Speaking and Communicating Podcast

This is why all my relationships fail, because I was going through a divorce at the time.

This is why I am not doing well leading my team, like I'm having turnover and people are quitting.

This is why I don't have a lot of friends.

I was not emotionally intelligent at all.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Rupesh and Leila.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And speaking of leadership, this exciting month of April, we have a special leadership series where every single guest will be a leadership coach, a leader in their own organization, and they will be helping us become better leaders ourselves.

And to top it off, we have three episodes per week instead of the usual two.

We will be publishing three episodes per week, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, instead of the usual two episodes a week in this special leadership series in April.

So stay tuned, become a better leader, and log on to Apple and Spotify to give us a rating and a review.

And let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Dr.

Stevie Dawn Carter, hailing all the way from Texas, where everything is bigger.

She is joining us today.

She's the CEO of Empathix.

She is a corporate trainer and a world-renowned speaker who gives corporate training based mostly on emotional intelligence, which is one of the main soft skills that we will be discussing during our conversation.

Hi, Dr.

Stevie.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

So happy to be here and have this conversation.

I'm so glad that you accepted the invitation to come.

We thank you for being here.

Welcome.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely.

So I've been on this journey of emotional intelligence for about the last 15 years, started when I got my doctorate degree in leadership.

I studied emotional intelligence development and leaders, and then went on to start my own company, Empathix, where we train corporations and organizations on how to build emotional intelligence and empathy into their corporate culture, make it a daily habit, as opposed to just that thing that you know you're supposed to do, but nobody knows how to do.

And we've been in business now nine years.

I love the work.

I love the life.

And when I'm not traveling the country and speaking, I have a community group here in my hometown, and we put on plays and musicals and have fun that way.

So I have the business side and the creative side covered.

And both sides, you're on stage.

You must really love the stage.

I really do.

I really do.

People ask me that all the time.

Yes, it is my favorite place to be.

It is where I feel I am my best self and living in my purpose.

So yes, I try and figure out ways to be on stage no matter what I'm doing.

Which then brings me to my next question on behalf of any listener who is afraid to be on stage, because a lot of the time, for instance, with public speaking, why are you not afraid?

Were you always this kid who stands in front of everyone and does the inky dinky do?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I am.

This is something I have been since I was a child.

My parents got me involved in dance when I was two years old.

And I was a professional dancer by the time I was 14.

So I have spent my entire life on stage, whether it was dancing, or then when I got injured, it was speaking and now with theater.

So it's something I've never been scared to do.

But I think what that actually comes from is not what people typically think.

But I actually feel a lot more comfortable in front of a room of people I don't know than a room of people I do know.

And for me, that comes from people I know I'm gonna have another conversation with.

They're gonna see me again.

And so in my head, I'm like, gosh, I hope I don't make a mistake.

I hope I don't say the wrong thing.

But when I go on stages with humans that I may never see again the rest of my life, if I mess up, oh well, they're not gonna hold it against me and they will probably never even tell me.

And I will just move on with life.

And that's how I've always felt.

I have always felt that even this one-on-one conversation is so much more difficult.

I have to pay so much more attention and make sure I say all the right things.

Whereas on stage, I think stage kind of can cover a lot of mistakes.

Those people that I'm touching in that moment, I hope I make an impact on them.

But if I don't, I don't have to see them next week.

So that has helped me not be scared in front of audiences.

And I felt that way for a really long time.

That's a very fresh perspective.

In addition to all the tips and strategies we've covered, take a deep breath.

Remember they're not judging you, all of that.

The fact that you will not see them again and let the stage take some of that pressure.

And PS, you don't need to be perfect here.

We, please don't.

In fact, listeners like authenticity.

But also it's funny you say that because, you know how some people say, I'm very social.

I'm the life of the party.

But oh, when it comes to speaking, uh-uh, so they do the opposite of what you just explained.

That's interesting.

Yeah, I am also the opposite.

I am alive and vibrant and extroverted when I'm on stage doing the work.

But in my personal life, I'm the quiet one, listening to everybody, staying in the back.

And I think for me, it's because I spend so much of my life on stage, that when I'm with my friends, I don't need to be on stage.

