How to Improve Emotional Intelligence: The 10-Second Move

Robin Hills (: 00:00

Emotional intelligence is not being soft and fluffy and wooly and nice and kind all the time. It's about doing the right thing in the right way for the right purpose in order to get things done.

Ashish (: 00:12

Here's the truth most leaders do not want to admit. The decision they call rational may actually be fear, frustration, insecurity, or ego wearing a suit. My guest today, Robin Hills, has spent decades helping leaders understand that emotional intelligence is not a soft skill. It is a power skill that can transform the way you lead, work, and communicate. And in the age of AI, it can become one of our greatest.

Ashish (: 00:39

Human advantages. In this conversation, you'll discover why emotionally intelligent people are not just being nice, how it helps them make better decisions and unlock the full potential of their teams. Robin also shares practical steps how anyone can build their emotional intelligence over time.

Ashish (: 00:59

So if you want to lead through pressure without letting pressure lead you, conversation is for you.

Ashish (: 01:05

Robin, it's so wonderful to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Robin Hills (: 01:12

Ashish, thank you for inviting me to join you.

Ashish (: 01:14

So, Robin, you are one of the leading voices and experts in the field of emotional intelligence, and you have watched emotional intelligence move from what often was described as a soft skill to one of the most valuable capabilities in our AI era. Why does AI make emotional intelligence more important rather than less important?

Robin Hills (: 01:37

Well, I think it's a very basic question around what us from machine technology, the robots, the computers, and where everything is going. And it's basically the interface that we have that makes us human. So it's looking at very fundamental questions around humanity, what it is and where it takes us.

Ashish (: 02:02

So can AI simulate empathy?

Robin Hills (: 02:04

To a certain extent it can, but it doesn't know what empathy really is. It doesn't experience it because it basically can't feel it. Empathy is a feeling that we share with our fellow human beings. And quite honestly, computers are becoming more affective, meaning that they've got the capability of being able to distinguish, understand and work with emotions to a certain extent.

Robin Hills (: 02:32

but they're not human. So they don't really understand what it is that we go through as humans when we're faced with challenges. They don't know what it's like to engage with another human at a deep level. And they don't know what it's like to be naughty boy or a girl and to grow up because he just hasn't had experience in that way.

Ashish (: 02:56

Yeah, you know, it reminds me a little bit. I had a conversation with Llewellyn he is the chair for the Positive Psychology Association. And he's talked a lot about this notion of AI systems designed to make us codependent on them rather than kind of as an aid. And he talks about you know how

Ashish (: 03:17

The responses and the underlying logic behind so many of them is to actually almost kind of designed to please us and keep us on rather than genuinely be able to help, right? So they're they're designed to make you like them. They're designed to make you ask them and feel real. And we know human emotions are so complex. We can hold multiple emotions at the same time. Sometimes having something

Ashish (: 03:43

agree with us so that we like it is not necessarily the best thing.

Robin Hills (: 03:47

let's look at where we are. We're talking together on your podcast, which is the Happiness Squad. Let's take that emotion and try to understand it. You and I know what happiness is. And if we have a good conversation, I will be very happy at the end of this podcast. Now, an AI system doesn't understand what happiness really is because it doesn't know what it feels like.

Robin Hills (: 04:12

So, yes, it can give you a description of happiness and it can give you a logical explanation as to what it is and how it can apply and where it comes from and all that sort of thing, but that's not happiness. When a computer or an AI system, a large language model or a robot has completed a task, they switch off. So what we've got to remember is that these are tools.

Robin Hills (: 04:37

And the tools are designed to make us happy and to give us a dopamine surge and serotonin surge in certain ways. And that encourages us to carry on using them. And I've been using AI all day. I have to admit that, but it's a tool and it's doing some stuff for me that I haven't got the knowledge, understanding and experience of.

Robin Hills (: 05:03

But at the end of the day, which is after this podcast because I'm in the United Kingdom and we're recording this at five o'clock English time on a Friday, I'm going to switch everything off and share a happy evening with my wife. We'll have a meal. We'll have a conversation. We'll go for a walk. We'll spend some time on social media. We'll go to bed. We'll have a happy time. Now, during that,

Robin Hills (: 05:31

You know, our emotions will ebb and flow. We may disagree on a certain number of topics. We may not end up being as happy as I would imagine that we would be because we might have a disagreement. But that's all that makes us human. And my wife and I have got a very good relationship. We've been married for well over 40 years. So it works.

