MasterStroke with Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak

Conversational Intelligence - Enhancing Leadership and Innovation -with Mara Teyolia

• Marla Teyolia • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Unlock the secrets of fostering trust and innovation through the power of Conversational Intelligence (CIQ) with our latest guest, workplace strategist and holistic executive coach, Marla Teyolia  Founder of the Culture Shift Agency

In this episode of MasterStroke Monica and Sejal discuss with Marla the groundbreaking CIQ framework developed by Judith Glasser, revealing how our conversations act as energetic exchanges that can either calm or activate our nervous systems.

Discover the critical intersections between personal development and effective leadership as Marla emphasizes the importance of managing stress across all aspects of life. They discuss how unresolved personal issues can bleed into professional interactions and the power of personal development in leadership roles. Marla offers practical strategies like journaling to identify and address limiting mindsets, highlighting the benefits of emotional regulation and inclusive workplace cultures. With Marla's calming presence and invaluable wisdom, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you thrive both personally and professionally.


















 




Georgianna Moreland - Creator, Executive Producer & Managing Editor;
Matt Stoker - Editor


Marla Teyolia:

I've seen people walk in to corporations healthy, having had their you know physicals and a year later, through the amount of stress and armoring up they've had to do, they have high blood pressure, they're pre-diabetic, they have high cholesterol. Right, and heightened cortisol, like chronic cortisol levels over a period of time, predispose us to those three metabolic factors high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol. There's real impacts to us. Not being true to ourselves.

Georgianna Moreland:

This is Masterstroke with Monica Enid and Sejal Petrazak H Zak.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Well, welcome everyone. We're super excited to have an exciting guest today. Marla Teolia is a workplace strategist and holistic executive coach. She's got 20 years of leadership development and group facilitation experience and is passionate super passionate about empowering individuals and teams to help us all think about and assess how we think, behave, work and how we can make lasting impact for both our personal and our professional lives. So how does Marla do it? She uses what's called a conversational intelligence framework, ciq, to leverage the power of neuroscience and language to establish high levels of trust that trigger growth and innovation.

Monica Enand:

Oh, thank you so much, sejal, and thank you, marla, for being here with us.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Yeah, thank you.

Monica Enand:

Sejal and I have talked a lot about different types of executive coaching and ways that we can up our game, so I can't wait to hear more from you. I'm dying to know because you know I feel like I've been exposed to lots of different types of coaching and therapy and all kinds of different ways to increase trust, and you know psychological well-being and psychological safety. We've had all these good conversations about it in the workplace but, I've never heard of conversational intelligence, so I'm dying to know.

Monica Enand:

can you tell us a little bit about what is conversational intelligence?

Marla Teyolia:

For sure. It's one of the frameworks that I use and it was pioneered in the executive kind of leadership development space by a woman by the name of Judith Glasser, who has since passed away, but it's based on the notion that conversations are essentially energetic and electrical communications between people. Right? So if you think about, and electrical communications between people, right. So if you think about, I can guarantee every one of us has been in a conversation where something that the person says puts us on guard. Right, we immediately say, oh, it could be tone, it could be word choice. There's something about that communication that is conveyed to me on an energetic level that I need to protect myself.

Marla Teyolia:

And so what happens is that our neuro systems really get activated, so much so that it's called an amygdala hijack. Right, we go into this part of our brain that says, oh, fight, flight, freeze or fawn, this system gets activated, and what happens is that it actually diminishes our executive functioning. Where creativity lives, where trust lives, where good decision-making lives, and if we can be conscious about how we are showing up in space, like our own energy field, how we are showing up as leaders that can prime our teams and individuals for trust and creativity and to get the best out of them, because their nervous system is calm, around us, right, it's settled, and when we are in that calm, settled place, we have so much more access to various parts of our brains to do the best work possible, right. So that is one of the frameworks that I use, and I think it's important to name that, while Judith Glasser pioneered this work in corporate spaces, it's very much based on indigenous knowledge and systems of being.

Monica Enand:

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I've read a number of business books and that are concepts that come in business training and then we learn that, oh, these concepts have existed for thousands of years, these things have been around for thousands of years, they just got a different name put on it and then put in our business school press and it's like it's actually not new news to the human race.

