. I said this earlier, but it's a great sandbox for the 18 to 20 year old 20 more 18 to 22 year old to learn and focus on emotional intelligence because they're gonna be able to relate it to everything.

Dr. Pelè 21:43

Yeah, no, you make a great point that you know, frankly, leadership begins earlier than we think, and we need to prepare people for this. Now, you're launching the my PE coach, formerly known as Seiji, with your students. Um, now what made you believe that? AI could play a meaningful role in emotional intelligence development. I mean, right now, if you survey people, what is AI? They go, oh, that thing that's gonna take away my job? Oh no, or you know, it's like there's 500 viewpoints about AI, but what made you believe that a coach in your pocket could really make the difference for students?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Uh well, I'm curious. You know, I'm curious. Uh I tend to believe that every new thing that comes out, right? So um my research is in employee engagement, right? My doctor's in human organizational learning, my focus is employee voice, employee silence, and employee engagement. So maybe I have to pre-COVID, maybe about six or seven years ago, the the thing was the pulse survey, more than the more than the annual survey. And what you find with with pulse surveys and other things, they're just tools. And all these tools do, these tools make you more good or bad. They make you more of what you were good or bad as a leader. So when I see AI, when I see AI, I'm looking at it from a curiosity standpoint. How do we make this, how do we make this beneficial? And what I found was um you can scale, right? You can scale it to a broader group of employees.

Dr. Pelè 23:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Um, so you can go broad, but for that individual employee, you can also go deeper. Yes, yes, so you get this two for one that if you I go back to the chief learning officer, if you are a chief learning officer who is curious about AI, um, you're going to find it can be very uh very beneficial in your organizational and your individual employees talent management journey.

Dr. Pelè 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

If you view it from a place of fear, uh then you're then you're gonna you're not going to have the right impact. Uh and I think if I am receiving coaching, EI coaching, I'm in a sense, I'm limited to the knowledge of that individual coach. And what I'm saying is, let's not replace that coach, let's take that coach and add in data and research from a world of coaches and consultants. And I tend to think if you do it halfway well, you're creating a beneficial opportunity for your employees, for your workforce, for your culture.

Dr. Pelè 25:05

Absolutely. You know, you are a pioneer, I think you're a leader in this idea of bringing AI into the educational space at this early phase, right? Um, you know, I wonder if if you're if you look forward five years from now, ten years from now, what excites you about the a future in which the ideas you're pioneering right now may actually become what most people do, meaning bringing AI in as a great onboarding and coaching tool.

The Future Of Onboarding And Hiring

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah, so I kind of go kind of I kind of go gotta go in a different direction to bring it back home. Um in the in the learning and development space, the belief the solution to everything is training. If we want to address DEI, we gotta get training. We want to employ, we want to address employee engagement, we gotta get training. If we want to address mental health and well-being, we gotta set up yoga and Pilates classes, right? But what I'm thinking is if you, and it's very small scale, right? Uh I got a blip, uh, I got a three-year program where we will have a blip of 60 people. But what I'm gonna have is I'm gonna have every year a cycle of 20 seeds going out into the workforce who are looking at the talent management prospect. I mean, sorry, talent management process. Because they're thinking about this as they're interviewing and selecting organizations and onboarding and training and developing promotion, being promoted, offboarding. But then when they get into those managerial and supervisory roles, hey, um instead of hiring somebody and teaching them emotional intelligence, why don't we ask emotional intelligence-based questions during the interview process? So we can already start to bring that person in. Then you're gonna get to the point where, you know, whatever AI is from five or six years from now, that's gonna be the tool where the organization can say, hey, here's what we're gonna do in your development as a person, as an employee. Let's go back to Klaus Schwab. Here's what we're gonna do to empower you to own some of your process as you develop as uh as an employee and as a leader. And what you're gonna find is, you know, the as a professor, um, I talk about the late great congressman John Lewis a lot. He had a quote that said, if you don't study your history, you tend to think everything you do is unique. Right. But what I have found is people have always struggled with mental health and and well-being challenges or the adjustment to college or this aspect of adulting, whatever AI is. And uh uh what I know, what I know as a Gen X that my students don't know is they've been trained right now to get you get you get your 4.0, you get your grades, you do a bunch of internships, life's a straight shot. Yeah, you're gonna meet and marry the right person, uh, you're gonna have the correct amount of kids, the correct amount of pets, you're gonna, you're not gonna have any health challenges. Uh every boss you work for is gonna have emotional intelligence, uh, and you find that's not it, right? You find that that is not it. But at the end of the day, what we find is if you create this space where you are self-aware and you build relationships. Because I tell my second-year students, like, look, when I was your age, my grades were everything. I don't remember class I took my second year of college. I don't I know what my GPA was, I don't remember grades, but here's what I learned about you, here's what I learned about myself during this period. Here, here are the connections I made. And you're gonna get to a point in life where your ability to manage your wellness and build connections is those are gonna be just as important as your ability to deliver results. You could be mid-career and learning that, or you can be this young adult that's practiced this this skill set and this tool. And by the time uh life comes at you, you are ready, you know how to stay medium through all of the peaks and valleys.

