Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Well, welcome. Welcome to the speak your power now Podcast, a show that empowers women through the transformational art of communication. I'm your host, Cheryl Clark, and I invite you to join us on a journey of self discovery, empowerment, and personal growth. You know, I always say, I'm just a girl from the Bronx. I learned a couple of tools along the way, and I'm here to them with you. So this weekly podcast is going to be a source of practical tips, inspiring stories, and transformational insight that's going to help you break through to any self doubt. So our mission is simple here. We're going to help you speak your Power Now because your voice matters. So subscribe now, and let's dive into the world of Speak Your Power Now, where your empowerment begins with your welcome. Welcome back to the speak your power now Podcast. Once again, I'm your host, Cheryl Clark, and you know what I like to say? I'm just a girl from the Bronx that stopped by and learned a couple of tools along the way, and I'm here to share them with you. Well, I'm super excited if this is your first time here. Welcome if you have returning welcome back. We are going to jump right into a new topic. We end the series of emotional intelligence, but before we do that, we always give sinners by doing our Speak Your Power Now declaration. And we get right into it. So get in a nice, comfortable position, take a nice long sleep, deep breath in through the nostrils and exhale it out.
[00:01:39] I want you to repeat silent to yourself after me. Today I reclaim my power of purpose. Today I declare that I have unshakable faith and confidence in my uniqueness. Today I declare that I will not live in fear, but with power, love, and a sound mind.
[00:01:58] Today I declare that I always communicate with words to empower myself and others. Today I declare to always honor myself by living in the present and living powerfully in each moment. Amen and ashe. All right, well, let's get right into it. If you know me, I am a psychotherapist. I'm a coach. I'm also a mom of six. I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm a woman. So I just come by, and every weekend I come by and I tell you a little bit of something that I've learned along the way that has helped me. And I may have guests on this show, but this today we're doing a little series in our space of emotional intelligence. I'm in a study right now about emotional intelligence, and I love that's. One of the secret tools, too. I always talk about the secret sauce of communication. And if you can learn EQ, IQ, whatever you want to call it, it's still on the same lines of that it is a game changer, because what it does, it gets you to a point where now you can begin to relate to other people in the standpoint of you tapping into your own emotional intelligence. Well, today's series we're going to be talking about in this podcast, we're going to explore the impact of emotional intelligence on your career, in your workspace, with your colleagues, your leadership. So whether you are working for a company, if you're your own boss, your entrepreneur's adventures.
[00:03:43] I'm an entrepreneur. I'm also worked in companies. So I understand what it looks like. When you have mastered emotional intelligence and when someone has not, it's important for you to recognize what that looks like. So the secret sauce of building any professional connection is anything in business is you tapping into your emotional intelligence.
[00:04:11] So sit back wherever you are, get your pen and pad out because you know, I like to just give you some nuggets and some little things of resources that you can take with you so that can lead you to whatever you're doing in your endeavor. So this is going to strengthen you in your relationships in your workplace or your drive toward entrepreneurship success. So the first thing I want to talk about is the foundation of what emotional intelligence may look like in the cornerstone of your career. So when you're building emotional intelligence, you have to learn how to be self aware.
[00:04:54] Self aware, empathy and relationship management, they work hand in hand. Because essentially you need people to make the business work. You need teams to make it all work for the company. So if you're rigid, if you're not knowing how to begin to manage your own self, how are you going to manage teams? How are you going to work with a coworker that you may find challenges with, that you may not agree in the same things that you guys do? So it's important for you to begin to transform how you think, how you are seeing your own self in a standpoint of your emotional intelligence. So your emotional intelligence in the workplace is connected to your self awareness. So when you go into the job or when you come into the office, are you self aware? Did you just have an argument with your significant other? Now you bringing that into the office.
