Stop Avoiding Emotions at Work
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“Emotional empowerment is a state of being in which emotions work for you instead of against you.” – Jamelle Lindo
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with emotional intelligence leadership coach and keynote speaker Jamelle Lindo on the impact of embracing emotional empowerment as leaders.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is an emotional intelligence leadership coach, keynote speaker, and founder of PARADIGM People Development, a consulting firm specializing in emotional intelligence learning for leaders. His mission is simple: to help leaders connect more deeply with themselves and others in order to lead more effectively.
Connect with Jamelle and learn more about his work…
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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Jamelle Lindo, and here is why he is awesome. He’s an emotional intelligence leadership coach, keynote speaker, and founder of Paradigm People Development. Pe– Let me rephrase that because it’s a whole word, and I’ve got it on another sentence.
Here we go. And on the show today we have Jamel Lindo, and here is why he is awesome. He’s an emotional intelligence leadership coach. He’s a keynote speaker. He is the founder of Paradigm People Development, which is a consulting firm specializing in emotional intelligence learning for leaders. His mission…
We all should have one, by the way. If you don’t have one, figure that out. His mission is simple: to help leaders connect more deeply with themselves and others in order to lead more effectively. And we’re gonna be talking about emotional empowerment today. Hello, Jamel.
Jamelle Lindo: Hello.
Russel Lolacher: Good to meet you, sir. Um, emotional…
Uh, there’s so many ways I wanna approach this, but then I have to stop myself ’cause I know I have to ask you the first question I ask all of my guests, sir, which is: What is your best or worst employee experience?
Jamelle Lindo: Oh my goodness. Okay, so this is, uh, this is a tough one because a lot, a lot of really good ones, but also a lot of really bad ones, and, and I don’t wanna highlight the wrong thing. So I’m, I’m gonna go with the absolute best. Uh, best leadership experience I had was in a previous life when I worked for a corporate company, and I got this opportunity to do new hire training, right?
So we bring in these new cohorts, and this is for customer service training. And so I got this like short-term opportunity to start facilitating these sessions. And the leader of training at that time, his name was Tarik, was by far the, the best leader in that organization and my mentor as it relates to training and leadership.
And so I’ll never forget the first time that we had connected, and we sat in a room and he asked me, “Hey, you know, Jamel, what, what kind of leadership do you enjoy?” And I, like, it struck me as odd because I’d never… No one in my entire employee career had ever asked me, “What kind of leader would you enjoy?
What kind of leader would you want?” Right? “What would, what does, uh, you know, delivering effective feedback look like to you? Do you like feedback? How do you like to receive feedback?” So he kinda did like this, this pre-interview that set the stage for how he was gonna be supporting and leading me, and that ended up being over the course of, oh my goodness, working with him for like 10 years, definitely my best e-employee leadership experience.
Russel Lolacher: It’s almost like he was interviewing you on top of… I mean, like, I’m, so I’m a communication nerd, and the number one thing about communication is know your audience. So he was making absolute sure that you were being served in the way that he served. The other thing that pu- drops up for me is the thing that pisses me off a lot which is when people ask…
Sorry, I don’t mean to pull negative out of this, but I love he,
Jamelle Lindo: No, it’s all good.
Russel Lolacher: He combated it in the sense that, um, everybody talks about what’s your leadership style? What’s your leadership style? And in this moment, they’re literally asking you which leadership style would you prefer? Because good leaders have more than one, not th- cookie cutter, one size fits all, because that’s not how the world works.
So I love that he actually operationalized it.
Jamelle Lindo: Exactly. Exactly. And so it’s a beautiful thing, and we don’t think about that, right? We don’t think about… It seems obvious now when I describe it, but oftentimes we just start doing the job. We don’t take a moment to say, “Okay, what does this person actually want and need from me?” And it made a world of a difference.
Russel Lolacher: How is that not part of onboarding? You know what I mean? Like, that should absolutely be a piece of… And when I say onboarding, I mean not just starting the job, I mean starting with a new leader. Starting with a– Because you, that is another onboarding process almost because you’re building a new relationship.
So that feels like it should be part of it. Of course, it never is. But oh, you made me hopeful. You’ve made me hopeful, Jamal. That just happened.
Jamelle Lindo: Hopefully people hearing this will, will start doing it and maybe we’ve started something new here. It is now onboarding moving forward.
Russel Lolacher: Well, let’s start a whole bunch of things today. Uh, the first thing I wanna talk about, well, the main thing we’re gonna talk about today is emotional empowerment. I don’t even know what that means. I mean, I know what the words mean, but you put it together in a way that I’m like, “I’m curious what he has to say on this.”
So before we get anywhere, could you define what you mean by emotional empowerment?
Jamelle Lindo: Emotional empowerment is a state of being in which emotions work for you instead of against you. So let’s, let’s think about, let’s think about that for a moment, right? I mean, the number one thing is we normally don’t even acknowledge emotions in the workplace. That’s a whole other story in and of itself.
But when we think about the emotions that we experience over the course of a day, right? Most of us will go to the negative, right? It’s the, it’s the stress, it’s the anxiety, it’s the pressure, it’s all of these things that I gotta do. I gotta perform, I gotta achieve, right? And everything that comes with that.
And then we think about dealing with others, and sometimes we think about dealing with difficult people and the emotions involved with that, having a difficult conversation, right? Needing to show up and perform at our best in a high-pressure moment. So there’s, there’s tons of emotional context when we look at the role of a leader, and not just corporate leadership, but just in life in general.