Marla Teyolia:

It's not right, and so, for me, I really one of my purposes is to bring these ancient technologies and merge them with real cutting edge wisdom and neuroscience to be able to have us be like our most empowered selves and to create deep impact. Right, Because we, as leaders, we are in charge of supporting other people to reach their highest potential.

Monica Enand:

You know something you said. I think that's really important because what I've also this was news to me and I'm only saying I know you already know this, but I'm only saying this for our listeners because I learned this sort of I think, late in life. Like I learned that you know when you're amygdala, you know you have this lizard brain and that when your amygdala is activated, that you know. Because they've looked at brains under fMRI machines, we now know that you know the other parts of your brain can't activate at the same time, like when you say loss of executive function, like when your amygdala is firing, the frontal lobe is shutting down, right, and we know this now with science and I mean really cool fMRI machines to know that this is absolutely true, right?

Marla Teyolia:

And I think that what you're pointing to is science has shown us that. But part of my work with leaders is to remind us that we actually have a body that's giving us that information, that we actually have a body that's giving us that information that we don't need quote science to validate. And our body is an incredible source of wisdom, and so, a lot of times, my work with individuals is to get them to slow down so that they can begin to listen to what their body's wisdom is trying to tell them. Right, and our bodies know before our brains know and can make sense of it from an intellectual place. Right? And so I call this work energy maintenance work, because, ultimately, we are vital sources of energy.

Marla Teyolia:

We are energy in human form, and so, in order to be able to get to that place where you are conscious of what's happening in your mindset right, the scripts that you're telling yourself or you're conscious of wow, I'm approaching a certain conversation and I've got butterflies in my stomach and I'm feeling really nervous, right. Or oh, my hands are really sweating in this conversation and I'm feeling really nervous, right? Or oh, my hands are really sweating in this conversation and I'm actually feeling like I need to. I'm a little. Some fear is getting activated. That's all information, and if you can notice what the body is telling you, you can begin to tend to it and disrupt it. Live in the moment so that you can show up in a much more calm and centered and grounded place.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

So can I ask, Marla, let's suppose you're about to meet with somebody or give a speech or give a presentation or do something that is making your hands sweat or is making you feel those butterflies in your stomach or your heart pound what are some, if any, quick tricks that we can tell our listeners on ways to be able to have that notion of calm?

Marla Teyolia:

So I think it's something that happens prior to that moment. Right, I'm not going to say that it's too late once you're there. But one thing about anxiety if it goes into anxiety, anxiety actually is a physiological response that has to see its way through, and so anxiety is something where you might start shaking. You're feeling like your nervous system is really activated and you feel like, oh, I'm getting out of breath. We don't want folks to get to that place, and so what I encourage is that you begin to have, uh, build practices in your daily life that build that muscle. So, the way you would go to a gym, you wouldn't go in and lift the heaviest weights, right, when you get there. Right, it's something you're going to build over time and so, with leaders, a lot of it. It's, it's simple practices. Can you start your day with just 15 minutes, five minutes? Even? Start small and just sit silently, eyes closed, and you could put on a timer and just notice that you have a body that breathes.

Monica Enand:

First a couple of thoughts on what you're saying. I have definitely felt like, as I've learned more about being in high pressure situations as a CEO, giving presentations, as Sejal says, or really critical meetings walking into critical meetings We've done that, both of us. Or really critical meetings walking into critical meetings We've done that, both of us. And I guess I wish I had met you. But I had to learn sort of the hard way how to try to calm myself down, and a lot of you know, I think what I do is a lot of breathing, is I try to like breathe deeply, to kind of tell my whatever my sympathetic nervous system or my parasympathetic, I'm not sure which one, but just to tell my nervous system to like calm down and to relax. But what I want to say is like I somehow feel like when you say anxiety is a physiological response of course it's physiological I sometimes feel like in our society we forget that, like you said, simply that we have a body, but we also forget that our mind is attached to that body and that actually all those things that are happening in your body come from your mind, like your mind is telling your body to do those things for good reason. It's trying to protect you from, you know, a bear or a lion or whatever why we evolved the way we did, but it is trying to protect you from social ostracization or whatever.