Dr. Pelè 29:55

Yeah, no, I I hear you. You know, um as a closing reflection, you know, we've talked a lot about the the recipient of this this AI coaching and uh the you know the emotional intelligence support. If you could give one advice, one piece of advice rather, to either, you know, other university uh leaders or healthcare leaders or anyone onboarding new employees or new students, what would that one piece of advice be?

Final Reflections And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Uh well again, I'm I'm an employee voice researcher. So I bring voice into how I teach. I have to. Uh I'm a Gen Xer teaching Gen Z, right? We did we did a check-in yesterday. Uh, what was the last concert you went to? I mean, listen, I know more about K-pop than uh than a black 56-year-old grandfather should know. Uh, you know, but you you have to meet people where they are. You have to be curious, you have to meet people where they are. Now you also have to hold them accountable. And I think a lot of the challenge I've seen, and maybe this is getting into a little bit of culture, culture design, is a lot of times we define the bar here, we define the culture here, we define the leadership here. And the students, the new hires, the team are here, and we're not doing anything to meet them where they are and bridge that gap. Yeah, and it really takes a matter of slowing down, being curious, creating the space where you can ask questions and not ask questions from a space of validation, but ask questions from a space of learning. Because when you do that, that's when you are bringing people in. Uh, I I tell my students, uh, we are co-con we are co-creators in this process. Uh, this is something you own as much as I do, and they give me great ideas. Great. Hey, uh, we appreciate podcasts, you know, as opposed to the traditional books. How do we weave this in? Um, so it really gets to meeting people where they are, being curious, listening, also saying where accountability is. Uh I have friends who don't want anything to do with Gen Z's, and I think they're fantastic. Like the the way they see the world is nothing like the way I see the world in a sense. But at the end of the day, uh people want to feel like they value, they matter, they can be safe, they can be creative, they feel like they are heard. How you do it changes. And I mean, there's a fascinating, there are a couple fascinating generations coming into the workplace. And if you give them the space to be heard, share their ideas, and share some of these tools where you make their wellness journey uh a little easier, I think you're gonna see phenomenal results.

Dr. Pelè 33:13

Yeah. No, I I hear you. Hey, Dr. Russell, uh, we could talk for a long time because you're just a fountain of knowledge and passion about this topic. I want to thank you for spending some time with us here today and really sharing this information about something brand new, really, that uh I think is gonna be big coming forward. Thank you, Dr. Russell.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Dr. Pillet, you're in a you're in a great space, man. I always like talking, I always like talking with you because it's a creation space, right? You're you're not trying, you're not trying to shoehorn people into a conversation or an answer you already have. Yeah, it's much more from a learn learn learning and curiosity space. So much respect to you and and the work you you're doing in this this healthcare space and with PE.

Dr. Pelè 34:03

All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Russell. We'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Yes, sir.