Robin Hills (: 05:57

and it works for me and it's part of what makes us human.

Ashish (: 06:01

Yeah, I love it. We are coming it'll be close to twenty years for us. My wife's English. She grew up in Sussex. We actually just spent three weeks exploring the beautiful English countryside. just you know, at the towards the end of June. and yeah, I'm with you, Robin. I mean, you know, this is one of the big when we talk about emotional intelligence, a lot of people actually don't even understand what emotions are.

Ashish (: 06:23

when we talk about happiness, I'm not talking about happiness as an emotion. I'm talking about a state of being that allows you to have a foundation to be able to navigate however the external weather changes. A place of peace, joyfulness, stability, grounded in abundance, gratitude, how much we have, right?

Ashish (: 06:44

Watered by our relationships with people in service of a higher purpose. So it's really building that foundation. but it's unfortunate that, you know, we talk about emotional intelligence in the workplace, but we never teach the science of emotions to growing up. We don't we don't learn it in schools, we don't learn it in colleges, and we accidentally trip over it in the workplace.

Robin Hills (: 07:07

let's look at how you've defined happiness and the basis that you're working from in terms of defining happiness. Everything within that is beyond the capability and the understanding of artificial intelligence. I mean, one of the core things about what makes us human is our spirituality. It's our relationship with God, whoever you

Robin Hills (: 07:32

perceive him or her to be. It's our purpose, it's our meaning, it's what gives us the life that we have. And to understand that we only have one life and that I am Robin Hills and nobody else can be me. I can be me and be the best version of me that I can possibly be, but that's never ever ever going to be replicated again. So how do I make the best value from that?

Robin Hills (: 08:00

or myself for other people and from humanity in general. And my purpose is focused around delivering messages around emotional intelligence. But I think it's vitally important to define emotional intelligence for you and your listeners so that we understand it and we know where we're coming from. Emotional intelligence is very, very simply put, but very difficult to do.

Robin Hills (: 08:27

It's being smart with your feelings. It's the way in which you combine your thinking with your emotions in order to make good quality decisions and build up authentic relationships with the purpose of taking appropriate action. So that's emotional intelligence. let's go back a little bit further. You've talked about emotions. What are they? Well,

Robin Hills (: 08:51

Even the scientists don't agree, but from a biological perspective, it's the physiological and psychological changes that we go through when we're adapting and changing to changes within our environment.

Ashish (: 09:08

I loved how you defined emotional intelligence, Robin. And I would love for you to define that again, because there were some beautiful nuggets in there.

Robin Hills (: 09:18

emotional intelligence is being smart with your feelings. It's the way in which you combine your thinking with your emotions in order to make good quality decisions and build authentic relationships with the purpose of taking action. Now, I can repeat that because I have repeated it many, many times and I've embedded that into my psyche. So that's what I live and breathe.

Robin Hills (: 09:43

However, it sounds very simple. It is very, very difficult to put into practice.

Ashish (: 09:50

I want to highlight and play back to you. You talked about emotional intelligence, you started with feelings. A lot of people think it's just about feeling, and it's not. You said feeling with intelligence, thoughts, thoughts and feelings together.

Ashish (: 10:03

First of all, be able to name what we are feeling, what that shows up in our body as, be able to tie that to what we are thinking. And we do that so we can make better decisions and we can build better relationships with each other, right? In service of something we're doing. That does not to me feel soft. That does not to me feel easy.

Ashish (: 10:26

Because most of the people in today's world are they can't even name any emotions before other than angry, sad, upset, anxious, or maybe a couple more. And and oftentimes, I want to get into this in a later question. Most of people are making emotion decisions without actually even recognizing you know what they're feeling, and to think they're making logical decisions, but they're not.

Ashish (: 10:49

They're actually letting their emotions make their decisions. we'll go there in a minute, but I wanted to actually start with a little bit, Robin, of you didn't start your career in this field. You actually started in pharmaceutical sales. And at some moment, you realized that understanding people mattered more than just simply knowing the product. And that through line led to

Ashish (: 11:11

kind of the start of what your work was, which has all been in this space around teaching emotional intelligence, but most importantly helping leaders and organizations build emotionally intelligent cultures and learn it. And they do it by practicing. So tell us a little bit of that story about how you actually discovered importance of this field.

