BBT Ep. 19: Emotional Intelligence with Cheri Anderson

In this episode we're joined by Emotional Intelligence coach Cheri Anderson from Good Life Productions.

Listen on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/better-billing-today/episodes/Ep--19-Emotional-Intelligence-with-Cheri-Anderson-e28vc0a

Watch on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3ZdmJvJ

Transcript:  

 Welcome to the Better Billing Today podcast. I'm your host, Adam Welchel from Spark Billing Services. This is episode 19. And on this show, we are talking to owners and operators of small clinics and medical practices, improving cashflow, streamlining processes, and improving the patient financial experience.

On this show, we're talking about technology, HIPAA compliance, hiring, training, developing your people. And on today's episode, we have Cheri Anderson from the Good Life Productions to help us talk about emotional intelligence, teamwork, and personal development. So let's dive in and talk about emotional intelligence.

So we're in the studio. I'm with Cheri Anderson, an emotional intelligence coach. And please correct me if I'm saying that, incorrectly. That is correct. Okay. So an emotional intelligence coach. So can you introduce yourself, the business and what emotional intelligence coaching is?

Okay. My name is Cheri Anderson and I have been doing coaching and consulting for entrepreneurs and people on leadership teams or part of leadership teams for probably 20 to 25 years. Emotional intelligence is something we experience. Literally in every single day people watching is a form of emotional intelligence all the way down to having a difficult conversation.

Coaching around emotional intelligence allows people, specifically in the workplace, to start to build trust, find ways where they can really believe in each other, where there are definitely strengths or weaknesses, and have a language and a way to be proactive in really understanding themselves and others.

And finding win ways to work together better.

That's a lot for a, a business owner or a small, a small practice owner or a doctor to think about in addition to, helping his patients with physical health or, chemical health. And now we're talking about emotional health and.

It's a totally different world different disciplines. You said two things that stood out to me. You can have emotional intelligence, just people watching, and then you can have emotional intelligence close at, in proximity. And then it made me wonder, or it made me think about this other dynamic where you're working with people who have low emotional intelligence, where you might think you're higher in emotional intelligence, and there's this gap.

And I'd like to talk, I'd like to, I'd like to hear you talk about the second one, but I'm going to circle back to the first one. Can you address first, maybe the idea that someone feels like they have more emotional intelligence? And they're working with people who don't have a high emotional intelligence.

How do you help that person in that scenario, in that, in your coaching? Okay.

I'm going to back up a little bit. Yeah. So I'll just explain. There's a competency cluster. So when you think of emotional intelligence, if you were to go, if you were to go online and read the book or study a little bit about it, it's broken up into a couple of Quadrants or categories.

So first thing about emotional intelligence is self awareness. So to the extent that we're self aware, we can make better choices. And then we can be more responsible to the things that we're

So if you're self aware, then you want to be able to practice improving being aware of others in a multitude of different ways. Then there's social skills. So once you're aware of others, then You want skills to come alongside. So you might notice some type of interesting observation and we can get into some examples as we go on.

But then you're going to need skills like communication skills, leadership skills, discernment skills. So those are some social skills and then self management. So if you're self aware, then what are the skills that you have to manage your own emotion? So if you get short tempered, if you get, Maybe you freeze because you're uncomfortable and you don't want to make a mistake.

Like, how do you manage your own spectrum of emotions on any given circumstance? Emotional intelligence is the combination of self awareness, others awareness, self management, and social skills. Does that help fill in some of the context?

Yeah, absolutely, because it sounds like you can be self aware of your own shortcomings, but still not overcome those shortcomings, and you're just aware that you're angry.

Yes. You're just aware that You're insensitive.

Yeah oh, this is just who I am. Yeah, just how it is Yeah,

and so it sounds like you're you know, you're describing social. It sounds like you're describing emotional intelligence as a spectrum Yes, we're on this journey of more or less and there's never like a hard stop, right?

and so Tell me about like your journey into the emotional intelligence world. It seems like it's, this unmarked territory and humans are very, human. And so we're not black and white. We're not rigid. We're not ones and zeros. How does somebody, look at their self awareness and figure out, am I emotionally self aware?

Am I emotionally intelligent? What would what's happening around me if I'm not?

Sure. Yeah. So historically we're conditioned and exposed to metrics with IQ, right? Like here's a standardized test and how you measure your intelligence against the score and the score of others relative to the metrics determines your IQ.

IQ scientifically is known to be static. Like once your IQ, once you're born, your IQ is set. You don't really get a lot of Room to change your iq, eq, emotional intelligence. You can learn, you can adapt until your very last breath. So when you're in a scenario and you notice, like your first question my emotional sensitivity to read a room is really different than this other person.

So let's make it specific. So let's say you're talking about a small office, small team. If you're a medical practitioner, like maybe a chiropractor, you really need to be able to lean on the person who handles the phone. The person who greets everybody when they come in the front door. One, you're intuitively going to be processing like, I need this person to have some degree of people skills.