And so what I like to get people to think about is what if all of the emotions that you experienced and the emotions that others experienced, you were in a state where you could allow those emotions to support and enable success, both your own success and the success of others. And when we are in that state, that’s what I mean when I say emotional empowerment.
Russel Lolacher: And, and thank you for clarifying a bit there ’cause I was like, “Oh, I got a question.” Because are we talking about empowering ourselves or are we talking about empowering others? And from what you’re describing is, and I’m assuming this is the order, you gotta figure it out for yourself first before you can figure it out for others.
Is that, is that what you mean it’s empowering everybody?
Jamelle Lindo: Yeah, 100%. And I, I normally break it down as having three parts. The first is, is emotional presence, right? So the ability to be present to emotion. Uh, I then break it down as the ability to maintain emotional balance. And the last part of that is the ability to be emotionally skilled, right? And so that’s where we get, get into the idea of emotional intelligence.
And so I know we’ll kind of dive in and get a better feel for what I mean by emotional intelligence and emotional skill, but those are the three parts that kind of come together and make up emotional power.
Russel Lolacher: Well, you’re talking about this. You’ve talked about this for a while. This is certainly an area that you’re very passionate about. What are you trying to fix here? Because obviously you don’t think this is working in the workplace as it exists. What are, what are we lacking in the workplace that leadership needs to even pay attention to this?
Jamelle Lindo: The thing that I’m trying to fix is this, this issue that we’re, that we’re constantly hitting up against, which are the challenges that we face as a result of emotional avoidance and emotional negligence in the workplace, right? So think about the stories that we’ve been told about emotions at work.
Don’t bring your emotions to work. If you show them, you’re un- you’re unprofessional, right? If you, if you tap into them, you’re gonna throw off your own performance and the performance of others, right? Emotions are bad. This is the language that, that we get. But then simultaneously, we look at all the biggest challenges that we’re facing right now in the corporate space.
What are they? Burnout is right at the top of that list, right? We have, you know, dysfunctional, toxic teams. We have lowered performance as a result of stress and all of the change that we’re experiencing. And we can look at those things, and then you can look at high turnover and low morale, all of these kinds of workplace issues, and we can look at it on a surface level.
But when we look at it more fundamentally, we go deeper, and we realize all of these are fundamentally emotion-based problems. If I’m burnt out and I can no longer perform, that’s because of what I’m feeling emotionally. If I’m gonna leave the organization because my leader doesn’t engage me or there’s toxic and teamworkplace dynamics, that’s because of how I feel about the organization, because of the cultural feeling inside of the organization.
So it’s about… And the thing that I’m trying to fix is to help us recognize emotions as a part of these problems and challenges, and then to help us to engage with these emotions in order to create success.
Russel Lolacher: Do you think it’s because of the, and I’ll use a word everybody loves, hypocrisy? Because we talk about leadership, but we’re really talking about delivery, which are not the same thing. So emotions get in the way of creating the widget, providing the service. You need to be an, almost an automation. I mean, I’m trying to think of the root of why previously organizations would say, “Leave your emotions at home.”
What was the benefit to them to even do that? Because obviously we’re looking at the ramifications and the damage of having that ideology, that perspective, that belief. Is that, is that, is it a weakness? Like are we– What, why was the, why do you believe that intention even started?
Jamelle Lindo: Well, ultimately it’s about, it’s fundamentally about productivity, and it’s, it’s built on this lie that allowing for emotions to be in the workplace, which is another fallacy that I’ll get into a little bit later, means that we’re going to be damaging productivity. Means that we’re not gonna be able to perform in the way that we need to perform.
Means that all of these emotions are gonna get in the way. Means that we’re gonna spend so much time on the human that we, that we essentially don’t get the job done. And so it’s caused us to now to turn away from emotion and basically to ignore them at work when the reality is that every moment of every instance at work with other people is emotional, and we’re fundamentally emotional creatures, right?
If I, if I just pull like just a silly example, I wouldn’t even take like a high impact, just a silly one, right? You know, you come out of a work meeting and, and, and there’s always that person who’s, who’s just a little snarky, right? A little snarky, a little snarky, and they think that they’re funny, and they make that comment that just rubs you the wrong way about your work.
They say something and they think it’s funny, but it’s really not, and you’re like, “Oh, that uh,” right? And so we get out of that meeting and it’s like, you know what? I’m, I’m supposed to send that person an email right now so that they can move the project forward, but I’m not gonna send it because they were being a bit of an asshole in that meeting, and, and, and I’m not gonna send it to them.
I’m gonna go take my lunch, and then maybe I’ll send it later. And so it’s these little micro passive-aggressive moments that are born from this place of not understanding ourselves and others emotionally that create all of this friction within organizations that then make the organization very, very, very, very slow.
And so it’s about waking up to the reality that we tell ourselves the story that we need to check our emotions at the door, but the fundamental truth is emotions are running everything that’s happening at work anyway. So the real choice that we have is either to recognize it and manage it intelligently, emotional intelligence, or ignore it, which then sets us up to manage it unintentionally, and that’s where we get all these little micro frictions and major frictions.
Russel Lolacher: I, I– You’re just bringing up the idea of this deceit that the workplace has, which is we say one thing but do another. Uh, a perfect example of that is we’ll talk about motivation, what’s inspiring you. But leadership, and I’m using air quotes, link it to productivity rather than the feelings and the emotions that you’re talking about, because that’s what motivation and inspiration is.