[00:05:55] You know, stuff happens like that. Don't act like I'm the only one. Because when you look at it, emotional intelligence, the EQ, is about how you are partnering with someone to bring that into you, understanding your own self, understanding that it's the significance of you being able to understand firstly what happened that can transform it into a space of understanding that I need to now be with other people in this office. And your leadership is really going to really be a real stakeholder in this. Because I first want you to understand the deeper connection that you can have with oneself. So as you have a deeper connection with oneself, then that's the only way that you can now have a deeper connection with team members.
[00:06:45] So understanding your own emotions and then how you can understand your own emotions and have control over your emotions, then you can understand and be concerned about your team members. We're going to get into that because fostering team members and rapport about that, getting into what people understand I'm not saying to get in their business, but what I am saying is be present with people because sometimes we make our own lives bigger than what's happening. Actively listening to people, that's what we talked about. And genuinely caring about your team.
[00:07:22] I mean literally, generally caring about your team. Because as you look at that, how can you inspire someone or motivate someone, especially if you're a lead? How do you communicate that? If you're in the way and you have no awareness of how you're showing up, that affects the whole team, that affects your bottom line, that affects how you are interacting. That affects the whole thing. So I need you to be self aware when you are moving into your workplace. You got to be self aware. And the second thing, building high performance teams. Now if you're on a team or and I'm all about team building. I have with leaders. I come in there and I tell people how they can use emotional intelligence to begin to be aligned with one another. So many discoveries have come out about how emotional intelligence can foster collaboration, can foster trust, can foster synergy among team members. Now I want to give you a couple of people that we may heard of CEOs out here in the world that really have I think Harvard Institute gave a synopsis of some leaders out there in the history of the world. And some CEOs that they were talking about that they picked from Fortune 500 companies out there is that they called them where we want to reach the emotional thermostat. So they are heating up on the emotional thermostat of the EQ. Okay, so the number one person they had is Jeff Bezos of Amazon. So they said that he is obsessed with the hearts and the minds of his customer.
[00:09:30] And Bezos is the long term he wants the long term perspective of it. And if you look at it now, you may not agree. Some people said that he's cornered the market and things of that nature, but he's actually doing something right because if you look at what he's doing, he actually tapped into what people needed and his business has skyrocketed.
[00:09:55] Another CEO they talked about was Howard Schwartz of Starbucks. And I love how Howard took something and made it into the company is about the people and they talk about how he takes care of his employees.
[00:10:20] He's very careful about paying for schooling and health care benefits and stuff of that nature. I want to tell a story a little bit about Howard from Starbucks.
[00:10:34] And if you ever get a chance, look at his Masterclass. Masterclass is amazing.
[00:10:39] Masterclass of Harvard schwartz and he was talking about how he wanted to get into China.
[00:10:50] He had a block with getting into China. He needed Starbucks into China. He wanted to globalize and he globalized, but he wanted to globalize. And he said he was just having a know he would build it, then it just would not work.
[00:11:07] So he said, well, let me go and see what was actually happening. So he took a survey of his employees in China, and he began to realize that they talked a lot about family, they talked a lot about honor, they talked a lot about generation. So what he did now he's from a United States based. So going into a different culture, that means that you have to now tap into what is special to them.
[00:11:39] So what he did was he started to survey and started to give what the family and then he invited the elders to come to some of their training.
[00:11:54] And as he began to get into their lives and the family aspect, he began to give little perks to the elders, the family, the grandparents, the parents, all of the aunts and uncles, because in China they value their elders. But he didn't know this until he started to tap into their emotional thermostat.
[00:12:24] So when you are attempting to go into a new area and you don't know that area, you need to tap into it, do a survey, do something that begins to look and see I'm not reaching them. It's not all about the dollar and cents. It's more about you being more of the common sense, because a lot of people have a lot of a high IQ, but do you have a high EQ? And that's when tapping into that. And then he shifted it and he began to give a generous help package to the elders of their family that incorporated the psychology and the philosophy of the Asian community.