And most people that tend to be receptionists do have people skills. But what happens when those people skills reach their limit, and a customer... Freaks out for whatever reason. How do you help manage the person to manage your customer? How do you build trust with that person help that person build trust with themselves instead of firing back at the client?

Does that make sense?

One hundred percent and you know you're talking about these delegates that are really the ambassador of the doctor Greeting a patient or a customer and this applies to any small business when the owner wants the best experience for that patient or customer. And now, someone on their team hasn't really measured up or delivered the kind of experience you want them to deliver.

And it's easier for us to get, reaction reactive to that employee. But there's your, through emotional intelligence coaching I'm sure you're going to say there's ways to elevate their awareness and change that behavior so that you don't have to replace the person. We can improve them.

Okay. Yeah. So just simply emotional intelligence itself has. several types of assessments that you can take. You can actually take an assessment of your EQ. It'll score you on those types of quadrants and it'll give you feedback on what you can do as next steps. Then there's a type of assessment, which a lot of people practice this in corporate companies, maybe small businesses, I would say a little bit less just because of the bandwidth that we have, like there isn't typically an assigned HR person.

So that hat falls mostly on the owner of the company and that's probably not his or her primary strength. Yeah, and they probably have a lot of other stress So it's hard to separate themselves from the HR role objectively Yeah, and be intimately acquainted with all of the process and details. So There's a 360 degree assessment that you can take where you give it out to everyone you work with on your team And they give feedback about how you are their perception of your emotional intelligence for better or for worse, right?

So there are different types of assessments like that and then there are tools like Meyers Briggs strength finders The one that I really am super familiar with is the DISC model of human behavior and working genius. Those types of tools really start to give you a grip like almost it's metaphorical, but like a real grip on decoding, right?

So if I, if I listened to one of your conversations with a chiropractor and he said, Oh I'm interested in business, I spent all this time in medical school. I'm going to run the company and I want to do the best that I can. It's my personality. I hired someone who's really good at accounting.

Yes. And he's terrible at people skills. Yes. Terrible at people skills. And we've had to have multiple conversations about how he can get better at his people skills. Just in that dynamic, if you had a tool like DISC, You immediately get a decoder. It's like a private eye. It automatically gives you distinctions between personality styles.

So if you're outgoing and task oriented, it's different than you're reserved and task oriented. People who tend to be accountants are often more reserved and not people oriented. So you can be task or people or a blend of both, but sometimes people are dominantly task or dominantly people. I'm sure we have examples in our lives like that.

And so you wouldn't want to train. Somebody who's dominantly task oriented to do a people oriented job. You wouldn't want the accountant per se to be in the receptionist seat. And so once you have a tool like DISC, you can literally minimize your hiring process by going, okay, I'd like you to go through this assessment.

And if they fall in a certain quadrant, like they're naturally designed and equipped to handle a certain type of work style. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. We did have that Dr. Matt on the show and he did talk about that. Yeah, it's. It's you know, it's more than just putting the right people in the right seat, but when it comes to Owning a business or running an operation or being a manager You are now saying that you people are under my care and I you know I'm responsible for not just the work you do and the output you deliver but also your journey as a human as a you know As a practitioner, as a technician, as a co worker, I'm responsible for this office and the way it runs.

And so now you've added this human component to nurturing people in through that growth. And I think that we are overall just well or under. Overall, we're under equipped to do some of this emotional intelligence coaching because we can, as an, as somebody who runs a team, I know what it's like to talk out of both sides of my mouth when I don't do what I want you to do personally, I might fall short of, using my emotional intelligence capacity and then I'm expecting you to do the same.

And I can imagine that bringing an outsider like yourself who's unbiased and hasn't, doesn't have the emotional connection to these people can probably get a lot of work done and you can facilitate a lot of progress for these small teams. Can you talk about that? The type of work that you're doing with small teams and the way that you help them?

Sure. We typically. Start with just a conversation. So Adam, how many people are on your team? We have 19 19 Yeah, how many of those people do you work with in person versus virtually?

All but two are virtual. So you have to have two co workers in the office with me.

And what are your communication? processes what do they consist of?

Our channels like our communication channels?

Well, more in the culture and expectations.

So when they start working at Spark did do my best to put a heavy emphasis on the awareness we need to have over texting, because a lot of our messages are black and white, text on a screen.

And we need to have that self awareness and that social awareness, like you've mentioned on this model. How does my message come across? And then especially when we're on these meetings where we're not having our cameras on Sometimes it's a bandwidth issue and I'll turn my camera on almost every meeting I have unless I have a technical reason not to because I know that most of my communication is nonverbal

As in like it's written as in nonverbal?

Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. Most of my communication is actually facial. And I use that intentionally on the team's calls and the Zoom calls. But most, I know most of my team doesn't. And so I've had my own journey there with do I require people to be on camera or do we just leave it as is?

Because some people are just self conscious with the way the camera makes them look on the screen and I'm not going to force them to be on camera, but we've done as much training as I can. Personally do on best practices for communicating via text, email, and on Zoom when your camera's not on.