It is based in emotion. It is based in hope. It’s based in, you know, connection. All emotional based, and yet, and yet, and yet. So I’m trying to figure out… You were talking a bunch about, uh, there were previous fallacies you were sort of mentioning that we have these myths in the workplace where emotion is…
I’m curious what else you’re sort of seeing that we need to be paying attention to, ’cause I’m, I’m a big believer that we can only fix things if we can recognize things.
Jamelle Lindo: Yeah. So the, the first one, and I, I did mention it, but I could go a little bit, a little bit deeper into it, is that, you know, we can actually remove emotions from the workplace. That that’s a real thing that, that, that people can do. And so because we believe that, once- what ends up happening is we actually start to avoid and suppress emotions that we’re feeling at work.
And then it’s the avoidance and the suppression of the emotion that end up causing all of these issues. So I’ll give you a real world practical example, right? And I’m s- and I’m very sure that every single leader listening to this will be able to resonate. You have this person on your team New hire, right?
You hired them, but now we’re like six, eight months in, they’re not performing. Now, you’ve seen many different instances that have validated their inability to be able to perform. In fact, you’ve made an effort to support them, to help them, to guide them, to coach them, but it’s not tran- it’s not translating.
No matter what you do, the behaviors are not changing. As you’re observing these things, you’re having an emotional response to them. There’s a frustration, there’s a disappointment, there’s an annoyance. There could be a little bit of anger, right? There are all of these emotions that are bubbling up inside of us.
Now, if I ignore and suppress, I lose access to all of the useful information that my emotions are trying to communicate to me about the situation and about what I need to do. If I mismanage them, let’s say I go to a colleague and a peer and I, and I, and I moan and I complain and I’m, and I’m negative and I’m the victim of this person who just won’t change, right?
Now I’m adding to a negative toxic culture. So what the emotionally empowered leader does is they say, “Well, what is it that I’m feeling? Oh, I’m feeling frustrated. What’s frustration? Oh, it’s a reflection of goal interruption. Okay, what else am I feeling? I’m feeling anger. Well, what’s anger? Anger is a response to an injustice of some kind.
Something that’s happening that I’m perceiving that shouldn’t be happening. What is that injustice?” And when we start to use that information in a meaningful way, we start to realize this emotional response is coming because ultimately, I don’t believe that this person is the right fit for the job.
We’ve done our due diligence, we’ve trained them, we’ve guided them, we’ve given them the extra tools and resources, and it’s still not happening. So that’s what my emotions are telling me, and that’s what we call emotional self-awareness. But now we’ve gotta use emotional self-awareness out there in the real world, so it extends outward into skills like assertiveness.
I may need to set a boundary. I may need to s- you know, have a difficult conversation, deliver a, a tough, a tough piece of feedback. I mean, I may need to go into empathy, right? To figure out, well, what’s actually happening that’s causing the disconnect between everything that we’re doing to support this person and what’s actually, what’s actually happening.
Maybe there’s a key piece of their emotional story that will help us to get to on the same page so that we can move forward in a productive way. But if I ignore their emotions, my emotions, none of those possibilities become available to me, and so what are we left with? A performer who can’t get better because they never received the feedback, and a performer who can’t exit the organization because we don’t exit them, because we don’t have any of those, you know, feedback conversations or eventually consequence type conversation.
So that’s a super practical example that I see almost every day that results from ignoring emotion. I could give you a thousand of those.
Russel Lolacher: It’s funny though, because the way you’re explaining it sounds very academic, it sounds very, like, structured, and yet that’s not how we feel. Like, it sounds great in the moment of going, “You need to segment how you’re feeling,” and– But when you’re in it, when you’re in it, when you’re pissed, frustrated, you don’t, you don’t actually, uh, have the capacity to reflect.
The reason I bring this up is that emotional empowerment, I feel is a range. I’m assuming, because some people show up, “I need to be able to be emotional at work.” I’m like, “Well, not that emotional.” Or, you know what I mean? Like, there, there feels like there, there is… Is there a range? Because I mean, we’re all that way in that we may not be able to handle our emotions.
So to be able to– I feel like there needs to be something foundational. Something needs to be in place for us to even be able to empower it. Or am I, am I… Yeah. Anyway
Jamelle Lindo: Let’s, let’s, let’s maybe circle back to that ’cause there’s a few things that you had said that kind of
Russel Lolacher: Oh, I’m all over the place. You’re not. Go ahead.
Jamelle Lindo: just now that I wanna, I wanna like take from. It’s all, it’s all, it’s all good stuff, right? So part of the challenge that we face is the belief systems that we have about our emotions that prevent us from really being able to connect with them, right?
So one of the things that you said is, well, we, we can’t manage our emotions in the moment, right? And so that’s, that’s a belief system that many of us have. It’s like, well, I’m not gonna be able to manage it, so I’m just not gonna do anything, I’m not gonna do anything about it. But when we really slow things down and we reflect, and usually this will happen in conversation after the emotional reaction, right, first in a coaching conversation, let’s say.
And we slow it down and we say, “What was it that you felt in that moment when, for the fifth time after five discussions, they still didn’t give you that report on time?” And they kinda settle in. It’s like, “Oh, well, you know, there was some frustration. There was a little bit of like disappointment. There was a little bit of…”
And, and this tone changes where it stops becoming about that external circumstance that they’re facing, and it starts to become a visceral feeling experience. And that visceral feeling experience comes from shifting my awareness to what I need to do psychologically and the concepts and the ideas to an actual feeling and sensation of the body, because emotions are chemical responses that happen in the brain and in the body.
So if we go to your listeners right now and I say, “Okay. Right now I just want you to bring your awareness to your body. Maybe you’re sitting on a chair right now. Maybe your feet are on the ground. Move into that sensation and just feel what that feels like. Is there any discomfort in your body? How are you seated right now?