Monica Enand:

The other thing that I thought about while you were talking is I've spent all this time doing presentations, being in high-stress business situations and realizing that, yeah, I need these little tactics.

Monica Enand:

But to me, one thing I've learned is that those tactics are useful in all aspects of my life. Like Sejal, you've got to have learned this too right that, like, whatever you use to calm yourself down for a high stress interview, you know I now play a little competitive pickleball in my neighborhood. I mean not at a high level, but just, you know, neighborhood pickleball. But it's still stressful because people are watching you, your team is counting on you and right before the serve I have this habit now, like people have established these routines Right before I serve, I just take this huge deep breath and sometimes people say, gosh, were you really nervous? And I think no, I'm not nervous. I'm trying not to get nervous, like, as you said, marla, I'm trying to head that off. Like I know that it can be stressful and I'm trying to, like, calm my body down so that I can be calm enough to hit the ball.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Well, but one of the things that's interesting, monica, is for anybody who feels it, isn't it true, that the nervousness or the anxiety or the worry Is before, but then, once you're in it, you don't even have a mind to think about all of that because you're so focused on being in it.

Monica Enand:

Once you can get into the zone, but it's actually hard to get into the zone, I think.

Marla Teyolia:

Yeah, and I think you know what you're saying, monica is for me, a core tenet of my work is that you get to be a whole human being being right. So when we're dealing with executive coaching, I guarantee when we start addressing some of your core issues and core ways of how you're speaking to yourself, limitations of how you're engaging with other people, people start to see themselves in their personal lives and in their professional lives and realizing oh, I'm actually doing this all over the place, right, like it's very rare that you have one maladaptive behavior that just shows up in one part of your life. That's just not how it works.

Monica Enand:

I try to tell my husband that all the time, and so Give that maladaptive. I'm just starting to use the word maladaptive behavior. Let's see how that goes over my head.

Marla Teyolia:

Right that Ultimately, it's just like what's driving you right, like there's something that's driving the way you're showing up. And I had one client years ago. He was a VP at a tech company and we got to an edge of how he was engaging with certain members of his team where he did not really respect them and their viewpoints and what was showing up and it was also very cultural as well, like some kind of I call them wounds, right, it's like this big ouch that happened to you and that you are perpetuating in the workplace. That often comes from a it's usually early childhood. There's some cultural context, there's something that has happened to you that has created some kind of way of being, and typically that has roots way earlier in your history.

Marla Teyolia:

And I want to be clear that you know I was trained therapeutically but I'm not a therapist, right, and there's a line between therapy and coaching that needs to be respected and but what's helpful is to understand oh, wow, there's something here that is driving a behavior, and it's usually based on some kind of wound. If it's deep seated, I actually may need to go to therapy for it. If it's something that actually I'm able to transform on my own with some support, but it's moving into the future. Okay, I may not have to go to therapy, but what happened in that situation was he identified how he was engaging with a certain member of his team and it was very oppressive, and he started. He came back a few weeks later and said, oh my God, I'm seeing how I'm speaking to my wife and my child when I'm frustrated. And he couldn't unsee that anymore, right? And so there's beauty in being able to see it, because then you can transform it. Right.

Marla Teyolia:

We are humans who are walking around with lots of stuff because we are just people in this world and there's things that have happened to us, and I think that I really hold our healing as a core leadership development responsibility. What would the world be like if our leaders were healed and doing their own work? Wow, what a different world we would be in, right? And so I really hold personal development and healing as a core leadership responsibility, because how you show up in these maladaptive ways will impact your teams, will impact how you lead right, and I was thinking about a client recently who she was really hard driving, and I think when we are in corporations where productivity and the bottom line is really ever-present stress and a goal and a marker for us. She was so hard-driving. Her team never felt that whatever they did was never enough. When we started doing PAC, you can imagine there was a parental wound there that she was never enough for her mom right Like that's where it was coming from.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

What are some practices that I can do, you know, to help me uncover that if I have some kind of limiting mindset or some kind of a challenge, what are some of those things that they can do?

Marla Teyolia:

Yeah, great question. So typically, when folks come to me, there's a specific issue that they're wanting to address, right? So I'll use an example of a woman executive VP at a tech company and she had come to me with really feeling like she needed to step more powerfully into her role. That was given to her, but she didn't feel she was really stepping into it powerfully. What I heard was I'm kind of disconnected from my power and agency in that her work and it's an activity that I give her homework.