And even if your camera was on, posture plays a big role in this leaning in, leaning out. The way you might squint your eyes that isn't visible on Teams or Zoom. And so it requires more attention with your ears. It requires more attention with your voice to communicate when you're in this digital environment.

And I know that for me, I can talk with my coworkers in the office for hours. Maybe even all day, just casually spitballing ideas. But the moment I get on a team's call, all of my energy is it's sucked out of me because I spend so much time trying to make sure that my communication is understood, but also that I'm hearing, physically a laptop, which is so stagnant.

There's no dynamic, if somebody's loud or soft, it's the same volume sometimes. Definitely working remotely and having a digital team has been a huge challenge to get. Some of the emotions understood by others.

And then what about as far as the way that your team members share responsibility?

So when you get the ball and the ball needs to be passed on the line, and maybe that same ball gets passed down three channels amongst the 19 people, and then between those people it needs to be passed, right? So how is it that your team is able to track? Or maybe not so well when the ball is being passed between them and also customer facing.

Yeah the technologically, the one thing that we've been trying to do is minimize opportunity for divergence.

And so if we can keep Everything in one channel as much as possible, and we don't have these splits where it becomes a parallel process. That has helped a lot because then someone has to go actively chase it down and figure out who's got it. And we've been working really hard to make sure that our technology does not allow tasks or projects to be split too wide.

Generally the shorter the... The task, the narrower the channel should be, and we don't need to split it up. But that has helped a lot because in the beginning we had emails going all different directions and we got rid of like personal email basically and got into a ticketing system and things are actually assigned.

So there's some gaps we still need to solve for, we meet. One thing we did start doing on a weekly basis was having our Thursday two o'clock call. Everybody in the entire company is on this call and we are going to level set for the next five days, and that does help a lot.

There are definitely some technical challenges when you're not sharing physical papers, boxes, tangible objects where you're all digital and you're remote. And so the need for emotional intelligence, the more you work remotely, I think it goes up exponentially.

Also it sounds. It's interesting because all of the answers to these questions, your mind is first going to technology.

Yeah, that's definitely me. So it's in the, it's interesting one because that's probably your role to spearhead and pioneer.

I'm going to engineer a solution to this! I'm going to reduce options. And so you're, it sounds like you're going to lead me to another option, which is. You could, raise up the responsibility and the communication of the team, right?

Okay. And That seems harder.

It is harder. But in that but just on the, on another dynamic of that, whether it was prior to this level of streamline that you've come to with tech or now there are people on your team that need to be able to communicate and even outside of the system digitally.

So when they have a misunderstanding or the timing of something is off or somebody drops the ball, whether it's because they didn't understand or they didn't know or they just got behind or they just had some malicious intent, I'm just kidding. But some that's true in a lot of offices, when people build up.

Yeah, stuff over time like they start allowing for resentments to dictate behavior patterns So in that way, how would you say your team? Struggles, like what are some of the ways that you've heard feedback? Like I don't know if I can get this done this person Doesn't understand or do or know X. How do you know what they're thinking and feeling?

Oh, it's very difficult And in fact, we had one team member who is no longer with us who for three months right before he left Was in such apathy about his workload or his technology frustrations, but he stopped communicating on the flip side I had somebody who was very vocal and said hey, this is a problem.

This is a problem. This is a problem This is a problem and we've been working all summer to fix it. And so it's interesting how The reaction was, and what I learned from the person who was vocal was as much of a pain that was to hear and as much as like it was difficult to take that communication from them, I would much rather have that one because that to me, that tells me that they're aware of the issue.

They're aware of what that's going to cause them and they cared enough to communicate the challenge. But it is difficult to even know that someone's having a challenge in a remote work environment. Silence is actually more harmful in this world that we live in because, you need data and that was an eye opener for sure.

Yeah, so this just reminds me of a parallel to when we're growing up and going to school are the adults, the authority figures in our life. Are literally training us to concentrate and focus cerebrally, you need to know this. You need to learn this. You need to study this. You need to be able to pass this test.

You need to perform. In the meantime, we have emotions, but we dismiss them. We typically are depending on what age range of our development process, and how your parents and the culture around you might be, but your emotions aren't the most important thing, right? If you're having a bad day, it doesn't matter.

Sit down and focus. We need to get through this. So not only do we not get to understand that element of our own individuality, we don't get to practice it in functional. Productive ways in a community. Yeah, so then when we get into community and we do have a myriad of emotions We tend to withhold them right and then our boss is no better per se like in theory Parallel there, right?

So now all of a sudden we're supposed to trust this other person And we're supposed to figure out a hierarchy. We're supposed to figure out who's got the authority. And if you don't have the authority or you perceive you don't have it, it's really hard to speak up. Yeah. Even if you are self aware. Even if you have great self management, a lot of times it's how is this other person going to receive it. And then people use their authority as a position to mask or protect, whatever.