How are you positioned? Right? Is there pain? Is it– Is your, is your back perfectly erect?” And suddenly people start to sink into this experience. Now, that’s the place from which we can start to see what’s happening emotionally inside of us, and eventually use that information in a constructive way. But it’s counterintuitive because it’s, it’s so different from anything that we’ve been taught.
What we’re taught is focus on the external, focus on the result, focus on the outcome, focus on the KPI, focus on having the right answer because you’re the leader, you always have to have the right answer, right? Um, those things are all external. And so we begin to shift these belief systems about emotions are bad, but I can’t do anything about my emotions, but if I tap into them, I’m gonna do and say the wrong things.
We start to shift those the moment that we start to feel them, and then it becomes an entirely different conversation, and that’s the place from which we start to develop emotional empowerment.
Russel Lolacher: I’m hearing a lot of self-awareness. I’m hearing a lot of vulnerability because we have to admit that these are triggers for us, good or bad, and a lot of us are not equipped for that at all, especially how we were raised. The funny thing is we talk about work-life balance, and I’m like, same thing. There is no work-life.
It is the same. Whatever you are at home, how you were raised is how it’s brought into the workplace.
Jamelle Lindo: Mmm-hmm.
Russel Lolacher: What are s- what are we doing to better prepare our mindsets? Because I, I hear you in that we need to be more aware, we need to be this, but there’s a lot of leaders that go, “But I’m being rewarded for what I’m doing already.
Why do I need to go back and learn something at this level when I’m an executive or I’m a senior leader and I’ve never had to do this before?” They’re almost getting in their own way.
Jamelle Lindo: It’s because the way that a leader like that has always done things will eventually exhaust itself. Usually, and it’s, it’s, it’s really kind of crappy. You know, a lot of leaders have to come to emotional intelligence because they’ve hit a roadblock of some kind. Like, they’re literally not able to go any further the way that they’ve always done things.
So that could be burnout, it could be a significant amount of friction that they’re dealing with on their, on their team that just has to be resolved. It can be, um, a kind of imposter syndrome that is, that is now starting to, to cripple them and prevent them from being able to move further along in their careers.
I work with a, a lot of lawyers, and oftentimes for the lawyer, it’s, they’re creating so much friction with, you know, j- with junior lawyers and associates that they’re not gonna be able to make partner unless they develop some of these skills. And so, um, it doesn’t have to be that way, but typically what I find is that there are many leaders who are experiencing a certain amount of pain that’s kind of signaling that they need to, that they need to change, that they need to change something.
But when we start to realize that ignoring our emotions is not a sustainable solution, that at some point, right, it is gonna catch up to us, whether by burnout or the, the impact that we’re having or disengaged employees, whatever the case may be, um, it, it challenges us to, to reevaluate exactly what it is, what it is that we’re, what it is that we’re doing.
And the other thing that I have to mention here, you make a, make a really good point. Self-awareness is hard, right? And, and it, and it’s hard because we have this idea of who we are. And when we pause and really reflect on ourselves and look at our triggers and look at our behaviors, we have to come to terms with the reality that we’re not always showing up as the person that we want to be, and that’s a difficult thing to face.
I mean, I teach this stuff every day. I tell every single person that I work with, “I’m not perfect. I have emotional reactions at times,” right? “I have moments of, of low confidence. I, I have moments of, of stress and feeling like I’m about to get burnt out.” So I’m practicing. I’m on the journey all the time as well.
So I think it’s about us, to your point, creating a space where it’s okay to not be a perfect human being, right? That there’s, there’s space for that. Um, it’s okay to be on a learning journey as it relates to the way that we show up in our, in our behaviors. In fact, in fact, everybody is. And to begin normalizing this idea of, of slowing down to get to some of these key truths in order to be able to speed up, whereas today it’s speed up, speed up, speed up, speed up, speed up.
More work, more to-do lists. Things are constantly added to the plate, nothing is ever taken off, and there’s no mention of how do we press the brake here? So it’s a cultural shift also that needs to.
Russel Lolacher: Oh, absolutely. I, I, one of the first things I tell leaders is if you don’t have time to go to the bathroom because you have a meeting back to back to back, you’re not a leader because you do not have the capacity to lead you or other people because there’s no space. You’re a slave to your Outlook calendar.
You are not a leader. You are barely managing your time, much less leadership. Uh, you re- made me think of a story. I did one of those personality tests or whatever, where, you know, they dig deep. I can’t remember which one it was, but it was really in-depth. I got back like this 15-page, this is who you are, and I pushed back on the people that gave me the document because I’m like, “This isn’t me.”
Like, I agree with maybe about 30, 40% in here, but this, this like identity, right? All about my identity. Can we do this over? And the people that goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.” We never redid it. They’re like, “He’s just not wanting to admit that that’s actually who he is.” And fair point. There was some stuff in there I did not want to look at in the mirror and go, “Shit, yeah, that is me.
That is how I show up.” So moving from how, how you’ve sort of laid this out from emotional awareness to emotional intelligence to emotional skills, how do we know we’re progressing? Is there lines, like is there milestones that we’re like, “And now we are emotionally intelligent, and now we are able to bring skills into our teams.”
Or, I mean, we know it’s a journey, but it’s still a progression. I’m, I’m like video gaming here. I’m like, how do we level up? How do we know we leveled up?