[00:13:09] See, when you begin to look at this and you begin to look at what this looks like, and not only from Howard's point of view, he understood this too, because losing his father to health insurance situations read up about him. He talked about his empathy because he lost his father as a child because of the simple fact of health care. So in his company, he has the pulse. His hand is on that pulse because he understood first, it hit home. And secondly, he began to understand what it looks like to not have. So he said, let me corner this and put that in the space here. So I hope that story really helped, and I hope you go and look at that masterclass with him and as he really put that in the space, also, another person we talked about where everybody knows is Oprah Winfrey. She was willing now let me tell you about Oprah. Oprah was willing to expose herself to ridicule.
[00:14:18] She exposed herself by being transparent about her story.
[00:14:23] So when you are transparent about your story and about your struggles, that really push you on a normalizing of it. This is why I share my story. I share that. I struggled with speech. I struggled with my communication. I struggled with control. I struggled with anxiety. And that's why I said, I'm a girl from the Bronx. I learned a little bit of tools along the way, and I'm here to share them with you. That's exactly what I do. That's exactly why I'm here. Do I say every word correctly? Probably not.
[00:14:58] Did I struggle with that, putting together the words? Yeah, sometimes I do. I have Dyslexia, and I didn't know that until I got into my early and my late adulthood. And when you move through that moving, how Oprah was successful in business and entertainment and journalism is because now she understood the knack of understanding her audience.
[00:15:23] Her audience wanted to see her in her most vulnerable space and then say, okay, and that was me too. So they began to look like how she was able to now move in that now she is known for her being transparent. She's known for giving away, for education. She's known for healing people. Now, you may disagree or whatever, but this is where she has a high IQ.
[00:15:50] Another person another person they talk about in political aspect is Abraham Lincoln. They talked about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, he's one of those people that early on of his life, his direction and things of that nature. For example, he was emotional intelligence. Because of his decision making. He went against the grain. He went against the status quo flow. And then that's how you look at that. Then you also look at Malcolm X. You also look at also Martin Luther King. All of those people, they went against the know, how do I get what I need to do politically, and how do I get to understand? And even you may not like it, but Donald Trump donald Trump, you know, as psychologists, we look at know, he struggles with a lot of things, but what he did was tap into the community that was mean. He tapped into them. How do we make America great again? Now, did he come with issues? Did he come with some things? Yes. That we don't agree with? Yes. But he tapped into a part of the world that it speaks for itself, that those two people were like, oh, my God.
[00:17:10] Oh, my God. We agree with you. And there are certain people that don't agree with him. You don't have to agree with me, but there's something about his EQ with that particular community.
[00:17:22] So when you look at this, I want you to begin to look and see how you can begin to practice the EQ in your workplace. Now, these are all professionals. These are all people that has a business. These are all people that begin to look in that standpoint. And when you look at that, I want you to begin to look at how you can discover emotional intelligence, how you can foster collaboration right where you are a synergy with your team, and how can you begin to move that forward.
[00:17:52] Now, I want to just change it up just a little bit and talk about how there could be challenges surrounding your emotional intelligence and you can find the opportunities in those challenges and those obstacles and that's conflict.
[00:18:08] So a lot of times, conflict is inevitable. It's going to happen. And when conflict happens, emotions are very high, logic is very low. So in this, your emotional intelligence, being equipped, being masterful at it, and you get skilled to navigate those conflicts in those difficult, challenging times. And you don't even have to be a leader in this avenue to begin to really navigate through this. But as you grow, you can understand that through networking, through building opportunities, doing your emotion, it enhances the ability for you to build these meaningful relationships and create the opportunities that can begin to foster emotional intelligence. And as you begin to foster emotional intelligence, there's something here that I want you to consider.
[00:19:14] I want you to consider in your life. When you're moving with a high EQ, something begins to happen.
[00:19:25] And what I notice in that something begins to happen is you begin to build the authentic part of yourself.