Marla Teyolia:

When we start to peel back the layers around, hmm, what's driving this behavior is to keep a journal right. You could have it be a physical journal, like even just a sheet of paper next to you every single day at work for at least two weeks, or you can do it in an online journal, and she basically started deconstructing every day. How did I show up? Where did I feel that I kind of pulled back from my power? What meetings did I feel good in? What did I not feel good in? And try to identify how she was speaking to herself in that moment. The way we speak to ourselves can be really abusive and it also is very irrational, right, like our rational brain as adults knows like oh my God, that's so ridiculous. Of course it's safe for me to say X, y, z, but in the moment it doesn't feel that way.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Showing emotion, showing empathy at work, you know, is generally not done. I mean it is, but people used to think in the past that it was not a good thing and it's criticized. So what has changed now? And how do you guide leaders to say it's okay to show vulnerability or empathy or emotion?

Marla Teyolia:

Yeah, I think, first and foremost in the coaching space, because it's such a sacred, confidential space. Giving them permission to access their own emotions is where it starts. So if you are not acknowledging your own emotional tapestry and landscape, you're not going to be able to acknowledge it for anybody else, and so that's where it becomes almost like a checkoff list. You see people who are like I'm supposed to be supportive and empathic, but you're not even empathic with yourself. And do you think that the workforce is changing?

Marla Teyolia:

I'm not necessarily suggesting is that we become quote emotional in the workspace. What I'm suggesting is that we honor that we are, have emotions and have we are emotional beings and that we need to learn how to engage with our emotions and learn to engage with other people and connect with people, understanding that they have emotions, and that we want to create real trust and cultures of inclusion and where folks feel that they can be seen and supported. It Right, and so there is also, I think, a new wave of folks entering the workplace who have expectations that their emotional wellbeing is also going to be part of the conversation, and some industries more than others, right, I think there are some very still traditional industries where you may not see this as much.

Monica Enand:

I want you to expand, if you don't mind, on something you said. You said I'm not saying we should be emotional at work, but that we should acknowledge that we have emotions. We're humans and humans have emotions, and it's part of our power, it's part of our humanity. What do you mean by not being emotional at work?

Marla Teyolia:

What I mean is that I have witnessed I also have developed a lot of inclusion coaching programs in companies and sometimes our tears can be weaponized. We need to be really conscious of how we utilize our emotions in spaces, sometimes to get what we want, and it is okay. I've been in meetings where folks have cried and said I need a minute, I'm really emotional, there's something really coming up for me, right. That is totally fine, because you are a human being who has emotions. It's a very different dynamic when your emotions have gotten so heightened that you're so upset. It's gotten the best of you and it's actually driving maladaptive behavior. That's different and I've seen both happen, right.

Marla Teyolia:

I've seen people get so angry and so upset that they start doing destructive things and saying destructive things within team sessions that it's like if they were able to tend to their anger, they could disrupt the way the anger is actually being destructive towards other people, right. So so that's where I'm talking about the difference, right. And there are some cultures where explosive anger coming from male leaders was accepted and it was like oh, that's how he is, and it was an oppressive way of navigating, not okay, and created unhealthy and toxic environments. And I will say that when an a woman does that, she is she given the same latitude or grace? Absolutely not, and your emotions are something you need to be responsible for, especially when you have power. So this isn't about armoring up and saying I can't show emotion of anything. Vulnerability all research shows vulnerability leaders who are willing to share their emotions and share what's really happening for them. People connect and they want to follow those kind of leaders Because it's true empathy and there's vulnerability and they can be seen as whole human beings.

Monica Enand:

You know, listening to you it almost blows my mind how the things that we do we claim for the minority, like you know, a lot of this inclusive culture. People think that we're learning inclusive culture because there is diversity and so that if you're not like the majority that you need this inclusive culture. And it turns out that actually the inclusive culture helps everyone, even the white males, like all. It helps everyone.