Maybe there are inefficiencies in these areas. Correct. And so as a, when it's difficult to lead up, as you might, hear in this community, it's difficult to lead up when you're unequipped with the emotional intelligence.

To predict how that person might respond or maybe how they best receive information or what they care about. I had to petition a developer the other day for a software change and I mistakenly came at it from an efficiency point of view. And I had to come back to him and say, this is actually a customer centric issue.

And by solving the customer centric issue, we were able to solve our own inefficiencies. But knowing how somebody perceives importance either of whether it's, importance of data, whether it's importance of others, whether it's importance of self, or whether it's importance of this relationship knowing, what they find to be valuable is sometimes just half the battle.

And then if you can just say something that speaks to that You can probably get a lot more done. Yes. Yeah.

Some of the examples that you're sharing I think are, is a good segue to talk about working genius a little bit. Okay. I would love to talk about that. So working genius is a model that was established by Patrick Glacione and he believes that you can be happy and satisfied at work.

Like work shouldn't have to be just a grind. You shouldn't have to suffer through the insufferable things. You can actually. Live a life that's satisfying and fulfilling with your work. Yeah, which a lot of people don't have that mindset, right? Like again back to we're trained to think and act a certain way and then just suck it up whenever it doesn't go our way Which most of us would say work doesn't go our way.

Yeah, at least not consistently So he came up with a model to help equip people professionally to understand that they have a gift or a genius with where they work. And you're going to either experience fulfillment or frustration based on if you're aligned more towards your working frustration or your working genius.

So this is really interesting because you've mentioned that I have an engineering point of view when it comes to human, communication. And then I have another employee who was very vocal about a frustrating experience they were having, and it took me a second to realize that, okay, this is just the way this person processes, the frustration.

And thankfully I don't take it personally. I'm glad she's communicating. I'm glad we're going to improve something about our business because of this. And others were quiet and, but they were all feeling it. And that's her unique genius where she knows what's possible. She knows this is not okay. And she knows that maybe she doesn't necessarily think through the the model of how does Adam gonna receive this information, but that's where having some of these tools working with good life productions a little bit I have some idea of this is maybe it's just a communication style and I'm not going to take this personally.

So let me see how I can fit this into the our projects that we need to re you know, revisit and solve this problem but can you talk about this working genius model? Are you saying that it's How is this different than disc where I might know what's important to that person if i'm using disc?

How does this translate to? That interpersonal communication where someone, you're working on a team and you're trying to get something done and someone's really frustrated about something.

Yeah, that's a great question. So DISC really prioritizes personality style Okay, so just to take a moment and explain DISC a little bit We have how we process information internally in our mind And then we have how we adapt our behavior based on our environment and the people were around sometimes they match and sometimes There's a big contrast.

I might be really introverted and think analytically and critically around problem solving, but when I'm in maybe at work, I have to be the one who's more outgoing and the point person and I have to choose wisely how I communicate because my Interpretation could come across as doomsday because I'm giving facts, figures, criticisms, but they're just data points.

But to someone else, it could be, it sounds like I'm being super negative and that's not my intention. So personality style requires us in that self awareness way to one, how do we actually process the world and how do we. See and digest that information and then how do we adapt working genius is different?

And it's such a good compliment. Like I love the way these two models really work well together because in working genius You are going to have parts of your gifts and your strengths and how you function and perform that come through your personality, so Wonder so I'll just tell you the working genius There's six functions wonder.

So it's in the, it's in the acronym widget. It's pretty easy. Okay. So wonder invention, discernment, enabling, or sorry, galvanizing, enabling and tenacity. So if you're somebody who's discerning. In the workplace, and that's your working genius, you're probably going to ask a lot of questions which could come across like you don't trust or you're disapproving, but that person with discernment is trying to seek to understand what are the cautionary areas that we need to be paying attention to?

What are the warning signs? What could go wrong? So they're trying to see through and assess how do we get the best possible outcome and optimize it, but they're going to do it through trying to discern Where the maybe pain points or weak points are so if you have somebody on your team that seems like they're constantly questioning everything Yeah, I mean you have to really press some button and like you can't just face value go Oh, they must be discerning and you can't go black or white about it.

You have to investigate some but They're most likely trying to help facilitate an opportunity for a better win. Does that make sense?

Yeah, and it sounds like they might be doing it unconsciously. Correct. And, by putting, by shedding light on some context, people can do it intentionally and then respond intentionally instead of being unconscious in my, origination and my, unconscious in my reaction.

And Is the benefit of emotional intelligence coaching such that you expose the areas that people are already working in? You expose what's actually already happening, but they don't know what's happening.

Yes, most often. Or they might just say something like, Dr. Matt that's just my personality.

Oh, he's just a numbers guy. He's got bad people skills. So like we have some, it's emotional intelligence is learning like a foreign language. Yeah. Like we don't necessarily speak French, but we might. No cafe and baguette like there are French words we know right so we can say things like oh, they're not people oriented Just like you might say baguette, but we don't have the rest of the vocabulary to speak fluently on the emotional intelligence level So these tools start to give the whole team.