Robin Hills (: 11:32

let's look at this in a slightly different way, Ashish, because this is vitally important. We've talked about artificial intelligence because it really has come into the public consciousness in the last three, four, five years.

Ashish (: 11:48

Mm-hmm.

Robin Hills (: 11:49

And we're sitting at the cusp of a revolution. When I started my career 40 odd years ago, emotional intelligence

Robin Hills (: 11:58

had only just started to be recognized and researched in the academic circles. It certainly wasn't well known in the public domain. That didn't happen until the mid-90s. So for a number of years, I was working in the field of pharmaceutical selling. I was working in the London teaching hospitals.

Robin Hills (: 12:21

selling anti-infectives and anti-ultra medication and drugs for cancer. And I found that there were a number of doctors who would engage with me very readily, very openly, and there were some that just wouldn't. Now, I would approach them in exactly the same way as what I perceived to be a professional pharmaceutical representative.

Robin Hills (: 12:45

yet I was met with very, very different behaviors from very intelligent people. And I couldn't work out what the issue was because, I was trying to be consistent, but something was just not right and something was just not happening. And then sometimes with those doctors I did engage with, it didn't work.

Robin Hills (: 13:06

because what I was doing was actually telling them about the product rather than selling them the product and finding out what they needed and finding out how to work with them in partnership. So there was a whole host of things going on and it wasn't until I read Daniel Goldman's books that were published in the mid 90s that I thought, here lies the answer.

Robin Hills (: 13:31

And it was a light bulb moment. It really just flashed through. It wasn't for another 10 years or so before I really thought, Let's start working in this area and making it an area that I feel I can start to make a difference in and start to take some ownership in and start to make some changes for people. So, you know,

Robin Hills (: 13:57

In a nutshell, that's my journey, but it's continuing and it's very, very fruitful for me and hopefully for everybody else as we move forward into this new changing arena based around artificial intelligence.

Ashish (: 14:13

I love that. It's a very shared journey, Robin, for me, right? So I grew up in the world of operations, doing large scale operations transformations. And along the journey, I realized that while over the last hundred years, from Ford Model T days to now, we had learned how to optimize physical assets. You know, most physical assets we operate them at close to 80, 85% efficiencies.

Ashish (: 14:40

If not our focus is to get them there. you know, we really have built systems like Lean and Six Sigma that equip leaders and frontlines to make improvements, continuous improvement in all the physical assets, the machines, the factories, the stores. And yet, I realized through the work that I was doing that when it came to human assets, we were not even touching 30% of the potential.

Ashish (: 15:05

Our workplaces weren't designed for that. We didn't treat people in a way that would give them the stability and get them out of survival-based thinking into kind of creative and collaborative thinking. and the fact that there was 25 years of research, you know, all the way from Daniel Goldman, the positive psychologists.

Ashish (: 15:25

Starting early 2000 with Marty Seligman, all of the organizational psychologists and research work at Michigan. Unless you went looking for it, all this research wasn't making it in their way into the workplace. And so that became kind of my origin story, very much similar to kind of your journey to say, hey, in today's world, we mostly run it's a service-based economy, and we actually need to take the way.

Ashish (: 15:49

We run our operations from the dark ages where we use carrots and sticks to drive behavior, where we use financial incentives to motivate performance to actually tap into something that makes us all human. It's the intrinsic motivators, it's ways of collaborating. And so look, I think it's it's fascinating that there's two of us and we didn't kind of grow up in this field, but

Ashish (: 16:13

dedicating our lives to the betterment of the way work gets done.

Robin Hills (: 16:17

very interesting because again there are parallels between both our stories even though they're very disparate. The interesting thing is with pharmaceutical sales is it has changed dramatically. I haven't been working in that field this century and it's completely unrecognizable. I couldn't do the job now.

Robin Hills (: 16:39

because I just don't know what the job is. I think what we've got to do is we've got to look at any type of role that anybody is performing and we've got to identify whether it's under threat from artificial intelligence and identify those components that are not. So we can look at all the automation, all the logic, all the things that machines can do.

Robin Hills (: 17:03

far better than we can do as humans and let the machines do it. What it is that we can do that the machines can't do is we can make choices, we can make decisions based upon our principles and our values, we can build relationships, we can network, we can be creative, we can be innovative and again we're all doing it because we've got this higher purpose.