Jamelle Lindo: Yeah. Okay, so I’ll, I’ll take this in a, in a number of different ways. I’ll start with the simplest answer, and, and my favorite answer really is when I get to the end of either a, a 6 or a 12-month coaching engagement with someone, um, and they tell me that they have become a happier human being as a result of the process, I know that we were successful.
Like, that to me is the, is the biggest marker of success. If you are a happier version of yourself, everything improves. Your family life improves, your, your, your marriage improves, your relationship with your kids improve, your performance improves, your connection to, to your work, your passion, you’re, you’re inspired, right?
You’re, you’re in a positive state of being. So, so that’s kinda like one of those fundamental things that I love to hear as a result of someone deciding to engage in a process like this. But, you know, uh, which we’re, we’re talking about the corporate space, so we need the, we need the numbers, right? We need the numbers.
Uh, so the other way that we can do this is we, we use a, a model called EQi 2.0. So it’s the world’s leading model for measuring emotional intelligence, and it breaks down our EQ across 15 different skills. And I use the word skills because I don’t want for anyone to confuse it with personality assessments or personality traits.
Now, there’s absolutely some overlap, right? But ultimately, a skill you can get better at. Think of this the same way that you would think about learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language. It’s really just about the time and energy that you put into it. And so there are skills like I spoke already about emotional self-awareness.
What am I feeling and why, right? We have skills like assertiveness, and that, to me, that’s not just a leadership skill, right? Like, that’s like a life skill. I often tell people developing the capacity to say the truth in a way that it can be received is so incredibly valuable because you’re gonna use that, you can use that in your marriage, right?
You can use that with kids. You’re gonna use that with your best friends. You’re gonna use that to set boundaries that need to be set that you haven’t set. You’re gonna use that to say no in moments where you’ve been saying yes and compromising yourself. Like, that’s a, a, a fundamental life skill. Then we have skills like empathy, right?
What’s happening on the other side? What is somebody else thinking and feeling? How is the world occurring to them? And as we know, there are many factors that tie into that And so there are 15 of these skills. We measure them so we get a specific number. And I tell people, “Don’t get focused on the number.
It’s about what the number means,” which is why we always have a conversation about context before we look at the report so that people know, “Okay, so if this number is low, it’s not about that. I understand the context of how this is actually showing up in my world and in my life.” And it’s very often that at the end of a six or 12 month, if we do a post, you will see that their EQ has, has gone up.
I don’t do that quite often, to be honest with you. What I’m far more interested in is how the people that you interact with every day are experiencing you, and is their experience changing? That to me, is one of the most critical and important measures of, of success. And so we have people that, that are working with the individual that’ll support us in coaching and providing feedback and helping us to, to monitor all that.
And then we have the experience of the person who’s going through the process themselves, right? I should be able to see very clearly that this thing that used to trigger me, right? When Sarah would make the sarcastic comment about my work that used to throw me for a loop for the next two, three hours of my day, no longer does that to me.
Now, I’m able to recognize that behavior, go to that person, have the conversation to understand what that was, set a boundary, and move on with my life. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so the, the, the things that, that make this measurable are so, uh, they’re so palpable, right? It’s like before I had a presentation at the executive team, I used to go into an absolute panic attack and stumble my way through the entire thing.
And now I still feel very nervous, but I’m able to regulate that, and I’m able to focus on delivering what I need to deliver, and I’m much more calm, and I’m much more present than I otherwise would’ve been without me investing in doing this work for myself. That’s like real hardwork, hard stuff. I’ll give you one other example.
So I did a, an EQ 360 assessment once with a CFO, and we’re, we’re sitting there and then we get to the, the 360 feedback part of, of the assessment. And it starts with this thing called a profile gap analysis. And it’s a beautiful thing because what it does is it shows us the discrepancy between how we have assessed ourselves and our own EQ and how others have assessed our EQ, right?
And so we’re sitting there and it’s kinda got like these quadrants, and then we’re just like staring at empathy. And it pops out because where he assessed himself with empathy was way, way, way above everybody else’s. So I asked the question, I said, “You know, um, so what do you think about this? Why do you believe that others are experiencing you?”
far less empathetically than you believe you are.” And then we just pause, and then we just wait. And I’m looking at him, and he’s thinking and he’s reflecting. And then he goes, “You know, Jamelle, I never really understood until this moment that I’m an asshole.” You know? And, um, it’s, it’s, it’s like we had this moment and, and, you know, I say, “I’m glad you, I’m glad you said.
I didn’t have to say it,” right? So, you know, we get to these, these fundamental truths and, um, and, and that’s a beautiful thing. And so we fast-forward, this is someone who did the work ’cause it’s, it’s all about doing the work, right? We, we fast-forward months down the line and, um, and then what they shared, uh, later on was, “Hey, I just wanna let you know I, I had this, this comment from my, my six-year-old daughter.
She, she came up to me, she said, ‘You know, um, Daddy, I just wanna thank you for no longer rushing me in the mornings. I feel so much happier every single morning that you don’t rush, and it feels fun, and it feels good, and I feel good.'” W- what is the ROI on that? There’s no RO- there’s no ROI on that. There’s no ROI on a, on a, on a happier daughter, a less traumatized daugh- a daughter who feels safe, right?
In that, in that moment. That’s gonna translate to the, to the, to the rest of her life. And so there are all of these other intangibles that are im- I wouldn’t have known about that if you hadn’t told me. There are all these other, like, immeasurables that take place and kind of reverberate outward. Because when that person has the courage to be assertive, to address something that someone said that was hurtful to them, and to open up that dialogue and to have the conversation so that they can actually come together and get stronger instead of not, right?