[00:19:35] Now, a lot of people this word is like slumbed around a lot of times with being authentic. But I believe that when you look at being authentic and an effective leader, it goes beyond just your technical skills, your IQ. But it's really about how you connect, and it's really about how your authentic, self leading, authentically as a leader, as someone that's in the place with you, you can begin to recultivate this right where you are.
[00:20:14] So living authentically means that your morals, your needs and all this other stuff you are fully aware of, even at home, in society, at the workplace, you are living authentic means that you're taking a little bit over here that you understand that you respect other people.
[00:20:37] You got to learn how to begin to respect other people. I had to learn this because truly, I was the one that would tell you off. Honestly. Honestly. But that was something that would protect myself. But I had to identify my own values in that. So once I began to identify with Cheryl why do you do that? It's because my own values and my own thing was getting in the way of me being authentic to my own self. So what are your values? What are the things that you value about life, yourself? And it's connected to how you are able to manage your own emotions. So when somebody lies to you or somebody takes something from you, or somebody does something that you feel is like disjustice, those are the things that you value, right? And when that happens, you usually are not in control of your emotions. And you either get defensive, your emotions are out of control. So when you have a high EQ, what will essentially happen is that you can begin to create the space where you can pause in the moment and create something out of that.
[00:21:58] Whether it's you learning how to control oneself, whether how can you be productive with this understanding what's driving that behavior, what's driving that emotion, and understand how to guide yourself and guide others to help you with that. So, a lot of times I talk about being an inquiry, asking questions what just happened?
[00:22:21] Can I get more clarity about that? Because your emotional intelligence is what we call not just a soft skill, but it is the cornerstone for effective leadership. It's the cornerstone of being able to be with people. It's the cornerstone of being able to explore with other people. And as you build your emotional intelligence, you get stronger and stronger, even as a teammate, and you can build that career that you love. Then you can begin to be successful in a space and then you can discuss how self awareness and being adaptable and flexible and have those interpersonal skills that can prepare you professionally. But as you begin to look at that, you use your IQ and you use your EQ to your advantage. But I say that when you look at your work, I want you to begin to look at your work as a purpose filled thing. I always say like your divine assignment, why are you on the planet? So, as I wrap up this episode, I want you to really look at some of the things we talked about. And I want you to really take on something this week. I want you to put something in, implement it in your workplace. I want you to see how you can enhance it right where you are. And be able to discuss how you can understand and tell someone else what you learn. Because it's important for you to start right where you are to master your emotional intelligence at your workplace. And if you are entrepreneur in your office space so you can excel your career. See, when you look at this, I want you to know that as you explore your emotional intelligence, it's going to empower you to connect, it's going to empower you to lead, it's going to empower you to actually succeed. So there's nothing else that I can say more. That this is one of the greatest aspect that you can put in with you. This is one of the greatest aspect that you can add to your communication repertoire, to your tool belt. This is one of the things that you can begin to look at. How can I can challenge my own self to begin to move into power? How can I challenge my own self to begin to say that I'm going to be brave in this moment and I'm going to move in power. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode once again. I'm super excited that you come to join me. Go listen to the episode. Go subscribe to us on all of our platforms as we are moving into the space. And remember, like I always say, as I end this episode. But we'll be back with more. Sometimes your life is survived by one single moment. Let that moment be today. Peace and God bless. Until next time. Well, thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of Speak Your Power Now podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insight on your journey of self expression. Remember, the power of communication is in your hands and by honing on to this skill, you're going to unlock a world of possibilities. Your journey doesn't end here. Stay connected with us on social media where we are going to continue the conversation and share your own stories of empowerment. So if you enjoyed this episode today, don't forget to hit us up, subscribe, leave your review and share it with your friends. Also, feel free to share your thoughts with any questions or ideas you may have for future episodes. Together, we're going to build a community of confident communicators. As we wrap up, always remember that your voice has power to inspire, to uplift, and to encourage and change. Keep speaking your truth and empowering yourself and embrace the power within. Until next time, remember, your life is defined by one single moment. Let that moment be today.