Yeah, the same vocabulary. So now we're all seen through the same lens

Yeah, it seems like it would be easy for someone to Take a few tests, do some reading over the weekend, and come back to work feeling like, Oh, I've got more skills and more tools now. How long does it take for someone to, to work into competency in these skills?

And when do you start seeing changes that, make it, make your job a better place to work?

That's a really good question. And it makes me have two lines of thought. One is... This isn't exactly what you asked, but for me, it brings up this, I think, pocket where people are skeptical because they don't want to be pigeonholed, right?

Let's say I do take this assessment and I find out this is how I am or this is how people perceive me. And let's say I have emotional attachment to that. Like my whole life I've been picked on because people just walk all over me or because I'm too dominant and I come across like a jerk, right?

So you have a history of sensitive, learning pain points and you might not have ever known how to overcome those things. So all of a sudden, you have a tool that's yep, these are true about you. Wow.

Yeah, so it's this It's intimidating. It's this confirmation that you're I've been hearing this my whole life and now this, test says it's true and maybe I want to write that off as

It's scary, right? We want to avoid pain. And so when something validates, like this is a perception. But are these assessments aren't our identity. They're just a way of getting awareness. So we can make So oh, I, I don't need somebody to tell me I'm outgoing. I already know I'm outgoing. So why is this even important? Does that make sense? So what's great, I think it always depends on the coach as well. Just if you go to therapy or you have a boss and, or you have a teacher and you're learning geometry, like one teacher can convey the information. So you receive it like a sponge and another person can make you feel like you're a dunce and you'll never get it.

So I think a lot of It comes down to the facilitator. That's been my experience just over the years, professionally. You hear feedback all the time when I had this person help me through this, it was so easy compared to when this other person interacted with me a different way. So in the dynamic of really being able to partner with a coach that wants to facilitate helping you see through these pain points, whether they're personal or.

In community, and then start walking you through so If you're gonna take an assessment, DISC, Working Genius, if you're gonna take them together and you're like, okay I want to be a better person. I want to be working in my working genius Like who doesn't want to be right like this is I get paid to be a genius, right?

Like we're all jealous of the geniuses at Apple like Genius idea. So who doesn't want that? So now it's like I have this report like so the DISC report It is anywhere from 12 pages to 65 pages. It's a lot of information. The working genius report is also a couple tens of pages, 10 to 30 pages.

So you take these and we don't typically go home for, at our lunch break, sit down like a book and like dive into it. Plus it's really hard to know how to have context without a facilitator who's got the examples to connect the dots. Gotcha. Gotcha. One of the things that Good Life Productions is doing, which, is one of the reasons why we're having this podcast is we're going to be hosting a 10 week training so you can actually take the assessment.

We're going to focus on DISC and Working Genius, and we're going to walk you through the. Application pieces. So you're asking how long does it take me to learn these things? You will start learning and applying it immediately. Just as soon as you have that awareness, the decoder of Oh, I'm more people oriented, but I tend to be more outgoing or I tend to be more reserved, right?

Like just that will start to give you it. Inside information. Oh, that makes sense. When I had this last job or when I was in this last type of relationship, whether it's personal or family or friendship or what, whatever it might be, you can immediately start to go. That's why that communication was so difficult or that's why this connection with this person goes so so so immediately your reflection and insight about who you are and how your history has been is gonna start to Like populate without you even trying.

How do you help somebody who says? Yep, this confirms all of my bad decisions are written in stone, and that's it. That's just who I am. And so you've almost validated the statement that we started with at Dr. Matt, which is, that's just who I am. So how do you take these tools and turn this into a story instead of a story loop?

You turn this into a transformative event instead of a static event?

Man, that's one of my favorite questions. It's like what I love to spend my time doing. Okay. My mom, I had her take this assessment, the DISC one in particular, and she got it, and I hated her answer because I just didn't expect it.

She's so she was a high S, and so it's people oriented and reserved. They love making people happy. They love to be a team player. They avoid and resist conflict at all costs, usually. You know to their own detriment. Yeah, and she goes this is a curse like knowing She was this dominant blend of a personality style She's this is my curse because in her own eyes, she saw her weaknesses, right?

I'm not like so you go into comparison, right? So when you're somebody who's thinking this is Stamping officially like this is who I am. What typically happens is you start comparing. I'm not like X, Y, or Z. Instead of going, Oh, I have these amazing strengths, right? Like I'm great at leadership or I'm great at problem solving.

I'm great at seeing what other people need and always being able to enable and support them and cheerlead them. I'm really good at taking the lead and having those uncomfortable conversations. I'm not afraid of rejection or conflict, right? So then you start recognizing, Oh, these are the ways that I rock in this world.

And so When you shift to the things that you're not so great at, it's just a blind spot. You're not meant to be perfect on all four of these types of blends. That's why we need each other. So this is where the coaching comes into play and helps with. Teams really well because when you have an assessment of the whole team together.