How does that then reflect outwardly into the culture? Oh, we have a culture of talking about things to the people, right? Instead of about the people to other people. How does, how does that, how does that reverberate? And so there are infinite measurables, but the ones that we pay most attention to are specific behavioral change, right?
So they come in and we assess what are the specific behaviors that you wanna change. So six months, what would be the observable things we would see you doing if you were successful in self-regard and self-confidence, stress tolerance and resilience? And, and we actually make– they will make a list, right?
And, uh, and then just based on the conversation, we could see whether or not you’re moving the marker, and you will experience it, and the people that you report to will definitely experience it.
Russel Lolacher: I heard resiliency a lot in that. I’m glad you brought it up there at the end. But I’m like, if, if what triggered you doesn’t trigger you, if situations you couldn’t handle, you can now handle, you’re creating, as much as I actually hate the term resilience in a lot of contexts, um, leadership resiliency because you can regulate your emotions and visualize your emotions.
But you bring up culture, and the thing is, is that there is no one culture. And you can come to work and you can have, you know, I’m emotionally regulated or I’m very emotional, I’m bringing my full emotional self to work. Meanwhile, you’ve got diverse individuals and different cultures you’re engaging with, even from a sub or a macro culture conversation.
So if I’m working with my team, there might be a boomer over there going, “Calm down. Like, it’s just a job. I’m just here to do a job.” Meanwhile, you’ve got a millennial who’s very in their feelings. I’m being very generalizing here. But it, it does illustrate that there are different approaches and definitions.
Like for instance, how you talked about your guy saying he’s an asshole, his definition of empathy might be different based on his own diversity and his own background based on somebody that might be very… How do you tackle that from an emotional empowerment standpoint when everybody sees emotions as being a very different experience?
Jamelle Lindo: Yeah. And so let me, let me put it this way, and then I’ll go into a little bit more detail. I’ll hop around a little bit too. In all of my work, I’ve been doing this now, oh my goodness, going on, going on two decades, over 10,000 hours for sure. In all of my work, I’ve never come across a single interpersonal leadership people-related issue that couldn’t be resolved through the development of one of these skills, first of all.
Okay, so that’s one point. Let’s park that. Second point, big conversations about DEI, right? The diversity, equity, and inclusion. Let’s get different people of diverse backgrounds and different mindsets and different ideas and perspectives to the table, right? What do we never say, though? We never say what the outcome of that is initially.
The outcome of a bunch of different people who think very differently, who come from very different places, who want to add value in very different ways, is conflict So the natural, and that would mean we’re on the right track because if there’s no conflict, everybody thinks the same. So when we, when we have this conflict, what it means is our ability to overcome the conflict is going to determine our ability to actually get the value from the diversity that we brought to the table.
How do we do that? Well, you do that through emotional intelligence skills. I need to have the empathy to understand, well, what is this person’s viewpoint? What is their perspective? Why is that their perspective? How do they feel about that? Why do they feel that way about that? And so I have to have the skill to be able to ask the right kinds of questions, open up enough of the space, engage in the kind of dialogue that allows for me to put my viewpoint, my perspective, my biases, my way of seeing the world aside and legitimately explore someone else’s with curiosity.
That takes skill, right? And so when we look at it the other way, do I have a bias? What kind of bias do I, do I have? How do those biases show up in my behavior, right? It goes back to where we started, which is the self-reflection piece. How am I seeing the situation? What do I believe? Why do I believe that?
Where did I get that belief? And so there’s a self-awareness component that’s required in order for us to be able to identify and, and eventually correct and smooth out our own biases. So the conversation that we’re not having is that in order to actually do DEI, we need emotionally intelligent, emotionally empowered leaders.
Otherwise, it’s conflict, it’s disagreement. So that’s the, that’s the second point, right? Now, the, the last thing that we talked about is culture, right? So you said, “Okay, what about culture,” right? There’s culture and then there’s, and then there’s, there’s subcultures. There are, there are all kinds of things that happen like that with- within organizations and, and the answer is really the same.
It’s about our capacity to be able to tap into and understand those cultures and to understand also why they’re happening. You can have one team that has a leader who’s very tapped into the heartbeat of what’s happening within that team. They sit down, they meet with people on a regular basis. They have their one-on-one coaching sessions weekly.
They ask questions. They seek to understand. They use that information, then figure out how do we support, how do we manage, how do we maintain? And, and, and right next door The very same organization, sometimes in the same department, you have another leader who’s toxic, who micromanages, who uses fear tactics, who, who’s, who’s insecure, and that insecurity prevents them from being able to empower others.
Like, you have that right next door. And so yes, to your point, there are subcultures that are also created. And then you, and then you also have, right, how all of those cultures come together to create the, the, the general sense of culture that is, that is here. What’s okay, what’s not okay, how do people behave?
And it’s fundamentally about shared behavior. So as we start to kind of peel the lid back on these emotional intelligence skills, it gives us insight into what’s actually happening within our culture. And then it empowers us to start to manage some of those things with more skill, with more intention, to be more, uh, constructive, positive, to help people get to a place where they really show up, perform, and perform at their best.
Russel Lolacher: Who’s responsible for all this? Because, I mean, we’re talking a lot up until right now, we’ve been talking a lot where it’s been kind of lonely. It’s been kind of go leader, figure out your emotional intelligence, go figure out your skillset, bring it to the team. But an organization is a microcosm. Is it executive?