Ashish (: 17:29

I love that. So let's go to this notion of emotional intelligence and the definition you made and go into how emotional intelligence helps us with decision making. And you made a very provocative statement that I loved, where you say we most often don't recognize that we make decisions.

Ashish (: 17:48

Where the emotions are disguising as logic.

Ashish (: 17:51

Unpack that for us.

Robin Hills (: 17:52

Sure, every decision that we make, everything that we do is driven by emotions and I think we've just got to recognize that. if we view everything that we do as a series of choices, how do we make the best choices that we possibly can in order to build up relationships rather than to destroy them? Now you talked about people

Robin Hills (: 18:19

being unable to recognize and name emotions and they have a very simple palette of expressions for their emotions, Ashish. I would like to make it even simpler, really, rather make it more complex. And the way I would ask people to look at their emotions is, how am I feeling about a current situation? Does it feel pleasant or does it feel unpleasant?

Robin Hills (: 18:46

And how can I use my emotional state to work constructively with the people that I'm engaging with rather than destructively? It's very, very simple because more often than not, people will have an emotion, react, and then have to pick up the consequences weeks afterwards, positive or negative.

Robin Hills (: 19:09

But let's do it from a point of view of choice. What decisions do I need to make in order to constructively build up a relationship? I want to leave my interactions with people feeling that they are worthy. They've enjoyed the interaction and I want to leave them feeling good about themselves. So how do I do that? Now, it's not a case of being soft.

Robin Hills (: 19:36

I'll quickly add that bit. It's a case of being cruel to be kind. So when it's appropriate to call things out, to highlight bad behavior, to ensure that people understand that they are behaving in a provocative way that I find unacceptable, that's part of emotional intelligence. It's not the fact that you do it, it's how you do it.

Ashish (: 20:00

So give me an example, Robin, of an decision that was seemingly rational, but that was fundamentally emotional.

Robin Hills (: 20:09

Well...

Robin Hills (: 20:09

I think that there are lots and lots of decisions that we can make that is seemingly rational. We all do it. We all do it all the time. And a classic one, a classic one is the color of our car. We will rationalize the color of our car, but it doesn't matter what the color of our car is. It's purely an emotional decision. So.

Robin Hills (: 20:36

I drive a gold-colored car. I drive a Polestar 4. I chose the gold color because it suited me. I really, really like it. It suits my lifestyle. And I've often said, if the gold color wasn't available, I wouldn't be driving a Polestar 4. That is not a rational decision. It is purely emotional.

Robin Hills (: 21:01

Now since I bought the car about a year or so ago, Polestar don't make the gold color available in the UK anymore. It's their choice, good business choice, but I've got a gold one and I'm very happy with it. Now that's not rational at all, it is purely emotional.

Ashish (: 21:46

I love that, you know? And so I think there's so many of these that are emotional. I actually think about this one decision and I'm curious to discuss this with you.

Ashish (: 21:54

I think Brexit was a purely emotional decision than a real logic based decision that has huge implications.

Ashish (: 22:02

Let's talk a little bit and get your perspectives on that.

Robin Hills (: 22:05

It's an interesting one because I think we can look at a lot of political situations where we are required to cast a vote. Now for the listeners, Brexit was a referendum that was held about, I think it was about 10 years ago, whereby the United Kingdom, the question was put to the people of the United Kingdom whether we should stay within the

Robin Hills (: 22:33

European common market or whether we should leave and it was very interesting because there were a lot of emotions on both sides and the vote was cast that the UK would leave the United Kingdom. I'm not too sure that that was a rational decision. I think a lot of people cast their votes purely through emotion. It's proved not to be a particularly

Robin Hills (: 22:59

good decision since, because we've gone through a number of prime ministers that have lost their jobs because they couldn't control the political arena. And I think we will still be living with the ramifications for a long time. But I think it really does highlight the fact that one person may have a particularly strong view.

Robin Hills (: 23:23

They can cast a vote, but if the populace has a different opinion, and that is the loudest or the most number of votes cast, then that is the decision which prevails. Now, all we can do is to go along and cast our vote and accept the result that comes out of it.

Robin Hills (: 23:47

and work and adapt around it, whether we like it or not. I mean, the only thing we can do is cast our vote when the opportunity presents ourselves or presents itself to us. Or if we really, really do feel very, very emotionally driven around it and really want to change the world, go and become political, become a politician and change the world that way.