I don't need to be the center of attention.

I can just calm that side of me down and take a rest.

And I actually think I really enjoyed that piece.

But I think people work up so much in themselves about being judged and, you know, oh, this person doesn't like me and all those other things that we put into ourselves, not only on stage, but even in just a one-on-one conversation or a small team conversation.

And somebody told me once that it's kind of narcissistic to think that their life revolves around judging you.

And I've never forgotten that.

And I think about that often.

Like, is it really fair to think that you're going to spend your entire time worrying about me?

Like, I'm so-

I'm the center of Dr.

Stevie's universe.

Right?

I'm spending 24 hours worried about me.

Worried about me and what I say and other things.

And when you put it in perspective like that, you're like, you know, those people sitting out there listening to you do your presentation, they got life going on, they got spouses, they got families, they got work relationships, they got a lot else going on in their life.

You are not their number one thing.

And so are they really going to notice or even care if you make a mistake or if you say something that doesn't come out right?

Probably not, because they're probably not paying that much attention.

They have so much going on.

I don't use the narcissistic phrase.

I usually say, people have stuff going on, people got bills, they're not worried about me.

Right, they got other things in their life.

And that really does help you like go up onto a stage or just go in front of a room of people and feel like, so it's okay.

I don't need to be a certain way, you know?

It's gonna be fine no matter.

So that's always helped me as well.

And I continue to say that a lot to other people who are getting on that stage and trying some of those things of just like, hey, realize you're not the center of their universe.

It'll be okay if you mess up.

Because you've been courageous enough to get on stage, they will admire that as well.

And you'll be the inspiration to us then.

But then the last part that I liked what you said when you said, I'm there to serve when I'm on stage, when I'm training.

Always.

I think all leaders, right?

All good leaders have some sort of servant part, right?

There's a reason you step into a leadership position, because leadership is not fun.

You know, it's one of these things people say, oh, you get more money, maybe.

But with more money comes a lot more responsibility and a lot more problems.

And so it's not necessarily a fun job to be a leader.

So I think the only people who truly become great leaders are people who are doing it because they want to serve others, right?

They have that servant part, because you have to be willing to serve others.

And one of the things I always tell in my public speaking webinar is, if you look at public speaking as I need to serve them by giving them the message that they need to hear today, that's my service.

And if you look at it as doing a service for others, I think it becomes easier to do.

Because I think when we put it on us and say, oh, it's my time to shine, it's my time to be a superstar, it's my turn in the spotlight, that can be overwhelming.

And then it feels scary.

But if you say, hey, I'm just here to share this message because somebody in this audience needs to hear it, so this is my act of service for today, then I think it becomes a little easier to open your mouth and say what you need to say.

Absolutely, and they came there for that reason.

They spend their time sitting on those chairs waiting for Dr.

Stevie to show up because they know that you are bringing something that will help them.

Why would they spend their time just waiting for you to fail?

Again, you are not that important.

No, back to Empathix, when did you find the company and what was the motivation behind that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the company has had a lot of different versions over the years, but I would say that over the last two years is really where we've been focusing on emotional intelligence and empathy.

And I think the reason I kind of came into the space of that needs to be our number one goal is because I am seeing a lot of empathy done badly or empathy done wrong that I would really like to fix.

And so that has been something, I'm bringing it up in every workshop, I'm talking about it at every presentation, even when they didn't hire me for empathy, even when they hire me to talk about productivity or communication, I like throwing empathy in.

And it's because I'm seeing so many people struggle with it that I feel like we really need to get this message out.

And so once I was kind of seeing that in my own work, I went to the team and I said, this is our thing.

This is what we need to focus on.

This is what the world needs right now.

And so that was about two years ago that we really focused on emotional intelligence and empathy.

And when you did your Ph.D.

off all the subjects, you could have zoomed in on why leadership?

Oh, that's a great question.

So prior to getting my Ph.D.

I was working in higher education, and my plan was to be a college president.

That's what I wanted to do with my life.

And so everybody told me, if you're going to be in higher education, you have to have a Ph.D.

And there was an online program for a Ph.D.

in leadership, and I thought, well, if I want to be a college president, leadership seems like a really good topic.

