Emotional Intelligence 101

We talk about emotional intelligence as the real-world skill of being smart with feelings and staying effective when we get triggered. We share how the brain and body react under stress, why “calm down” backfires, and the simple pauses that help us respond without regret. 

• defining emotional intelligence as skill with our feelings and other people’s feelings 
• noticing triggers early through body signals like a twitch or gut punch 
• understanding the amygdala response and why modern life sets it off so often 
• why telling someone to “calm down” escalates conflict 
• using empathy and reflection to lower the emotional temperature 
• taking responsibility for our reactions rather than blaming others 
• how assessments and training shaped Sharon’s workshops and book 
• what high emotional intelligence looks like in behaviour and leadership 
• practical tools that create space before we respond, including “That’s interesting. Tell me more” and a deep breath 
• why emotional intelligence can be a career differentiator, including higher earnings for leaders with strong EI 

If you want any more information or have an idea for a podcast, go to the website beabetteryou.ca backslash podcast and send us an email. 

Have a question, a comment, or want to find out more? go to https://www.beabetteryou.ca/

Podcast thoughtfully produced by https://www.isleofsound.ca/

Transcript

Welcome And What We Cover

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Straight Up Talk with Sharon and Peter. We are both proud Brits and Canadians. This is a no-nonsense weekly podcast about people, life, leadership, and all sorts of stuff. We don't always agree. Hello, this is Sharon and Pete. I'm Sharon.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

And I'm Pete Johnson.

What Emotional Intelligence Means

SPEAKER_00 0:25

A topic this week is something that's very close to my heart. It's emotional intelligence. So an overview of the basics of emotional intelligence. It's this simply. It's about being smart with feelings, about being smart with your own feelings and the feelings of other people. And it's something that I had to learn the hard way and continue to have to learn. When you and I got together initially, I don't mean back in the 1980s days, I mean back in 2012. What did you know about emotional intelligence back then?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Not a lot, really. I must admit, you you taught me most of what I know about emotional intelligence. I I used to have a very short fuse, if you remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

You still have? Yeah, I still haven't.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So yeah, I I yeah, I was I didn't really understand what my triggers. I didn't understand why I was I used to get some let some things wire me up so much. And uh you you kind of taught me you know, recognise what your triggers are, think it through, give the person who you're dealing with a little bit of uh you know, be kind to them and listen listen to what they got to say, all that sort of stuff. So uh you know be careful how you respond to them and don't get too shouty.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Oh don't too shouty. All of this is really easy to say when you're feeling calm, and I don't mean you specifically, but I mean the you. And here's what's interesting, because I've just been training some people in in this, and I always like to ask them the question, you know, how do you know when you've been triggered? Where do you feel it in your body when you first know that something has triggered you? So interestingly, a woman on the course just recently said, she's she's she said, I feel it in my earlobes. Oh, okay. Well, it doesn't matter where you feel it. And somebody else said, I feel my left eye twitch.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I know I I feel it when I've been sucker punch, like someone's gone right into my guts, and I just I know, I now know that what that is, I have been emotionally triggered. So something has set me off, and I've gone from this calm person into something else. And the analogy I use is the amygdala, which you asked me to explore last week. So the amygdala, the reactionary control centre of the brain, sitting there like a monkey eating, eating peanuts, whatever right now. Calm, saber-toothed tiger comes in, all of a sudden this monkey starts throwing out stress hormones into your body to get you ready to fight, flight, or freeze. Your thinking narrows all of that, and you're likely to get very shouty or screamy or run out to do anything to protect yourself. But the issue is that that helped us evolve into human beings as we are, but today we actually have more triggers more of the time that set this thing in motion, and we don't have the same need for it to occur. You know, I I'm expecting an email to come in, and I know when it does, I'm gonna get emotionally triggered by it because I have I pretty much know what it's going to say. So I'm prepping myself. It doesn't really matter.