Robin Hills (: 24:14

My approach is to give people the responsibility and to empower them to make the best possible decisions. And I do that through emotional intelligence. And you do it, Ashish, the erstwhile way that you are doing it by communicating with people through the Happiness Squad.

Ashish (: 24:35

So look, I think there are so many decisions like those that have so such big implications that if we could teach people, and that's why I love your work, of combining the thought and the logic with the emotion and not be too driven by one or the other, I think that would make people make better decisions. Before we move on, I want to talk a little bit about what happens to leaders.

Ashish (: 24:57

When they think they're being rational, but they're actually operating from fear, insecurity, frustration or ego.

Robin Hills (: 25:05

I think a lot of that happens very much within many, many work environments where people are put into leadership positions. But as you rightly said earlier in our conversation, people are not trained or they're not or they don't learn to work with their emotions. And more often than people are put into leadership positions because they've been particularly good at one particular role.

Robin Hills (: 25:32

They've outshone in that and they are then put into a management position where they're supposed to lead and manage people. And suddenly they're supposed to have all the skills and capabilities to do it effectively. Now, a lot of people will look at their transition into that role and think, I know how to be successful here. All I've got to do is to tell people to do it my way and to follow the process that I

Robin Hills (: 25:59

and they will have the same level of success as I did or do. So that's their approach. Now when it doesn't work, they actually then resort to telling people what to do, shouting and barking orders at them and encouraging them to do it that way and occasionally it will get them good results and they will lead through fear.

Robin Hills (: 26:26

They will lead through being angry all the time and then they develop a culture within their particular department that gets a certain amount of results. And if they are good at getting the results that way, the organization encourages them. And that's the big concern because there is a better way. It takes a lot longer and it can be a lot harder.

Robin Hills (: 26:52

But the results are a lot more powerful for all the individuals involved, the people, the leaders, the culture of the organization. But lot of people are not prepared to invest in that money because, or that resource, because they want the money now, they want the profitability. So, pile it high, sell it cheap, shout loudly, get it done. And that seems to be the philosophy in a lot of organizations.

Robin Hills (: 27:19

however, I think to be fair, I have noticed that there are a number of leaders that do get it and are making some remarkable changes. And what we ought to do is to encourage more of those.

Ashish (: 27:32

So you clearly highlighted a frong, which I see quite often as well, right? Our research when I was looking at this when I was at the firm, seventy, eighty percent of people leaders, because of all of the pressures are operating out of fear, anxiety, scarcity, this triggered nervous system.

Ashish (: 27:50

and they are many times acting in exactly the ways you highlighted. You said there is another way and you're seeing some leaders move and make decisions and operate in that other way. Share with our listeners what is the other way.

Robin Hills (: 28:03

The other way is to engage and empower teams of people by recognizing as a leader that you are not going to be doing their job. You don't know how to do their job. So if you don't know how to do their job, ask them, what is the best way for you to do your job? How can I help? How can I unblock things to make sure that you're working as efficiently and as effectively as possible?

Robin Hills (: 28:30

How can I be a resource for you? Now, that is a fundamentally different change in leadership attitude, and it requires a different set of capabilities, but it's a much more powerful way of getting the person to feel valued and to perform at their best because they feel heard, they feel listened to, and they feel valued.

Ashish (: 28:55

Yeah, so it's it's really fundamentally instead of a top-down leadership structure which puts all the pressure on you and knowing the answer, you're really advocating a bottom-up structure where you empower your people, you build their capabilities, you trust their intelligence, and you act more as a guide and a coach towards co-creating a better solution. So that you don't have to shout, you don't have to push.

Ashish (: 29:22

your solution for adoption, it organically evolves. Now that does mean it will take longer, but all of our work over 25 years shows those are probably more sustainable and drive higher value in the long term than the short-term bump and then a crash that follows.

Robin Hills (: 29:41

Yes, I think it's also important to say that if you have an individual who is genuinely not performing and you've explored all the avenues as to why that is and what the issues are and they are putting into place behaviors that are detrimental to the company, the team and the way in which they work.

Robin Hills (: 30:07

then I think you have to go down certain pathways which may lead towards disciplinaries and it may lead to them being asked to leave the company. So those processes are still very, very relevant, but I think you use them more as a tool to help and support the individual rather than using them as a punishment. And I think

Robin Hills (: 30:32

It goes back to what we were talking about. Emotional intelligence is not being soft and fluffy and wooly and nice and kind all the time. It's about doing the right thing in the right way for the right purpose in order to get things done. And to do that, if somebody is putting the blocks up and they are not performing in an appropriate manner, then we do need to utilize

Robin Hills (: 30:57

whatever is at our disposal in order that we can improve performance all round.

Ashish (: 31:02

Yeah. Emotional intelligence is not about being soft. It is about being able to have the hard conversations in a way that are more productive that actually allow the other person to not get defensive.

Ashish (: 31:16

And together create a better solution.

Robin Hills (: 31:18

Yeah, and if defensiveness comes from that conversation, it's the case of actually recognizing how and why it arose and working with that.

Ashish (: 31:27

So look, Daniel Goldman wrote about emotional intelligence in late 90s

Ashish (: 31:32

This field about top-down leadership, you know, servant leadership rather than top-down leadership, emotional intelligence, we've been talking about it in the last 25 years. A lot of people have heard it, a lot of people know about it, a lot of people recognize that when they make decisions from a place of emotional charge, most often they're not, they're not the right decisions. And as you said at the beginning of the podcast,

Ashish (: 31:57

you end up going back and having to clean up the mess. Whether it's in a work setting, whether it's in a personal setting, road rage, fights, these are real consequential impacts of letting our emotions ride us.

Ashish (: 32:10

So my question is why is it that smart leaders, despite having all of these 25 years of knowledge and experience and sound bites and yet continue to react in ways that they regret later?

Robin Hills (: 32:24

simply because they're human and they have learned that certain ways of behaving get them the results that they want. So why should they bother to change? I think a lot of leaders will look at emotional intelligence as a soft skill and a lot of leaders won't recognize the fact that it's not a soft skill, it's a power skill and it then

Robin Hills (: 32:47

defines them and it provides them with a different level of capability. I think it's a very, very big broad question. And I think the other thing that falls out of that is that a lot of leaders have not learned about emotions. So they see them very black and white, very on and off, very good and bad. They see them in a diametrically opposed way.

Robin Hills (: 33:12

rather than being something that needs to be worked with and needs to be motivating and needs to be used in an appropriate way with everybody, themselves, their team, their family, their friends, everybody. I go back to school and when I went through school, first, second grade, went through university,

Robin Hills (: 33:37

the emotional component of what we were working with was never ever considered. Emotions are taught, but they're taught at kindergarten, they're taught in nursery schools, they taught in the first few years of primary school. And then as you rightly say, Ashish, that everybody forgets about them. So what we need to do is to build emotions into the curriculum.

Robin Hills (: 34:02

emotional understanding, emotional management, do it in an appropriate way and it's going to become far more appropriate to do that and far more relevant and this is what should be taught at school because of the threat from artificial intelligence.

Ashish (: 34:18

So first question, what happens in the brain and body when somebody feels threatened?

Robin Hills (: 34:23

Well, again, when somebody feels threatened, there is a response that occurs. We either go into flight mode, so we'll flee from the situation. We'll go into fight mode. We'll stand up and we'll fight. We can have perhaps no emotional response to it whatsoever, or we can freeze. Now, more often than not, it'll be one of the first two. It'll be flight or fight.

Robin Hills (: 34:50

And in most situations, we can't do either. So we actually have to respond to that situation in a way. And if it's sustained, people will get angrier and angrier, and then they will go into fight mode and they'll do it without actually physically hurting somebody. Or they may even default to that if it suits them and if they feel it's appropriate.

Robin Hills (: 35:16

or people will go into flight mode and they'll just put up, shut up and eventually prolonged flight mode behavior will lead to anxiety, long-term anxiety and stress and may even lead to certain clinical conditions from arising.

Ashish (: 35:33

So what are the earliest signs from your perspective, Robin, that we are moving from a thoughtful, choice based response to one that is an automatic response?

Robin Hills (: 35:42

Well, I think first of all, we've got to recognize what our hot buttons are, what our emotional triggers are, what is it that sets off a cascade of emotional reactions and behaviors that leads us to behaving in a certain way. Again, look, let me say this right up front, Ashish, it's very easy for you and I to talk about it. It is incredibly difficult to do it. And it's particularly difficult to do it in the moment.

Robin Hills (: 36:09

But the important thing is to learn to do it in the moment and recognize what it is that causes that emotional reaction. So if you see it coming, you can stop and you can make hopefully better choices.

Ashish (: 36:23

Yeah.

Ashish (: 36:24

What is something that somebody could do in the first, let's say, even 10 seconds of a difficult conversation, recognizing that this might be one that is touching one of their hot buttons and might make them go one way? So, what's a move that a leader could practice, almost make it a habit, so that it is something they can leverage?

Ashish (: 36:44

before emotions overpower us.

Robin Hills (: 36:46

Well, I think in the first instance, recognize the human quality of the fact that that is leading us to react and behave in a certain way. And a good leader will say, the way in which you're behaving is making me feel very angry. And by so doing, what you're then doing is taking responsibility for that emotion yourself, rather than saying to the other person, look,

Robin Hills (: 37:12

the way in which you're behaving is wrong. So if it really is leading to a very intense emotion, just say that I'm starting to feel really, really angry and starting to feel really uncomfortable. I just want to take a minute or two just to gather my thoughts. Go to the toilet. Walk out the room. Give yourself breathing space. Give yourself time.

Robin Hills (: 37:35

You've got every right to do that. Just give yourself permission to do it. If it is so intense after you've done that, then say, look, I think we ought to discuss this tomorrow or next week or whenever it is. Give me a chance to really think about it and work from that perspective. Because by doing so, you're taking a lot of the heat out of the situation.

Robin Hills (: 38:01

And again, I've got to say, very nice in theory, often in the heat of the moment and when decisions need to be made very, very quickly, it can be very, very difficult to do it. But learn what is happening and learn what it is that's provoking you from feeling that way and learn to make better choices.

Ashish (: 38:24

So, Robin, I wanna end with a story you shared in with me about a leader who changed himself first. Recognizing this was art, his own behavior was part of the problem, he decided to take action. And rather than change things out there, started to change himself within. I would love for you to share that story with our listeners.

Ashish (: 38:46

As I think it could provide at least some elements of a roadmap that they could start to apply for themselves.

Robin Hills (: 38:53

It actually loops back to our conversation that we've had all the way through this podcast. It was a leader who learned that they could get results by telling people what to do and structuring the conversation to deliver what the leader needed and what the leader wanted. And he found that a lot of people would disengage from that because they felt there was a different way of doing it.

Robin Hills (: 39:20

So what did the leader do? They got angry, they started to shout, they started to insist that their way was the right way, my way or the highway, which is an expression that's often used when people are being threatened with losing their job. And he then realized, I don't know what the realization was, I would like to say I was a catalyst within this.

Robin Hills (: 39:43

But he then realized that if he actually asked people what they wanted and what they needed, it would actually get a better engagement from people. So rather than people ending up really despising him, disliking him and hating him and waiting for the moment when he wasn't in the office so they could let their hair down and just get on with their job, they found that people actually would come to him and ask for

Robin Hills (: 40:11

support and for help just because he would actually ask some questions rather than telling them what to do. It's a very, very simple change but very, very effective when it's done.

Ashish (: 40:23

What were some things that he started to do to shift and put it into practice? So there's realization and then there is action.

Robin Hills (: 40:31

Well, again, to use one of the terms that you used, it's more a case of being a servant leader and to use coaching capabilities rather than being a little dictator and telling people what to do. So it's a shifting conversation really from me as that leader telling you what to do.

Robin Hills (: 40:54

to me as that leader asking you what it is that you need and what you would like to do and how I can help you.

Ashish (: 41:03

So you do a lot of speaking on the topic, you run programs, you train people on emotional intelligence. What are three practices that you are a core part of the work you do that you teach that our listeners can implement or start to implement tomorrow to become more emotionally intelligent, integrating feelings and thoughts to make better decisions?

Robin Hills (: 41:25

Well, first off, it's recognizing that everything that we do is underpinned by emotions and then recognizing that we have emotions that may feel unpleasant or may feel pleasant, but we've got choices around how we work with those emotions.

Robin Hills (: 41:43

Are we going to use that emotional state in order to build up relations constructively or build up relationships destructively?

Ashish (: 41:53

Robin, Thank you for

Ashish (: 41:55

the decades of work you've done in this field, into bringing emotional intelligence so we can make better decisions in the world that amplify flourishing, not just for ourselves, but for the organizations we lead and for the communities in which we operate.

Robin Hills (: 42:11

And thank you Ashish for this platform for me to spread the word.