Hello friends, and a very warm welcome to Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash. Are you ready to turn stress into your comfort? For over 30 years now, Dr. Ash has worked and gained education across three continents: India, the United Kingdom, and the United States in healthcare. He's witnessed firsthand how stress can impact our health and cause our happiness. But here's the exciting part. He's here to help you transform your stress into a powerful tool for growth and resilience. Each week, he'll share practical tools and life-changing insights from his books, including The Boiling Frog, to help you manage your stress, find balance, and live a life of purpose. Please join us every Friday at 5 pm and let's start turning stress into strength together. Now let's dive into today's episode.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back, Funella. I'm very excited to discuss this chapter of social intelligence with you. And social intelligence is being intelligent about our day-to-day, daily interactions with other people. Very important piece for resilience.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And I think we've laid some ground in our last discussion. Shall we go to the picture and just see how we can use that to illuminate what we want to talk about here?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so the the picture I've used here is a board of chess. It's a metaphorical chess. As you can see, on the chess board there are different pieces. And all of the pieces have different functions. Whether it is a bishop or whether it is a rook or a or queen, they play different roles. Similarly, in an organization, there are frontline workers, there are there is management, different divisions in different industries, it would be different. But they're different functions. But the the way they are communicating with each other, like in a board of chess, the pieces are communicating is very important for the resilience of a person, for the resilience of the organization. The way you deal with people, the way you understand their emotions, later we'll be getting into culture, is really crucial. Because we are working, if you are working effective as a team, again I'll give you an example that if we have a strong team, I worked in the during the COVID period, and when we had a strong team, we could deal with the biggest of the challenges. If you are playing a strong defense in chess, even the most aggressive attacks you can deal with. And how do you develop that team cohesion? Is your interpersonal skills, your social intelligence, which is again based on your emotional intelligence. So in social intelligence, we go a step further. In emotional intelligence, we are intelligent about our emotions, about the emotions of the other people, and in social intelligence we go a step ahead. How we how do we use that information then to be able to create that strategic support networks towards a higher, bigger purpose?
SPEAKER_02So we're taking a much bigger view. We we have that knowledge about ourselves that we can move forward with. We're projecting and um working to understand other people's emotions, and it sounds like communication is really vital in there.
SPEAKER_00Communication is really vital.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And actually understanding that we can ask other people about how they feel. It's not only about interrogating our own emotions and gathering that data. If we go about it in a sympathetic and empathetic way, we can get that information from others and and be creating cultures where that information can be shared.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And on the opposite side of this vanilla, if we are not able to do this effectively, what happens? Then it creates a huge amount of stress in the environment, which is not good for anybody.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Can you give us any particular examples, Ash, from from your very wide experience of a time maybe when something like that occurred that you can think of?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very happy to share uh some uh uh some stories around this on a on a bigger giving you the bigger picture. You don't want to go into the names and details for confidentiality purposes. So let's say if there is a colleague, if there's a senior colleague and he and he's not able to lead the team effectively, yeah, and we are looking after patients and sometimes a lot of patients, and these patients have serious health issues, that's why they have come to the hospital. They have expectations, they are worried, they have got strong emotions. So if we are not able to connect with the patient or the families or the clients, like for this example, there was this doctor during the COVID situation, he was feeling very exhausted and burnt out. What it has kind of a knock-on effect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so this does affect the people around.
SPEAKER_00It is infectious. And then he was dealing with patients and relatives and not able to pick up their concerns and acknowledge their concerns, and then what happens that you make mistakes.
SPEAKER_02So he was not reacting in or he or she was not reacting in an effective way because they they weren't picking up the signals.
SPEAKER_00They're not picking up the signals, not being effective in leading the team, and ultimately what happened that it affected the patient care, and the patient care gets affected and it affects the entire, not only the family, then there are complaints, it comes back to the team, the the complaints come to the management. So it creates a huge cascade of time, resources, further stress. Yes.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00That's what I'm trying to say.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00If we are able to if we are able to tap into the strengths of our colleagues, have appropriate empathy of where what are the roles of other people, then it's a different level of game. And that's what is the need if you want to develop resilience, especially if you are working in organizations where we are we are where you where customer service is very important, whether it is working in the hospital or any kind of caring industry, it is important to have that level of empathy and connection and understanding what's happening around in the environment.