Oh, Adam's got this strength that I don't and together Galvanizing and tenacity wonder and discernment like we are able to work well at this part of building the business or sustaining the business And so you start to see how you work well with each other inside of your blind spots instead of seeing it as a point of a deficit or a loss or shame.

Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

And so let's say I'm in a small practice and maybe I have fewer than 10 employees and I find out that I just happened to hire a lot of people who are inventive and, And we're having a hard time getting things done.

We all, we have this idea that things need to be better, things need to be better.

We could do this, we could do this, we could do this. Great, those are all great ideas. Is it that we can... Did we find ways to shift our attention to these other geniuses, or did we hire the wrong mix of people, and should we start to replace, or can you coach some of these other things to help round out the team?

Those are all super brilliant questions, and the answer is yes and yes. Can evaluate where everybody is at, which is one, just a huge insight. Yeah. This is where we're at and this is where we're struggling, and now we can see where these gaps are. Yeah. Through the assessments, you can go, who has maybe a secondary genius where we can share some of these responsibilities. Yeah. They might not be your favorite, but you can at least. Succeed in them, or do we need to hire other people? So with good life productions, we just were going through a hiring process. And I said, we need a galvanizer. Yes. And so with tenacity but we need them to be.

Task oriented more than people oriented.

So now you're marrying, the working genius with the DISC profile. Okay.

We happen to find a woman who she is Task oriented and outgoing which works really well with the owner of the company and he's militant in the way that he leads not in a dictatorial way but just his leadership style is very forward and direct and So we need somebody who can run with him instead of be intimidated or overshadowed by him.

So we knew with that, what her disc assessment, we, where we'd like her to be, or it was him or her, but like we ended up hiring her. So her, and then we needed her to be galvanizing and have tenacity versus wonder and discernment. And so she tested out the way that we. We're hoping to find someone right to fit that hiring profile.

Yeah And so you have a pool of people and maybe a coach like you could say I'm looking at your team right now You're very heavy on the left. You have a lot of people oriented, and so let's see if we can round out the needs of the business you say that you need a receptionist or an accountant or a medical assistant, but That's fine.

Let's get all of those people to fill out some assessments to figure out where they fit in the human side of this team because there's the business, there's the tactical, there's the human aspect of this. So these are just additional tools, and it sounds like we could either save a lot of time and money and headaches and emotional frustration if we were to ramp up our, resources around human Yeah.

What other ways would maybe if we can shift towards back to it being more tactical, like how does a business owner maybe get an, a return on investment? And I know, I don't mean to sound so cold, but just sometimes these these are investments that we have to make into our people and we have to be accountable to the money that we spend.

And so how do we show that we've already talked about we can hire the right person in the right seat we can move people around but maybe we can talk about retention and maybe how that would impact the longevity of people staying on the team.

I love this question as well and it's like a, I'm trying to think of like a happier picture because the picture I just got in my mind was like if you get A rock on your windshield, a spider's out, yes, I just got one of those. I have one too. I'm trying to think of a happy version of that, a rock in the pond,

Yeah, a pebble in the pond. There's these ripple effects. Yeah, ripple effects. You think you're learning about yourself and your team, but there's so many other benefits that we've, we just touched on a few of them.

So with retention, so for example, do you have somebody on your team that's, that could be like a successor? Should you need to take a leave of absence? This person could step in as your substitute and manage and mitigate the overall operations of the company?

That's a really good question because It would be difficult for me to say yes until I knew what my strengths were and what their strengths were and then I could figure out what do I need to work on with them.

I don't have a baseline to judge that. I know that I'm naturally good at some things and I've done a really good job, building something. But now I am trying to replace some of the hats that I wear and I am. Not sure what they're good at but I know that they're hungry for the position So I'm rewarding the behavior rather than the genius behind it.

And so Definitely running blind in some of these areas about how do I put the right person in the right seat? So That you I'm you're leading me to that answer.

So think about that person that could Share that level of responsibility, whether it's temporary or long term, just conceptually.

How would you start to position both of you so that could be a

Yeah. Like I said, I think I would need to take an assessment myself just to know why am I naturally able to overcome these things and you're not, and, but what are you able to naturally overcome? And let's see if there is a, either an educational gap or a, it just takes on the job training or is there an actual skill you can get certified in and actually close that knowledge gap.

And then, Try to put you in situations where you're going to be tested a little bit in these weaknesses and then let's build that muscle, right?

Exactly, and there might be if you in theory went through that process you might find well this person no matter what we've tried just doesn't like being in that position of responsibility because of all of the Ripple effect consequences, but they're really great at this aspect of leadership and operations.

Maybe just not the overall responsibility because of the consequences, right? The consequences of the decisions you make are life or death, right? Make or break. They could, yeah. Yeah, right? Inevitably.

Depending on which hat I'm wearing.

For sure. So then, What you could do is open up conversation to people on the team, if everyone, for example, had working genius assessments and understood it, you might find Oh, this person is working out of tenacity or enablement, but they really prefer to do strategy.

They really prefer to be part of the conversation around forward thinking and vision. And maybe they don't want to be in the visionary position. They don't want to be the seat of the boss or the owner, but they have a type of insight, clarity, training, skill, wisdom, that only will add to that piece.

And so then you can pair those two. And that person doesn't have to be the all in all like you happen to be, right? Not that you're literally all in all, but from the position of how you've built your company. So then you're saving money that way too because you're not having to hire from the outside.

You have greater intention and then people are again going back to being fulfilled in their work. Yeah. Because now they're working out of their genius and you've given them the position to even recognize like, Hey, we actually need somebody like you to have a voice on this seat.

In my line of work, sometimes we're asked to put together these business intelligence dashboards.

Okay. Yeah. And it's. To display historical information in a context that tells a story.

Numbers? They are all numbers.

Yeah, there you are. Just trying to get a picture. We have financial information, we go to the marketing team and we get their marketing data and because we're on the financial side, sometimes we're supplying data to somebody who will put together a business intelligence dashboard.

It's so interesting watching these models come into fruition because they really do tell a story of if you pull this lever, this thing happens. We tried to pull this lever, this didn't happen. And so now we're analyzing to see what we can predict next, right? But this model that you're sharing is in so much like that because And just in the last few minutes of talking to you, I can see where if I knew what type of working genius, my staff was working in, I'd have this intelligence dashboard where I can say, they are here.

We need to go here. I bet if we move these pieces around, we could get there a lot faster. And so I, I mentioned a few minutes ago, I asked you, is there a return on investment? And it sounds like there's, lower hiring costs, higher retention lower turnover and Maybe more efficiencies in the way we're putting people on the right seats doing the right job and then It sounds like you know making people enjoy what they do Maybe they have more passion behind it and they're more interested in and in diving into the work and helping the team so what other as we wrap up, what other how do you want to tie on the loose ends of this?

Because there's a lot here. There's so much, there's so much value there.

Just as you were sharing. I just wanted to add to this thought and I just, I've listened to a few of your conversations from other episodes, so they're just fresh on my mind, but somebody was talking about Jennifer. Yeah. Yeah. Rebecca.

Yeah. Yep. Yes. Somebody was, Dr. Matt was talking about the accountant, right? So to go back to the example of Dr. Matt and the accountant, he said they've had decades of experience now together. Yeah, and he's made him, I'm gonna say the wrong word, but this is just the words that we use. Yes. So this person who was hired to do bookkeeping, billing, accounting, keeping things organized has become such a vital aspect of the team.

The operation could not go on without it!

So they are in essence business partners, right? Like they've grown the business together. They share the responsibility. And that dynamic of how they've learned to trust each other, right? So like everybody who works together, especially in small teams, we really want to believe in each other.

Like I want to believe in you. When you say, I'm going to be able to get this done, I'm going to carry the ball down the field. I want to believe in you. So I have to be able to trust you, right? So how do I build trust with you? Yeah, and it's more than you turned in your work on time It could be just the way we interact on a zoom call like reading body language learning To get over your discomfort of the cameras, just there's a million subtleties in building trust and intimacy, which helps create that culture.

Yeah. When you have someone like Jennifer going above and beyond to connect with a customer, that customer has become a raving fan of Spark. Yeah. If you could, we talk about Like in medicine and anything right like people think oh, I'm in the medical business, but really we're all we're always in the people business Always so the people business is your staff your team plus the community or the clients that you serve Yeah, so if you could give your receptionist for example These types of assessments and tools and she can pick up on the phone Because you don't get the luxury even of a video, right?

Right just listening one everybody's gonna have certain types of stress. Usually when you're calling a medical office It's not because you're feeling your best, right? It's because you're in some type of pain So and if you can start to ask a few questions Related to their personality style you can adapt your language to make that person feel really seen and cared for right Just tiny little tweaks.

So you can learn that within a week's time, and it will only get better over time. If you're working between people technologically, like your staff, and you know this person seems always to be super stoic, and they don't smile, they don't laugh at your jokes, they don't think you're charming, all those different things.

If oh, this person is more task oriented and reserved, I don't need to take this personally. But now I know that they really appreciate quality information. They really appreciate when I say thank you and I follow up on time. And maybe then I'll win a smile, but I've earned it through meeting their needs.

Versus making them meet me where I'm at and thinking they should be like me.

And that's more outer focused and more, I see. Communication isn't always... It's not always body language. Sometimes it's just the way you did something and you can say thank you in a lot of different ways. And that you just really opening the door to communication when you open the door to emotional intelligence.

Is that what you're saying?

Definitely. And so this is why we wanted to host this emotional intelligence workshop. Okay. It's 10 weeks. I've done training for large companies, small teams, and it's not. As a facilitator, it always feels like you're leaving so much collateral on the table because you do, you give people an a ha, eye opening experience, and it's transactional, usually it's like a team building experience, so great, you learn, oh, I have this working genius, oh, I have this personality blend.