Monica Enand:

Yeah, because it helps everyone in the workplace. It creates just a better workplace where you can have more collaboration. So you're not doing it. You can say you want to do it for people who are underrepresented in the workplace, but frankly, you don't need to do it. You can just do it for everyone and it helps everyone right. And it's not necessarily a benefit to a change that is a benefit to underrepresented groups. It's a change that's benefiting everybody.

Marla Teyolia:

A hundred percent right. Everybody benefits from an inclusive environment where you feel safe and psychologically safe and you feel like you can bring your best foot forward and do your best work right. Everybody benefits from that.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

So, marla, I have a question forward. And do your best work right. Everybody benefits from that. So, marla, I have a question, as after you work, you know you said you finished an engagement with one client after two months. So they have a certain level of energy now, or a certain level of, you know, the right mindset, emotional wherewithal that they understand, mindset, emotional wherewithal that they understand. How do you maintain that energy? How does that person?

Marla Teyolia:

or how do we maintain energy and emotion in the right way long-term, I think, going back to kind of what we shared around? You've got to have practices for yourself to tend to the multiple energy bodies that you have, right? So when I think of energy maintenance, I'm thinking about your physical self. Right, like your physical nourishment. Are you getting enough rest? Are you eating well? Right? Are there breaks throughout your day that gives your physical body a time to recalibrate? Right? Are you dealing with your emotional self? What does that look like? And for everybody it can be different, right? For some people they're like I see a therapist twice a month and that's something that kind of helps keep me steady. For some, it's like I do journaling and I process at the end of the day, right, what worked, what didn't. I'm trying to really give myself just a space to unpack so that I can have a good night's sleep.

Marla Teyolia:

Think about your social self. Are you socially connected with others? All research shows that those people who are socially connected they live longer, actually, and they live fuller lives. What about your creative self? I think a lot of times, unless you're in a creative industry, you think that creativity stopped in childhood. Right Like what are the things that are generative, that bring you joy? And I think mindset work is a big piece of the way in which I work with folks. Right Is having rituals for yourself that help generate more of that positive thinking that you're trying to move forward towards, and, I think, with a coach. If you work with a coach who's helping you with mindset work, they will typically give you specific exercises to do based on what it is that you're trying to transform.

Monica Enand:

Well, marla, I have to say I think you're doing a very good job. I'm going to let you in on a secret. When we were thinking about preparing for this discussion with you on this podcast, you sent a voice memo, I think, or you left a voicemail for Georgiana and Georgiana forwarded it to Sejal and I, and the first thing Sejal and I both said once we listened to it is we said wow, I feel calm listening to that woman's voice.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Yay, literally on the voicemail, but throughout this entire podcast as you're talking, marla you have a gift of speaking, in a way that's very calming. Thank you, it is. Maybe it's the tone of your voice, or maybe you've learned it, or maybe it's inherent, but it's phenomenal, even on a podcast. Thank you, I really appreciate that and.

Marla Teyolia:

I receive that. I get that feedback a lot and I think if you would talk to my family they would be like that's work voice.

Monica Enand:

Thank you so much. This has been wonderful, Marla. We really appreciate you joining us. I know there's so much. You know we've been talking a lot about coaching, but I think you brought a completely different lens to this that you know we're happy to share with our listeners. I think it's already impacted me, and I'm sure Sejal feels the same. Yeah.

Sejal C. Pietrzak:

Same.

Monica Enand:

And I know that anybody listening will feel impacted and they can find out more about you at Culture Shift Agency. Is that correct Culture?

Marla Teyolia:

Shift, yep, cultureshiftagency, and they can also follow me on Instagram, at Marla Talia, or on LinkedIn. We do a lot of. I do once a year a retreat called pause and press play to restore to retreat for women of color in Mexico. That happens every June. There's always offerings that I'll be putting on LinkedIn or on Instagram as well, and you can absolutely connect with us on our website, cultureshipagency.

Monica Enand:

We'll make sure to make sure that we give people a way to do that.

Marla Teyolia:

Thank you, Marla. I appreciate you both. Thank you.

Georgianna Moreland:

Thank you for listening today. We would love for you to follow and subscribe. Monica and Sejo would love to hear from you. You can text us directly from the link in the show notes of this episode. You can also find us on the LinkedIn page at Masterstroke Podcast with Monica Enid and Sejo Petrozak. Until next time.