I got into the program.

It was a great program, but everybody else in the program really had a research topic, right?

Really had something they were super interested in.

I didn't.

I literally was doing it to check a box and say that I was a doctor.

That's really the only reason I was doing it.

And so I didn't have a research topic.

And my advisor and I did not get along.

We just did not see the world the same way.

And she definitely thought that people who came in with like a passion for research were definitely more valuable than the people who were like, hey, I just need a box to check for HR purposes.

And so we did not get along.

And it was getting down to the wire.

I was getting down to, I had done all my coursework.

I needed to study something.

I had to write this big dissertation.

What was I gonna write it on?

And my advisor sent me an email.

And if you can just picture this in your head, she sent me an email.

The subject line said, you need this.

You need this.

Three words.

The body of the email had no message.

Nothing.

No hi, no nothing.

Just blank.

And then there was an attachment.

And the attachment was an article by Daniel Goldman on emotional intelligence.

I read that article and it changed my life.

And I said, this is why all my relationships fail because I was going through a divorce at the time.

This is why all my relationships fail.

This is why I am not doing well leading my team.

Like I'm having turnover and people are quitting.

This is why I don't have a lot of friends.

I was not emotionally intelligent at all.

I did not have that gift or that skill.

And so that article then spurred me to, hey, let me research this.

Let me find out how do you learn emotional intelligence because I knew I didn't have it.

And since my program was in leadership, I had to do it about leaders.

So I looked at how is emotional intelligence developed within leaders, especially leaders who don't have any coming into a leadership role, how do they develop it on the job?

Because that's what we actually found in the research is a lot of people have some of it growing up, but unless they were really forced into relationship building and empathy and things like that based on their growing up and their culture and their family, unless they were forced into that, most people don't start thinking about it until they have to lead teams.

And then they start thinking about it and they start learning about it.

And so we kind of looked at that in the research and said, wow, this is really important.

Leaders need to be taught this skill set and how do they do that?

So in doing my research, I taught myself.

And that's how I learned emotional intelligence was by looking at how do I teach it to others, which I always think that's a great way to learn a skill.

Try and teach it to somebody else.

You learn a lot along the way.

So that's what got me into it.

That's what got me into the doctorate with the leadership and studying emotional intelligence.

It was literally an email she sent with an article, and that was it.

We will need that article URL and I will ditch it on the show notes.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you, Dr.

Stevie.

After reading it, that's when you realized you didn't have emotional intelligence.

So that awareness, what brought that awareness?

What was in the paper?

It goes really say self-awareness.

So what does that mean, self-awareness?

Yeah, so really what I noticed is that I was very aware of my strengths, my weaknesses, myself and my skills, but not necessarily aware of how I'm perceived by others.

And that's really what emotional intelligence starts to ask us to do, is to start looking at ourselves, looking at our emotional state, looking at how we look at the world, how we view the world, and then saying to ourselves, how do we feel this impacts other people?

How do other people perceive this?

And that was the piece I didn't have.

I could be honest with myself.

I was pretty self-aware in that respect, but I was not socially aware.

So I didn't realize the way my word sounded to other people.

I didn't realize the way they took what I said, and I just didn't care.

I didn't pay any attention to that.

So when I teach self-awareness now within our program, it's really about get in touch with your feelings, get in touch with who you are, but then assess the impact that has on relationships.

Awareness is step one.

Assessment is saying, okay, I'm aware, but now let me assess the impact that has.

And so I was that person who I had awareness, but I never thought about what the impact was on other people.

I never thought what the impact was on relationships.

So in that article reading about how emotional intelligence was really about other people and communication, I started to go, oh, maybe that's my problem.

I have the awareness, but I'm not really assessing how that impacts other people.

And once you start doing that, you realize how much your emotions impact your decisions.

How much how you're feeling comes out your mouth, right?

I have a favorite saying to people, don't let a three day fall out your mouth.

Meaning when you're having a bad day, how do you not take that out on somebody?

Because we tend to do that as humans.

We tend to have a bad day, and then somebody comes around us and we're just extra short with them, or we're snappy at them and why?

It's not their fault.

We're having a bad day.