And then I disappear and then they're left on their own. And what if you got to open the reports and you got to do small group workshop interactions and you got to take real life scenarios like, hey, here's the situation I have going on with my team or with somebody in my life and I'm not sure or here's, I'm really frustrated with this part of my job and I like the people I work with, but I don't necessarily like what I'm doing, and I don't know how to change it.

So do I need to quit? Do I need to ask for a raise? Do I need to... Like, how do I... I feel envious of how this other person is interacting or getting certain types of... Yeah. Whether they're monetary or otherwise. And I don't know how to get that, right? So what if you actually had a workshop where you can start acknowledging those things that you see, that you feel, that you think, and then you're equipped with the language and the right people to ask you the questions and help connect the dots?

So we want to offer that workshop. We're doing it for 10 weeks. It's going to be every Tuesday from noon to 1. 30. So we're trying to do the lunch hour, extended lunch hour, and There's going to be a link for everybody to check it out in the show notes.

So this 10 week course is coming up soon, right? They need to, if they're interested in doing a 10 week course with you at Good Life Productions on emotional intelligence, they would need to sign up by when?

I would say the third week is when registration ends. The exact date will be in the show notes.

Okay. And the, this 10 weeks, every Tuesday, 12 to 1. 30 what are you hoping to deliver to them at the end of this 10 weeks? They're going to learn more about themselves and the way other people operate.

What are they going to be looking forward to when they're done?

They're going to have experienced A deeper level of insight around their personality style and around their figuring out their genius. They're going to be able to have connected dots on, is this who I am? Is this what I want?

Is where I'm at working for me? If not, What are my options? And they're going to have answers to these questions. And what are the best approaches I have to making the necessary changes that are important to me? And it could just be, I like everything that's happening, but I want to elevate the culture of my team.

I want to elevate the Connection that everyone is experiencing because we have the money, we have the time, but we just don't necessarily have the tools to work on the intrapersonal dynamics of our office and our customer relationships.

Yeah, and it sounds like there's going to be an extension of this.

Obviously, you don't learn about co workers without learning about your kids, without learning about your parents and your spouse or partner. So there's these these secondary and tertiary impacts that are going to have on this person. So these classes are going to be held online, right?

They're virtual.

They are virtual. We're going to give you, as part of when you sign up, you'll get books and you'll get your assessments to take. And then you'll have all of that information and all of those tools in your hands immediately to be able to start learning and applying. That's awesome. The, I don't know if there's a way to completely summarize this.

This depth of content, but as business owners and people on a team, like it's not our job individually, any one of us to do the emotional labor and the emotional heavy lifting of helping everyone have fulfilling, satisfying experiences. If you could elevate everybody to be more fulfilled, to connect to their genius, to have confidence that we are building towards the bottom line of what's going to build and grow our company, wouldn't you want that person to come alongside of you?

And you don't have to be the one responsible. To onboard all of this new knowledge and training, but you can facilitate it through a coach, through classes, in a short amount of time, that's going to give you an immediate result.

That sounds like a really good way to spend your Tuesdays for the next 10 weeks.

And I know that people on my team would definitely benefit from learning about themselves. They're co workers, they're customers, clients family and friends.

So you're signing your team up is what I'm hearing. Yeah, that's right. Exactly.

Yeah, all of these tools sound like they're really invaluable and it's it's so interesting that we've been working so long without them.

And that it really should just be a, something that's already in our quiver or in our toolbox. And I'm excited to see the results of your workshop and we'll have you back on in 10 weeks and see if we can get some of the updates on how that went. But the the links to this are in the show notes.

The deadline is coming up and if people want to sign up they go to Good Life Productions and get started by early October It sounds like.

I think our first Tuesday is the last Tuesday of September.

Okay. So Cheri. You have brought a lot of content to this episode that we don't usually dive into and I really want to thank you for sharing this information and these PDFs, these downloads, these resources, we're going to make these available in our show notes and they can follow up with you and reach out to you directly if they want personal consulting, if they want business coaching and consulting, or if they just want to learn more about emotional intelligence those access, Bye.

Those resources are going to be available?

Yes. Okay. And I can give all of that information to you and to add to the show notes.

Awesome. This is probably one of my favorite episodes so far because there's such rich content that we could just keep talking about for hours. And it's such a cool topic to dive into because the impact it can make on so many different dynamics is really exciting and something I'm very interested in.

Thank you again for coming on the show. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

I think you guys are in great hands with Spark. It's been an honor to sit here and also just listening to everybody and the way that you're taking time to really research the industry and elevate the people that are going through these economic changes and small business challenges and struggles and really being innovative to think of solutions and be a forerunner for them.

Thank you for all the work that you're doing and I appreciate you having us.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here

10 Week EQ Workshop (register before 09/26/23): https://goodlifeproductions.org/leadership-eq-workshop

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