Triggers And The Amygdala Reaction

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Tell you that later. Tax man, is it? No, that's a whole different kettle of fish. Um, but it it's when I had had to learn it, um, goes back many years because when you and I did get together, I'd been training and I'd done topics like um communicating with diplomacy, but I didn't really start to learn about my own emotional intelligence until I started at Thomas and I I got the assessment, the trait emotional intelligence questionnaire and I looked at the results and it made me laugh because um I've got like you, I've got very low impulse control, very high emotion expression. I've also got extremely high assertiveness. So when something triggers me, I get very shouty very quickly. People either explode or implode, and neither reaction is helpful. When people implode, that's when you can see by looking at them, they're just you know, they're fighting with themselves, but then they cut themselves off from you. What's the two worst words to say to somebody when you see them having an emotional meltdown?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Oh, I know this one. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Exactly. Calm down, but here's what happens is that when you are calm and you see somebody else having a meltdown, yeah, we judge them. We're humans, we're judgmental, we have to accept that fact. So we say things like, Oh, well, I wouldn't do that if I was them, and I don't know why they're getting so upset. So we try and be helpful and we say, Well, you know, you should just calm down. If I was you, yeah, but how that lands when you're the person. So when we've been triggered emotionally, it's remember the amygdala is trying to keep us safe, so it thinks there's some kind of social threat to us, something is going to be taken away, we're about to lose something. So that's why the reaction steps in. When somebody says to you, calm down, how it lands on you is it feels like they're telling you what you think and feel is not important. So instead, it's like throwing the gasoline on the fire. And most people, when you tell them to calm down, what do they do?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Go ten times worse.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

They do the opposite, they they explode.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Explode, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

The best thing that you can do when you see somebody like that is to say, it looks like you're upset because you can't specifically name the emotion.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah. And they might go a bit of empathy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

And they might say, No shit, sure, of course I am. But the fact that you have recognised how they're feeling automatically helps bring down the temperature for them. So, what I do in that situation is let them rant because when the amygdala is in control, then the prefrontal cortex part of the brain, the executive thinking part, the rational part can't get a look in. It's knocking on the door, going, hello, let me in. But the amygdala's going, no, no, no, and throwing adrenaline around. I did. I did write a book on this, and I'm going to get to why I wrote a book on it in a minute. But thank you for that plug, I appreciate it. So we try and calm our ourselves down. Another trick, actually, is to name the emotion that you are feeling. Never blame anybody else, because how you feel is always on you. Something happens, you react to it, it's never anybody else's fault.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, you taught me that as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, nobody makes you feel anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Because I used to say it was one of my favourite sayings. It was. You made me feel like no, I didn't make you feel like anything. Exactly. You chose it.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

That's right, because thing happened, you reacted. Because if you get up in the morning, you're having a great day, something happens, you don't react. So you get up in the morning, spill a coffee, trip over the cat, something happens, you're already emotionally wound up. You miss the bus.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Miss the train.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Somebody says, Oh, you've got a funny hairstyle today, bang! You know, you've you've suddenly exploded. So I learned this through my results in in the assessment. Then we came

Assessments Workshops And Sharon’s Book

SPEAKER_00 7:52

back to Canada in 2016 and I was selected to write a workshop for um very large business in Canada that was going through a transition from command and control leadership to collaborative leadership. So they were going from you'll do what I say, not what I do, kind of thing, to more let's work on this together, sort of servant-style leadership. They needed for all these very senior executives, they wanted a two-hour course. Can you get that? Two hours on emotional intelligence, and they interviewed a load of facilitators. They liked me because they felt I was authentic, I'd got experience in the space.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

No degree though.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

No degree, didn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

No, it didn't matter, eh?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So I put together this two-hour workshop and we ran it as a pilot and it went really well. So I ran it several times in that business. I've run it ever since. I wrote the book called Tread Gently for the Emotionally Clumsy off the back of it. I launched it on Amazon in 2019, it went to become a bestseller, and I still use it now in my workshops because it's got actual the workshop process. But here's the funny thing: I don't think you'll be able to answer this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.

What High Emotional Intelligence Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Since about 2016, I get groups to describe, and I'm gonna ask you this what does it look like behaviourally when somebody is demonstrating high levels of emotional intelligence? What does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Uh well, first of all, we came back in 2015, not 16.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

I'm talking about I've been teaching this workshop in NumPy since 2016.

unknown 9:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Answer the question.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Right, so how do I know when somebody is What does it look like?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

How do you know by looking at them what are they doing if somebody's demonstrating high levels of emotional intelligence?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Engaged, uh they're empathetic, they're they're uh they're listening.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Right. You know, yeah, they're they're calm.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, they're calm.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

So I I ask this of all the groups, and I've done this globally. People always know what it looks like. And then this next question, I don't know if you'll get the same answer, but I always ask in North America, anyway. I've been asking this question since 2016. Who in the public eye demonstrates high levels of emotional intelligence? And one name still comes up today, and it came up actually this week already, you might not know the name of the person.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Um in North America only.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Uh Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

The antithesis of of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

No, I'd probably say uh Obama.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yes. It seriously is.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Comes up every single time because people rem remember, now forget his politics, but as a human being, if you were to meet him, uh he didn't play up to being this the president of the United States. He made you feel like you mattered. He paid attention to you, he gave you space, he was authentic, he was open, communicative, all of the things that uh somebody in those positions some should be. What we don't know is him and Michelle might go home and beat the you know what out of each other. I don't think they do. They might have been coached how to look.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah, I would imagine he went through a lot of coaching then.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

But you know what? There are some people in the world who are naturally only a very few handful of people who are naturally high in emotional intelligence. And I think him and Michelle are a good example of that. They're not in the public eye to the same extent, but the fact that they are stuck ten years later, that's the number one name that comes up. Other names come up like Oprah Winfrey, but there has been a lot of stuff in the press about what goes on behind the scenes with her. Ellen doesn't come up anymore because of what was going on behind the scenes with her. So

Pete’s Real World Workplace Triggers

SPEAKER_00 11:41

um when we talk about triggers, what are the things that trigger you into I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

I mean I used to, you know, as you know, when I had the business, I used to I what I used to get really annoyed with um certain members of staff as you do lateness. You know, especially on moving day, it's it's a big problem.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So would you get all shouty?

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Oh yeah, as soon as they turned out, yeah, they they get like you know, why are you late and so oftentimes you get all shouty before there could be a legitimate reason? They probably had a great reason why they was late, yeah. I don't know. But I mean th that that was probably the main thing, and um uh untidiness was another big thing. Right. Keep keeping the trucks tidy and keeping the the the uh where we used to have a little warehouse, keeping the keeping everything you know remembering to close the gate to the storage facility that we had. Because you got uh you're storing people's stuff and then you you someone leaves the gate open, all your security's gone.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

So something would happen then and you'd get shouted.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

You get my I used to get mad, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Not yeah, I mean not too bad, but but you you you you would, and I say this because I do too. You're you're you're quick to a negative response, as am I, naturally.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah. So not so much these days, but yeah.

The Pause Between Stimulus And Response

SPEAKER_00 13:24

But there's a there's a thing that I I uh try and help teach people. Between you and me, it's a little different because we understand each other, this is our safe bubble, we are able to just express ourselves because we've spent years developing that between us. Outside of that, if I'm triggered by something or somebody, I have to be very careful about not letting that show. So there's there's a great quote by a guy called Victor Frankel who said, In the space between stimulus and response lies the freedom to choose. That means being able to identify the trigger in the first place, so that punch gut, etc., and buying yourself enough time before the reaction comes out. So I give away my secret when I feel that punch in the stomach. This is what I say. That's interesting. Tell me more. That stops me.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

You said that a few times to me.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

But that's why I'm I'm stopping myself from instantly reacting because I've I've been triggered. Buys myself some time and allows me to calm myself down if something that you have said or somebody else has said.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I do something similar actually. I take a big deep breath before I offer up my response.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Wait, not with me, you don't. No, not so much with you, but that's different.

unknown 14:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Give yourself a few seconds to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yes, and and I I think that's it. So um, big takeaway uh of the week for emotional intelligence is it is absolutely something that is a big differentiator for us as people to learn how to get on better with each other, to um manage ourselves and our emotions. It is worth investing your time in. And if anybody out there is getting you emotions, they're all icky. The rubber hits the road in terms of your bot, your pocket. Those leaders who can demonstrate actively that they have high levels of emotional intelligence earn on average at least 28,000 US more per year than their non-EI countries.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

It's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

What's your brutally honest takeaway the week?

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Um again, keep it nice and simple. Take a big deep breath before you burst out there and say something you might regret.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, that's a nice one. If most people could take that on board, the world might be a better place, but you never know.

Takeaways CTA And Goodnight

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Well, thank you very much everyone for listening. Uh, this episode has been thoughtfully produced by the Isle of Sound. If you want any more information or have an idea for a podcast, go to the website beabetteryou.ca backslash podcast and send us an email. It's good night from me.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

And it's good night for me.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Good night.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Good night.