SPEAKER_02And so it sounds almost like there's something there about a kind of culture of resilience that you want to be creating using that social intelligence. So that you're building something that's strong already. So when something starts to happen or go wrong or go in the wrong direction, there are already strengths in place. Yes. It's about being proactive. And I'm wondering what you can do. I I know because we've worked together for a very long time, that this is something you've given a great deal of thought. How how can you create those environments? How can you be proactive and create because we've talked about the jacuzzi effect, you want that place where people are experiencing a lack of distress and having you stress, which is is the good side, is I'm engaged, I'm involved, I feel good about this. So, yeah, tell me more about how you would do that.
SPEAKER_00So, Funella, a huge insight to me came from the work of Victor Frankel, which I mentioned earlier with the man's search for meaning. Where he talks about his experiences in the Holocaust, where he saw people who were even in the most challenging situations, could find meaning, could find purpose, could find growth, could find compassion, could find kindness. So I felt that if you are working in a hospital or any caring industry or any industry where you can affect the life of others, you can become, first of all, aware, and then secondly, you can become intentional about what you can do. And when you are doing that, you are you are creating these micro moments of meaning, of connection, of joy and contribution. Yeah. And when you do that, that has a very positive knock-on effect. The other thing is also creating a culture of mutual courtesy and respect. So important. And also realizing that everybody's strengths are different. Now I talk about in details into this when we go into the section four in the value management, where we talk about creating a strengths-based culture. Because you've got to know in a team, everybody has different strengths. So we can leverage into the strengths of other people. Here comes the game of chess again. The knight can jump two and a half squares, the rook can go straight, the bishop can go crosswords. Yeah. So everybody has different skills. And if we are able to leverage into the strengths of each other rather than running down other people, I think it has a very positive, very synergistic effect which I have felt even during a full year long working in a kind of highly challenging COVID environment. I was thriving just because of this very effective teamwork which we could we could tap into. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02Does it answer your question? It does. But I I know from speaking to you as well, Ash, and outside COVID times, more so that you're very good at initiating connection. I know that you uh take time to organize social events or to just open up spaces where people can be a bit more relaxed. You know, your your appropriate boundaries are still there, but there's something in the workplace, there's that zone. Yes, finding it might be a couple of minutes just to speak to somebody here or there and make connections and links. And actually, if you can, be a little bit of social glue. Would would you agree?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very much so. And I'm I'm also very big on celebrations. Yes. So even if even if we have small victories in the team or we had a very serious patient, let's say they they were very sick, they had severe lung infection, uh, and they went it went into the intensive care unit, they've come back and they've gone home, and we have done an amazing job. I will go and say thank you to all nurses, to all my junior doctors. What hard work they have done. Yeah. And we will have milestones, we'll have celebrations. And celebration is also a flavor of gratitude that you are expressing gratitude towards others who have made your journey joyful and also help you to create contribution and meaning. I don't think we do it enough in the unfortunately in the healthcare industry, we should do it much more in terms of saying more thank yous and expressing our our gratitude, especially when people have gone the extra mile to do the work and to to basically take care of patients or other colleagues.
SPEAKER_02And you're saying recognize that and people acknowledge it. Because some workplaces they'll have the birthday celebrations, and and that's nice, that's okay. But uh yeah, congratulations for being born, we're happy you're here. But it's really meaningful to go in and say, this hard thing happened, this was really difficult. We were all pushed to the wall, and you pulled it out of the hat to your team. And thank you so much. And I recognize the roles that you played. What a good feeling to create. Yes. And it's leveraging those positive emotions, it's making them palpable in the workplace. That's just such a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00Makes a huge difference in the environment and it brings a lot of joy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which is an ultimate uh what we want is that we want to create meaning, we want to create contribution, we want to look after. Yeah. Uh whether in my case, working in the hospital, we want to take very good care of the patients. But whatever industry we are, we want our customers and clients to be highly satisfied, and we want to we want to overdeliver. I think if we understand social intelligence, respecting each other's strengths, valuing each other, gratitude, we can really go a long, long way. Well, Funela, thank you so much for sharing some remarkable insights here. It's really making me feel very joyful just now. Bringing those nice um beautiful moments back. We will further discuss about other ways of creating resilience, but this was really big because it just reminds me of one thing that together we can go very far. Yes, and what a great culture to have. Yeah. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd greatly appreciate it. If you could leave a five-star review, a like, or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Your support helps us reach more people looking to transform their stress into new comfort. We'd love to hear your thoughts, so don't forget to comment and share. For more tips and updates, please be sure to check out our social media links in the description box below. We can't wait to have you with us next time as we continue this journey towards turning stress into resilience. Remember, it's not the stress itself but how we rise above it that defines our strength. So stay resilient and keep thriving, and we will see you next time.