Is it HR? Is it standardization? Because, I mean, we need to operationalize this for this to actually connect and matter in an organization. So who’s leading it
Jamelle Lindo: So it’s, it’s a com- it’s a combination of things. I’ll, I’ll give you first a very surface easy, like one sentence answer, and then I’ll…ex…
Russel Lolacher: It’s everybody’s…
Jamelle Lindo: uh, y- y- you know what? I was, I was gonna, I was gonna start, I was gonna start with the opposite.
Russel Lolacher: Oh good,
Jamelle Lindo: I was gonna say, I was gonna say it’s the CEOs. And I’ll, and I’ll, and I’ll, and I’ll tell you why.
It… When, when I’m, I’m doing work in an organization where, where the CEO has not bought in, you’re always working at… You’re, it’s, it’s tough. You can do really amazing things, but you’re always working against the grain, against the grain, against the grain, right? The perfect world is a scenario whereby the, the CEO understands the importance of this, and so they set the stage to establish that this is something that matters.
This is something that we are committed to focusing on long-term, right? We understand the human component in, in work, and, and we’re invested. It- we’re invested in that, right? And so now you have an HR team that’s bought in, you have an executive team that’s bought in, you have a leadership team that’s bought in, right?
You have a culture that kind of understands what, what the stage is, right? They, they set the tone in, in many ways, and their ability to demonstrate the behavior is kind of the easiest way to get that organizational change ’cause it really trickles down in a, in a significant way. Like I, I often say that the culture within an organization oftentimes can be a reflection of the psychological emotional state of the CEO.
Like, it’s that real, right? So that’s one answer. And then the other answer is, um, is everybody, because everybody on some level has influence, which means that everybody on some level is a leader, right? We often think about leadership in terms of these, like very specific titles and salary bands and, you know, certain amount of responsibility, when the reality is when I sit down next to my colleague, if I’m performing well, I’m going to influence my colleague to perform well.
If I’m a neg- if I’m a poor performer, I’m gonna influence my colleague to be a poor performer. Like, you know, the things that we focus on just as employees, the way that we have conversations, those are all micro moments of, of leadership and of either culture building or culture destroying, right? So everybody has a part to play in culture.
It’s, it’s shared behavior. Uh, I focus on leaders because that’s my area of expertise, and when we get the leader demonstrating the right culture behaviorally, that is by far the, the best thing that, that you could, that you could ever do. It’s like we want for people to be more empathetic, more understanding, right?
We want for people to like, engage, ask our clients questions, right? To explore some curiosity. You allow that employee to experience a leader who does that, and you will magically, without leadership training even or coaching, you will magically see those behaviors translate not only into the culture, but, uh, your clients externally will feel that as well.
Russel Lolacher: I’m so glad you didn’t lead with everybody. No, I get it on paper, of course, it’s everybody’s responsibility, but it also is used by, quote-unquote, “leadership” as avoidance. If they’re like, “Oh, it’s everybody’s responsibility,” where’s your accountability? You’re supposed to be modeling it for the whole organization.
So I feel like the term everybody is a little too quick of an answer when we’re like, “But no, you’re supposed to be representing the vision, the mission, the DNA of the organization, and you’re here delegating emotions?” That’s not how leadership works. So I thank you for that. The thing is, is as much as we’re talking about emotion and empowerment, our world is changing astronomically.
We don’t work side by side anymore. We are remote. We are on Teams every other day. Not to say that there’s not something there, but with the rise of AI and all these things that are happening with change, how does emotional empowerment butt up against that or overpower that? What is the relationship?
Jamelle Lindo: And I’ll tell you what I’m, what I’m seeing from the work that I’m actually doing, right? And so what’s happening is we’re, we’re dealing with this accelerated, super accelerated pace of change. Um, and it’s the kind of change where the moment that we get used to something, it’s different again, right? And so that change is creating, uh, a significant amount of emotional disruption.
It’s creating stress, it’s creating burnout, it’s creating this feeling of more and more and more speed, cannot catch up, cannot keep the pace, and there’s a lot of emotional overwhelm that comes from that. And so we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta look at those two things, right? We have this accelerated pace of change in technology and displacement that’s happening, and then we also have this accelerated amount of burnout and emotional disturbance and emotional demand, right?
And so these things are now coming to a head, and what’s happening is we haven’t prepared ourselves emotionally to, to deal with our new external, you know, rapidly evolving technical, uh, technical world, uh, techno world. And so now more than ever, we, we must have emotionally skilled leaders. We have to have emotionally skilled leaders because we need someone who’s good at…
We need leaders who are gonna be able to maintain a certain amount of emotional balance, right? As things are, as things are changing, they’ve gotta be able to have a certain kind of equilibrium. There’s gotta be a certain degree of, of comfort operating in the, in the unknown where I don’t know what’s around the corner or how things are, are necessarily, are necessarily going to change, right?
I have to be able to build deep, meaningful relationships with people when I’m not sitting in the room next to them. I need to be able to create the kind of relationships where people feel like they really wanna show up, perform, be at their best when I’ve never seen them ever in person. The entire relationship is virtual.
And then we, we add to that kind of the, the leveling out globally that’s taking place because now with remote work, we have workforces that, that, you know, are all from, from different cultures. So there has to also be an awareness of different cultures. All of this is, is people skills. It’s people skill.
It’s, it’s, it’s emotional skill, right? And I, you know, I beat this drum, but it’s not to say technical skill, job expertise, all of those things are not critically important. They are critically important, right? You need them fundamentally to be able to do the job. But what I’m saying is the thing that’s gonna make the difference is not gonna be intellectually what you know, especially as we move forward into the future with AI that- You’re not gonna outsmart AI, right?