They don't know the life that we've had up till now.

So is it their fault?

No.

So why are we taking it out on them?

That's the assessment piece, right?

Let's be aware of where we're at, but then let's assess how is this impacting our life?

And then let's start to make changes.

Once we have that assessment of how it's impacting us, then how do we start making changes?

Changing how we communicate, changing how we schedule conversations, changing our levels of empathy.

How do we start adapting so that we can have better conversations and better relationships based on that self-assessment, starting with that self-awareness?

Impact, really big word.

And the reason is, you know that saying the way to hell is paved with good intentions.

Sometimes you have, sometimes you have people saying, but my intentions were good, but what was the impact on the other people?

What you said or what you did, impact.

Well, and if we think about it, that is truly what relationships are built on, is the impact.

It's not on the intentions.

We can say, oh, they had the best of intentions, or the road is paved with good intentions, or even gifts, right?

We say, oh, it's the thought that counts.

It's not, it is the gift, okay?

If you give me a vacuum cleaner for Valentine's Day, that is not good.

The impact is wrong.

The thought is, you belong in vacuuming carpet.

Right?

Like, what are you thinking?

That is not a good thought.

That's not, right?

So I think we get into this place where we say, well, as long as my intentions are good, I'm good.

No, what impact do you have on other people?

Like, intentions is a good first step.

But if you have all great intentions, but you're still hurting people's feelings every conversation, then you're missing something.

And I think we just, as humans, don't take a lot of time to really look at that until we see it destroying relationships in our life or being a problem.

And then all of a sudden we look at it.

And relationships, we've realized, if you don't know how to build relationships, no career success, if the leadership is gonna be even more difficult, as you said at the beginning, it's not the most fun job.

It just goes downhill from there.

It does, it does.

Everything in this world is built on relationships.

From our personal life and our family, to our work life and our career success, to our leadership and everything we do in the end.

And a friend of mine has a quote, she says, to people.

When she's talking about building relationships and how it's important to cultivate relationships for your entire life, right?

Like to not just do it in, well, I have my marriage, so I'm good.

I don't need any other relationships.

Like you need to cultivate relationships.

Because she says at the end of the day, you need six people to carry your casket.

Who are your six?

And if you haven't built good relationships, you're not gonna have six.

Because for most of us, if you took out family, a lot of us, especially as adults, if we take out our family, right?

Our kids, our brothers and sisters, who do you have?

What relationships have you built and cultivated for so long that they would carry your casket?

Who are the closest five people to you that will determine your level of success?

Absolutely.

So it's just your family.

And that's not it, right?

Family is everything.

Don't get me wrong.

Oh, no, I love my family.

But you need other people.

You need career relationships.

You need mentorships.

You need leaders.

You need friends.

You need companions, right?

We all need other people to get through this thing called life.

And so if you're not looking at those relationships and seeing how you can build them better, you're not gonna end up with a lot of people to choose from when that time comes at the end of your life.

And then back to Empathix, when you come to corporate, you said that sometimes they'll say, oh, come and talk about productivity, Dr.

Stevie, but you realize that this is what they need.

How do you come to that realization first?

Yeah.

One of the questions I always ask when somebody is asking for us to develop a training program or come in and work with them is I always say, what actions or behaviors are you seeing that you don't like, right?

Because that's usually when people bring in training, it's usually because there's something happening that they don't like.

It's an HR director who says, I have too many people in my office complaining about their boss, so we obviously need leadership training.

Or it's the leader who says, my employees, the morale is real down, I need some kind of team building.

Or it's the CEO who says, we're not being productive enough, we're not hitting our sales goals, I need training to get that fixed.

Right, so I always ask, what are the things you're seeing, the actions, behaviors, the outcomes you're seeing that you don't like?

What are you in that life?

Nine times out of 10, it is something about the way they treat each other and the way they work together.

Even if it's about productivity, why can't they work together?

Why can't they be more collaborative?

Why can't they handle their small problems without getting me involved?

Well, yes, that all has to do with productivity, it's really all about the relationships.

The underlying.

The underlying problem in every organization to achieve any goal is going to be relationships.

Now, it may not be internal relationships, it may be they don't have good relationships with their customers, or they don't have good relationships with their vendors.

But every problem an organization has is built somewhere on bad relationships.

So I look at it as, even if you want me to come in and talk about productivity, or you want me to come in and talk about goal setting, the truth is that that by itself without talking about relationships is actually not gonna fix the problem.

It's gonna give you a strategy, an idea, but if they're still not gonna talk to each other, you haven't solved anything.

And so I always find ways within my training to put in some of the key pieces of relationship building that I think are necessary all the time.

And then I weave it in to whatever topic they have paid me to do, because I know that at the end of the day, it's still relationship building.

It's always the underlying factor.

And when you are done with the training, what kind of feedback do you receive by inserting that into whatever topic they thought they had a problem with?

So one of the things that I notice is, not only hopefully do I get an email from the person who organized it saying, oh, you were great, that was perfect, that's what we needed, blah, blah, blah.

But really where my, like, what I call my invisible trophy is when somebody comes up to me afterwards and goes, I think you just saved my marriage, or I think you just changed how I talk to my daughter.

Like when they come and they tell me it's something they see personally, as well as professionally, that's how I realized they got it.

They got what that underlying thing was, because otherwise they wouldn't say those things.

And so I look at that as my like check mark that they got the underlying piece, as well as some of the other topic, when they can come in and say things like that to me.

And that to me is the work, right?

That's the piece that feels good.

The impact.

That's why we say on the show at the beginning, it's both professional and personal success when we improve communication skills and soft skills.

Absolutely, absolutely it is.

Everything I do at work are things that I also do with my family at home.

We say all the time to our team and then when we're out and about, my husband and I have an emotionally intelligent marriage.

We fight with emotional intelligence.

We communicate with emotional intelligence.

Most of what I teach other people to do, I first tried with him to make sure we were on the same page, right?

So it really does.

If you improve communication in one part of your life, those strategies work in all parts of your life.

While it can be something you learn at work, that doesn't mean you can't apply it to your personal life as well.

Absolutely.

Now, if any of our listeners are wondering, Dr.

Stevie, let's do one quick exercise.

If you can think of one and you can practice with me, how do you make someone who wasn't emotionally intelligent before, let's say it's me, what is something that you say, okay, what questions do you ask?

How does the process go just top level?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the first exercise I teach everybody is how to take a pulse check.

So pulse check would be right now, think for yourself, scale of one to 10, how are you feeling right now today in this moment?

No judgment, no analysis, just how are you feeling?

Put a number to it.

10 being today is an awesome day, I'm loving it.

One being, you know what?

I could really just wake up, have it be tomorrow, and I'm okay.

I'm done with today, right?

And we're all somewhere in that one to 10 range, right?

So if I ask you, Roberta, what's your number right now, scale of one to 10?

Let's say a seven.

Seven, okay.

I'm feeling about a six myself.

I'm a little tired, so I'm gonna drop that a little bit down and say I'm feeling about a six, right?

So between the two of us, if we're gonna enter into a conversation, we're doing pretty well.

We're having a pretty good day.

That number, when we talk about impact, that number correlates to how easy it will be for you to listen, interpret and act on anything we talk about today.

Listen, interpret and act.

So if that number is above a five for both of us, then we're gonna have a great conversation, right?

We're both able to listen.

We're both able to interpret each other pretty clearly.

And then we're both gonna be able to ask on whatever we ask each other to do because we're feeling okay.

We're hearing it, we're processing it, it's all good.

But a lot of us go into conversations and either ourselves or the other person are below a five.

So below a five, what happens?

Well, it means that they're not having the best day.

When they're not having the best day, their brain is focused on making their day better, way more than it's focused on listening to what you have to say.

So if I'm talking to somebody, if you had told me your number was a three, I would have in my head go, cool, so I need to talk a little bit slower because you're trying to process some other stuff in your life that's taking up your brain power.

So I'm gonna go a little bit slower.

I'm probably not gonna hit every agenda item that we wanted to hit today because I'm gonna give you more time to process.

And I probably need to soften my tone and make sure nothing comes out too harsh because when you're at a three, you're gonna hear things as if they're difficult because you're having a difficult day.

So I'm gonna talk a little softer, talk a little lighter, give you a lot more open space to say, how does that make you feel?

What do you think about that?

How does that sound to you?

I'm gonna ask a lot more of those questions because I want you to feel comfortable in the space because I know that you're not having a good day.

So that's impact, right?

Our emotions impact our ability to listen, our ability to speak, our ability to interpret, our ability to act.

All of those things are impacted by that number.

So just simply doing a pulse check on yourself before your interactions will help you to be more emotionally intelligent because you'll start to go, oh, I'm feeling a two.

Maybe I should think about that before I enter this conversation because if I'm feeling a two, how do I let that not impact our conversation today?

How do I make sure that I'm not letting that be the filter I hear every word you say through?

Or how do I let that not take over my brain and my brain's really focused over here and I'm not present in the conversation?

Awareness, right?

Pulse check, awareness, and then assess the impact.

What is that number going to do to this conversation?

And so for the leaders I train, one of the things I tell them is, if you're below a five, try and reschedule the conversation.

Try not to have the conversation if you have the opportunity to reschedule it or reposition it at a different time.

Great, because if you're below a five, that conversation isn't going to go well.

And then the other thing is, if you're below a five, but you can't reschedule it or redo it, because I know sometimes it's just, the conversation is happening now, I've already picked up the phone and dialed, and now I realize, oh, I'm not in a good place for this.

Then what can you do quickly to adjust your mood?

So can you take deep breaths?

Can you look at some fun photos on your phone?

Can you do something to try and help you with that number before you go into that conversation?

Because any conversation you have below a five will not go well.

And that's just the reality of how our emotions impact us.

That is absolutely true, and I hear you.

But then I'm wondering if I was a seven, and I'm your leader, and I come to you, Dr.

Stevie, have you finished the report?

Oh no, you haven't done what you're supposed to do.

Then your actions bring me to a three.

Right.

What do I do in that instant?

So how do you, right?

So that to me is now you've disappointed me.

Why?

Because you expected my answer to be yes.

So let's retrace our steps.

Did you make that expectation clear?

Is now the time I was expected to have it done?

Have we had a conversation about those expectations?

So we have to make sure that before we let somebody else's response or behavior adjust our mood, we need to make sure we were not the problem.

So if you're like, well, Dr.

CV we had this conversation last week, and I said it would be due at this time when I came to you.

So help me understand what we need to do differently so that things get done when they need to get done in the future, because we've obviously had these good conversations.

What I will tell you is many times, when I ask leaders about conversations that don't go well, or people who are letting them down, and then I ask them, how clear were you in your expectations?

Many leaders tell me they were not clear enough.

Communication.

Exactly.

Right?

So before you let somebody make your day worse, ask yourself how much ownership you have in it, and you'll be surprised.

Sometimes you're like, oh, I think this is kind of my fault.

You can still then feel bad.

It's okay then to be like, well, I went from a seven to a five.

That's okay.

It happens throughout the day.

We do not stay at the same number.

We are a roller coaster of emotion.

But knowing that, you can now make changes, right?

And that's really the key piece.

You gotta start by knowing it.

Right.

And then I would like for you to also talk about how you said you've seen empathy being done wrong, hence focusing on it.

But back to what you just explained, when we talk about empathy and leadership skills and soft skills, we are not saying that business still comes first.

We still need to perform.

We still need to have the outcomes we expected to.

Yep, absolutely.

I think we should be able to get stuff done in time, on deadline, the way it needs to be done, and have great relationships.

You should be able to have both.

So I look at it as if you have a situation where deadlines aren't being met and things aren't being done correctly, one of the questions I'm going to ask you is how are the relationships?

If the relationships are strong and you're still not meeting deadlines and you're still not getting things done the way you should, then there's a process problem, not a people problem.

But if you're not getting the outcomes you want, you're not reaching your deadlines, and I ask you about the relationships and you're like, well, there's not a lot of trust, we don't communicate well, da da da.

Okay, then it's a people problem.

So let's fix the people problem, then we can fix the process problem.

But you kind of have to know which one it is.

So I do think sometimes in trying to be more empathetic or more relationship building, people are like, oh, well, then I'll let people be late on assignments and those kinds of things.

No, it's still work.

There's still deadlines.

I'm not saying you just allow people to walk all over you.

I am saying let's build strong relationships all the time so that when there is a problem, it's easier to address because it's a strong relationship.

As opposed to when there is a problem and it's a weak relationship, now it gets into personal attacks.

And that's never a good thing for anybody.

Absolutely not, because that's when the emotional intelligence goes out the window.

Exactly.

Have you met any leaders who, when they have a private conversation with you say, you know what, I really love my job.

I was excited for the promotion, but all these leadership and soft skills and empathy, all that comes with that, I'm not sure if I still want this.

Yes, I hear that more often than I don't hear.

I think what we do, especially in American standard corporate culture, is you're an individual contributor, you do well at your job, you're a CPA, you're a good CPA.

And so, hey, let's make you a manager.

Well, the skills that made you a good CPA, dealing with Excel, detail-oriented, data analysis, the things that made you good at being a CPA do not make you a good leader.

But now we take you as this human who's a good CPA, and we put you in charge of other CPAs.

Now you have to do people management, and that's something you've never been taught.

And so, to me, that happens to a lot of leaders.

They were really good at their job.

They got promoted, and they were excited for that promotion.

But once they're in the promotion, they realize the standard leader, 80% of their day will be spent with people problems.

80% of their day.

If you're not aware of that before you start, you're gonna get into this job going, oh, I get to still do my work.

No, you're gonna spend 80% of your day dealing with people, and then 20%, you gotta knock out the work that you would have done in the full eight hours days because they didn't actually assign you less work.

They just said, do this work and do people management on top of it.

And that's really, really hard.

And so I always am very empathetic.

I feel that, I hear you, I get where you're coming from, and you're not wrong, right?

You're not wrong.

It is hard to be a leader, and they expect so much of you, and your leaders expect so much of you, and you gotta get all this work done, and you gotta deal with all this drama.

Drama, drama, drama.

Yes, absolutely.

It is a hard job.

But if you learn how to build those good relationships, it can get easier.

I'm not gonna say it's gonna get fun or perfect, but it does get easier.

It's a hard thing.

And yes, I hear that all the time.

Because as I said, the job that you are really good at that got you excited, now you do less of it.

The other anxiety is the fact that if something goes wrong with the actual job, it's a reflection on you.

If the team doesn't meet deadlines and all the things we talked about.

Yeah, and I think that's where, right?

Building these good relationships is so important because if we miss a deadline, it's my fault, I'm gonna be the one to blame.

But then I have to ask myself, why did we miss the deadline?

Is it because I don't have a good relationship with my team?

Did I not know we were gonna miss the deadline because they weren't telling me?

Like now I've got to really sink into that.

But if we have good relationships there, then most likely I knew already from the team informing me that we weren't gonna meet the deadline.

So hopefully I was able to have those conversations in advance and say, hey, boss man, we're not gonna make this deadline.

Here's why, here's what's happening.

What would you like me to do about it?

So it's still my fault that I'm informed.

And be as a leader, the number one thing you should always strive for is to be informed by your team.

If you are informed of what they're going through, if you're informed of where they're at, if you're informed of their progress, you can make better decisions and you can have better conversations with the people you have to respond to.

But any leader who feels uninformed, that's probably because you don't have strong relationships.

And when you have to do damage control, you don't even know where to begin.

You don't, you don't even know how to start.

And when everybody's just mad at each other and nobody's talking, like, how do you fix that, right?

Like, it's gone so far, so bad.

I go in and work with teams who've been teams together for 10 years, 12 years, and you start digging into the problems in the relationships.

And some of them are 10 and 12 years old.

The problems in the relationship are a decade old?

Absolutely, because they never fixed it.

They just avoid it.

They don't talk about it.

They think it's gonna get better.

Yeah, just like any of us in relationships, right?

How many of us have stayed in a relationship too long?

We thought it was gonna get better.

We think it's gonna get better.

We think, oh, it's just, it's a season.

It's a dip.

It'll get better next time, you know?

And so we stay.

We stay longer than we probably should.

Work relationships are no different.

And I think in some ways they're even worse because a lot of times at work, people don't feel like they can speak up.

Like they can't advocate for themselves.

And so somebody is holding on to a grudge from 10 years ago, you know?

And they're not dealing with it.

Not to judge them, but that's such a burden.

It is, but when are we taught not to have that?

What school class are we all taught to let things go and forgive and forget and all of this?

We aren't.

We aren't taught that.

So it's just a matter of how they grew up as a human and where they are in their own human development to know if that's a thing for them or not.

And what we also find is the people who struggle at work tend to also be struggling at home.

The relationship skills, they apply in both.

They apply everywhere.

So if this person is not having good, strong relationships at home, they're probably also not having them at work, which probably means that they're not in their best mood at work, probably leads to other issues.

So it's all tied together.

We are having one human experience and one human body.

And sometimes we have to be willing to say, man, I don't understand that person.

I don't understand how they can deal with that.

Like, why would you hold on to something for 10 years?

But then also have the grace to say, but I haven't lived their life and I don't know what they've been taught.

So now that I know that about them, how do I help them?

How do I serve instead of judge?

I always ask people to try and change that language.

Like, I can't believe this person.

Absolutely, I can't either.

But how do I serve them?

How do I be the person that teaches them to let go?

I have so much compassion for them in this.

Cause you can feel something in your chest when you carry a grudge for such a long time.

It must have been so hard.

Yeah.

It must be, right?

And so I always look at leaders and say, so how do you help with that?

I know you can say, gosh, Stevie Dawn, they should have been taught this before they come to work here.

I know.

We can all wish that they just came to us fully formed, self-aware, great emotional intelligence, great product.

We can wish that they came to us perfect human, but let's realize that they didn't.

And part of our job as leaders is to be teachers.

And if you're not willing to be a teacher as a leader, you're gonna struggle.

Because part of our job as leaders is to teach and coach the people we serve and support.

So how can you teach them to be better?

Last words for leaders who feel unprepared for their new leadership roles.

So the best thing you can do when you step into a leadership role and you haven't been a leader before, the best thing you can do is listen to everybody, take a lot of notes, learn who they are as humans, learn who they like, who they don't like, observe a lot, observe body language, observe facial expressions, learn as much about the humans you're going to be serving as you can.

And then once you feel like you've learned some stuff, then start having those one-on-one conversations and start laying out your expectations.

Now that you've learned about them, what do you expect of them moving forward?

The number one thing a new leader can do is set clear expectations.

If you do that, everything else will go easier, regardless of what else goes wrong.

Everything will be easier if you set those clear expectations.

But the only way to truly do that is you gotta get to know them.

And I think when leaders get into positions and they feel overwhelmed and they're like, I was not trained for this, I don't know how to deal with all this, they feel like they have to solve all the problems day one.

Your job day one is to listen.

That's your job day one.

So listen, learn, then change.

We've all worked for leaders who came in and just started making changes really quickly, and we were all like, what are you doing?

We've been working this way for five years, right?

We will all respond better to a leader who listens first before they change things.

So if you are feeling that overwhelm, it is probably because you feel like you need to change things right now.

Don't.

Give yourself some time, listen and learn, then you can change things.

And I often tell my leaders, the first 90 days, you're probably not making any big changes.

You're probably just keeping the boat afloat, and you're listening and you're learning.

Then you can start making changes because you will have gotten to know people, and people respect somebody who gets to know them before telling them what they need to change.

Words of wisdom from Dr.

Stevie Dawn Carter from Texas, the CEO of Empathix and a speaker who is helping corporates, especially during their training, to add empathy into their relationship building amongst other solutions.

Thank you so much.

This has been very insightful.

I really appreciate you being here today.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

It was really a pleasure, great conversation.

My pleasure.

And before you go, if anyone wants to know more about your business or to connect with you, where can they find you?

Absolutely.

So you can find all the information about Empathix at empathix.net.

And you can find where I hang out is usually on LinkedIn.

So you can find me at Stevie Dawn Carter at LinkedIn.

empathix.net or Stevie Dawn Carter on LinkedIn.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Stevie.

This has been really awesome.

Thank you, thank you.

My absolute pleasure.

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