Like, we’re literally moving into a world where every single human being is going to have a super genius right in the palm of their hand. And I’m not joking when I say super genius. I mean the, the kind of technology that outperforms human beings intellectually in every single way. So what’s the differentiator there?
It’s this. How do, how do we connect? How do we, how do we collaborate? How do we work? How do we work together? How do we bring a team together? How do we deal with and, and manage stress? How do we ensure that our emotions are working for us instead of against us? That is what gives us the competitive advantage
Russel Lolacher: So somebody listening to this is living in that chaos of constant change. They’re not understanding where they might be from their emotional awareness, intelligence to skills. What would you recommend that they do starting tomorrow before they’ve even gotten to coaching, before they’ve gotten anything?
They need to understand that that’s the direction they even need to go in. What would you recommend is that first toe in the water?
Jamelle Lindo: Yeah. The first toe in the water is, is really a mindset shift. Before anything happens, we really have to change our minds as it relates to emotions and the way that we feel. So the first thing that someone has to do is, uh, recognize truly with every fiber of their being that the way that they feel matters. It matters. The way you feel matters, the way the person across the table from you feels matters. Emotions matter. And when we can get to a place where we can genuinely begin to prioritize our own state of being… Like, it’s crazy what I see. Like, uh, like my heart goes out to, to so many executives because they’re, they’re, you know, being, like beaten to a pulp, you know, in, in their, in their work and, you know, they’re, they’re being dragged and they’re, they’re overly stressed and they’re overly, you know, overwhelmed and they, they don’t have the time to be able to sit down and really enjoy their families and enjoy their hobbies, right?
And, uh, and yeah, the company gets ahead, but they suffer. That’s what I see. They suffer because they’re stressed and they’re, and they’re overwhelmed, and what they do is never enough. In fact, they feel like they’re not enough. That’s a whole other conversation. And so it just starts with how you feel matters If you can get there, then you can do kind of this three-part equation that I teach.
And this will likely be the most important thing that I say for this entire podcast. And this is the trick. This is the, this is the one thing that I’ve seen and that I’ve developed over all my time of doing this that really works and really helps. It’s about pivoting from emotional avoidance to emotional engagement, which then positions us to develop emotional skill.
I’m gonna say that one more time. We have to pivot from actively avoiding emotions. I feel something uncomfortable, I feel insecure, I feel afraid, I feel whatever it is that I feel. I have to pivot away from avoiding and suppressing that to getting curious and to engaging. Well, what is this? What is this emotional information telling me?
And when I can allow myself, when I can be vulnerable enough, when I can have the courage to begin that internal feeling journey, that is the first step in developing emotional skill. And like I said, there are 15 of these different emotional skills. So how does someone actually do that? I get this question so often that I created a resource for it, but you don’t even need to use my resource.
You can just do it yourself. Um, I would start like this. I would download a tool called the Mood Meter, which is this tool that organizes emotions a- across two different vertices. One is emotional intensity, so how intense the emotion is, and the other is how pleasant the emotion is, okay? So if you can imagine that, it would create four different quadrants.
The bottom left, it would be low intensity, unpleasant emotion. So what would be like a low intensity, unpleasant emotion that you’ve experienced, that you’re familiar with?
Russel Lolacher: Oh, now I’m blanking. Thanks for that on the spot question.
Jamelle Lindo: I also totally threw you under the bus on that. All right. So, um, sadness, right? D- d- disappointment, right? Like, you know, those are the blue, the, the blue lower quadrant. Right above that, we would have, um, high intensity unpleasant emotion. So I’m sure you’re probably really familiar with those high intensity unpleasant emotions, right?
You ever been cut off on the road, right? Like, what do you feel when that happens? You know what I mean? Anger, frustration, right? That’s your high inte– those are the red quadrant emotions. Then in the bottom right, right, we have low energy pleasant. What’s that? You know, relaxed, calm, chill, studio, whatever it is.
Um, and then right above that, we have the high intensity pleasant emotions, or the yellow emotions. That’s easy. That’s, that’s happy, elated, exhilarated, inspired, right? All of the things that, that really get us, you know, performing in the way that we need to perform. And so I would say download that. You can download that for free.
And just every day, take, take one to two moments to identify a trigger, something that has happened that’s triggered you. It could be pleasant or unpleasant, and just write down all the emotions that you felt. If you were to do that for 30 days, your life would be transformed. Now, I say that, right? And it sou- it sounds like this crazy bold promise of like, “Oh, there’s no way.”
Uh, do it, do it, do it. Do that exercise, reach out to me on LinkedIn,
Russel Lolacher: Yeah.
Jamelle Lindo: and let me know what happened when you did that. If you want a structured way to do it, you can download it on my website. It’s a structured way to take you through that 30 days of self-awareness. Your life will be transformed because what you will learn is that you are being triggered in the same way, by the same people, for the same things each and every single day.
You will recognize your own insanity, and we all have some degree of emotional insanity, right? But in that recognition and in that awareness, you’ll start to be able to understand that information and use it constructively. And so quite naturally, we’ll start to transition into behavioral change. You can make adjustments.
You can do things differently. You can show up differently. And there’s nothing more empowered than taking full ownership of your, your own mental emotional being. So that’s what I would say. Just start with some simple reflective self-awareness, and you’d be amazed at how transformative that could be
Russel Lolacher: Recognizing our own insanity and what to do about it. Thank you. That is Jamelle Lindo. He’s an emotional intelligence leadership coach, keynote speaker, and the founder of Paradigm People Development. Thank you so much for being here, man.
Jamelle Lindo: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure