Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading podcast. The podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Have you heard about emotional intelligence or EQ? It’s being discussed a lot in organizations around the world today. What is the difference, however, between your IQ and your EQ? And why does it matter? You’ll want to listen to this episode because my guest, Dr. Steven Stein, a best-selling author and the founder and executive chairman of Multi-Health Systems or MHS will explain this for us. We will learn the importance of emotional intelligence and how we can discover our own emotional intelligence numbers. And become a more effective leader as a result. We’ll learn that and more right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading podcast. The podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Have you heard about emotional intelligence or EQ? It’s being discussed a lot in organizations today. But what is the difference between your IQ and your EQ? And why should it matter to us? Well, you’ll want to listen to this episode because my guest is Dr. Steven Stein. And he’s going to explain to us the importance of emotional intelligence, how we can discover our own, and how we can become a more effective leader as a result. Dr. Steven Stein is a clinical psychologist and the founder and executive chair of Multi-Health Systems. More affectionately known to many people as simply MHS. An internationally known publisher of psychological tests and human analytics. MHS is a three-time profit 100 winner for the fastest growing companies in Canada. It’s one of Canada’s 50 best-managed companies since 2014. And one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures. And has been awarded the American Psychology Association Healthy Workplace Award.Dr. Stein has also been awarded Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and that took place in 2015. He’s consulted a number of organizations including profit and non-profit along with government and military. He has an impressive list that will be posted to the show notes, and it’s essentially the who’s who of business. He’s a leading expert on emotional intelligence and has offered several books on the topic including: The EQ Leader: Instilling Passion, Creating Shared Values, and Building Meaningful Organizations Through Emotional Intelligence, The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success, Emotional Intelligence for Dummies, and Make Your Workplace Great. He’s done over 100 tv, radio, and newspaper interviews mostly related to emotional intelligence in the workplace. And for that reason, I’m excited to have him on the Keep Leading podcast. Dr. Stein, welcome to the show.

Hey, it’s great to be with you here Eddie.

Dr. Stein, I just gave everyone a little bit about your impressive credentials, but can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Sure. As you’ve mentioned, my background is in clinical psychology, but I kind of changed directions and went into the business side because of my interest in the assessments. And we started our company back in 1983 looking at clinical assessments of people but then moving into organizations and doing organizational assessments. And we came across the concept of emotional intelligence in the early 1990s before anyone ever heard of what it was. And once that became a popular idea, it really galivanted and helped turbocharge the work that we were doing.

Interesting. Now I first learned about emotional intelligence as a student at Northwestern University. I went back as an adult to get my degree. And around 2006 I thought it was a very fascinating concept, but I didn’t do much with it. Fast forward to 2017 and I began coaching at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, and I was reintroduced to emotional intelligence because the Doerr Institute requires it as a part of every single coaching engagement for the students there. And so I went from using it to becoming a full-fledged practitioner because I became certified in the tool. And that’s how I learned about your company MHS, and that’s how I discovered your book which I will tell people I consider one of my Bibles. It’s one of the key tools in my coaching toolkit, The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success, so that book and your assessment. And I use them in my private practice as well, not just at the college. And I’m one of the certified people who can deliver the Emotional Intelligent Leader workshop.

That’s great. Great to hear Eddie. It’s really amazing to see something that we started with as basically just an idea and see it grow to be so huge all over the world the way it is today.

Yes. It has really taken off, and you’ve reached a lot of people as a result. So that’s why I’m just so excited to have you on the show and be able to talk to you. Get it straight from the author himself. Well, not just a fantastic series of books, but also this powerful assessment. So please explain to those listening to this episode what emotional intelligence is. What is EQ?

Sure. So with emotional intelligence you can kind of boil it down to three major things: your ability to understand, be aware of your emotions and the emotions of other people, your ability to manage your emotions and manage emotions of other people. And finally, your ability to focus those emotions to really help you achieve things, to help you make decisions, to help you manage stress. There’s a number of different definitions of emotional intelligence that get more specific but, generally, all of the different definitions of emotional intelligence include at least those three things.

I like the way you explained that because that’s not how I normally define it. So I will certainly be using that going forward. Thank you. Now, I often use the correlation of the difference between IQ and EQ. Can you explain that for our listeners?

Sure. Well, most people are probably familiar with IQ. It’s the kind of testing that we have in schools. The focus on arithmetic or solving math problems, verbal fluency, reasoning, logic. All those what we call cognitive tasks lead to IQ. And everyone kind of knows that because our school systems are really focused on those cognitive skills over the years. We’ve been tested on them all the way through school. The newer discovery of these emotional skills are quite different because, for one thing, the good news about them is that they’re changeable, they’re malleable, we can actually increase our abilities. And they include things like, as I’ve mentioned, our ability to be aware of our emotions, to be aware of other people’s emotions, and manage those emotions. Very different from the cognitive skills we talk about in IQ. Our ability to manage ourselves and deal with others. We used to refer to things like street smarts as these emotional skills. It’s those things that we haven’t really focused as much on as school, although we’re seeing big changes with the emergence of emotional intelligence.

Thank you. And it makes people perhaps wonder, “Well, which one is more important? Shouldn’t I be more focused on my IQ since that’s what–” as you mentioned, “schools are concentrating on?” And certainly, that’s how many people may attribute their success in life to in terms of getting hired and promoted at their places of employment.

So what we found is that they’re both actually important. But it’s interesting, we’ve studied millions of people around the world and, clearly, if you have a strong IQ and a strong EQ, you’re really going to go far in the world. And we’ve seen people on the stage – just think of people like Oprah Winfrey and other people who really succeeded – they had both of those abilities really strong. But, interestingly, we found people who maybe aren’t as strong in their numerical ability, or math ability, their verbal ability, but really strong in their interpersonal skills, their emotional intelligence skills, and they’ve been able to succeed in many ways as well. And then on the other hand, we’ve found people high in IQ often– and low in EQ, some of them end up as university professors, or engineers, or scientists, and they still manage to get through in life being fairly successful. But you can sort of notice those differences once you start thinking of these factors and how they play out in people’s lives.

Absolutely. In fact one of the things I have observed, and I believe you actually have written about this in one of your books or one of the white papers, is that at a certain level everyone is an accomplished professional, especially in your top-tier organizations, they all went to the top schools, they all have the best pedigree. But what we start to really see become the differentiator is the level of success attributed to their emotional intelligence as opposed to IQ, all things being equal.

Sure. When we looked at people, like leaders– we looked at lawyers, for example. The average IQ of lawyers is somewhere around 115 or so in terms of getting into law school and succeeding. But we see a huge range of success among lawyers. We find some that are so bad they get disbarred, they go to jail, on one end of the spectrum, and then we see phenomenal performers on the other end of the spectrum. And we found the same– we’ve also looked [inaudible] physicians we see medical people who get sued for malpractice, who lose their license on the one hand, and others who go on and do great things, help hundreds of people make great discoveries, and in all of the different areas that we’ve looked at, including corporate leadership, we find that range. People squeak through with high EQs, but it’s really their emotional intelligence that differentiates those that really shine versus those that maybe don’t shine so well or in some cases get burned.

Yeah. So they squeak through with the high IQ, but then it’s the EQ that comes back if I’m correct.

Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely. So I thank you for citing the areas of high performers like doctors and lawyers, but how does this show up in other workplace settings?

Well, there are so many different examples. Are you speaking of non-leaders or do you want to go into leadership?

Let’s do both.

Okay. So we look at other people. We’ve looked at, as I mentioned, millions of people around the world. So frontline workers, customer service, salespeople, these emotional skills are incredibly important in terms of being successful. As customer service, you have to be able to listen to what’s going on to the customers. These traits that we measure, these skills such as empathy, interpersonal relationships, assertiveness, they really differentiate the high performers in everything, customer service, sales. We even looked at Air Force recruiters in the US Air Force and it made a huge difference in their success whether or not they were strong in these emotional skills. So in the direct-facing occupational groups where you deal directly with people, it’s just an incredible difference. Leadership, we’ve done a lot of studies on leadership in both for-profits, corporations, nonprofit, military, all kinds of areas. And, again, the leaders with the higher emotional intelligence scores on the EQI, for example, really stand out and we’ve been able to identify some very specific areas that differentiate them and that’s what’s really exciting about this research. When we look at all the different occupational groups we find that there may be different factors that are important or that stand out for being really successful in those areas and a lot of our work has been working with organizations and companies and pinpointing what are the critical factors in your organization for success.

I want to share with my audience that you have done in addition to all this extensive research you’ve boiled some of these down to a very nice case study brochure that I will include as a part of the show notes for folks who want to look at not only the list of some of these organizations you’ve worked with but some of these different case studies where you’ve applied this and seeing the success rate change in people at these different organizations no matter what the context was, public or private, nonprofit, for-profit.

Yeah. That’s great. Yeah.

Now, some people may wonder, “Hey, listen, I’m hearing this emotional intelligence. Is this just the latest leadership buzzword? Is this a fad or a trend that’s going to be replaced by the next best thing?”

That’s the question that I started getting back in around 1992 when we first started talking about it [laughter]. I would get that a lot. “Is this just reengineering?” It’s just they list all these fads that have come out in the world. And what I used to say back then, and I guess I could still say right now, as long as there’s more than one person in the world, you’re going to need emotional intelligence [laughter]. The world becomes if there’s only one person left, some hermit somewhere, it may not be that important, but if there’s at least two people walking around and interacting with each other these emotional skills are going to be pretty important and I don’t see it going away. And, in fact, since the 90s when we started it’s become increasingly more important and we’re just exploding with requests in the work that we’re doing in this area. So we’ve seen nothing but growth as more and more think tanks and investigators are identified, this is one of the top 10 skills that people are going to need in the workplace now and in the future.

Wow. One of the top 10 skills needed now and in the future. That is something that obviously [inaudible] significance and it’s important, and that it’s not just a passing trend. So thank you for explaining that. Now, the other thing that people often inquire about is does it matter more for men? Or does it matter more for women? Or is it no difference at all?

Oh. That’s a great point, Eddie. So we get a lot of questions about gender and gender differences. And in the research we’ve done, we really pioneered the first look at how genders differentiate each other on these emotional skills. And consistently over time, we found that there are some gender differences like males and females. And they’re universal. We find them whether we go to Africa, whether we go through Asia, whether we go South America, North America. Everywhere in the world that we’ve looked women seem to score higher than men in areas such as empathy, interpersonal relationships, social responsibility. On the other hand, men seem to score higher in stress tolerance, self-regard. Now, it’s amazing how universal this finding is in all the different cultures that we’ve examined worldwide. Now, it doesn’t mean that some men can’t be more empathic than some women but these are just overall averages that we find in populations. But the great news, as I mentioned before emotional intelligence skills can be improved. So even some male who has low empathy can learn how to improve their empathy and be a much better performer.

So we’re not lost causes? We can become more empathetic? That’s good news [laughter].

I hope so. Yeah. That’s our message.

And I’m glad that you included the information around other countries because that’s a closely related question. I’m often asked about, “Well, does this matter as much in India or China as it does in Europe? As it does in the States?” Because I often cite if the sample size for the instrument I’m using was based on the United States and Canada.

Right. And in my book, The EQ Leader, we’ve got some fascinating data on how these things play out internationally. Especially when it comes to leadership. So we know generally around the world leaders are expected to have certain behaviors. For example, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, as a leader you’re expected to get things done. The difference culturally is in how you go about doing that. Right? So in some cultures, we find that the skills are different in terms of how they’re displayed. Assertiveness is one of the things we measure as part of emotional intelligence. And assertiveness varies from culture to culture. People in Asia come out a bit lower in assertiveness than people in United States or in some countries in Europe. So what we find when you move leaders around within multi-national corporations is that it’s important to know how to get things done but it’s also to know how to temper those emotional skills to fit where you’re going. So if you’re overly assertive in an Asian culture, you may not come off well as a leader. On the other hand, if you come to a more assertive culture, think Mexico was one for example, and you’re under-assertive, nobody’s going to follow you as a leader. So it’s really important to understand the culture and how these emotional skills play out in that culture and your ability to adopt them and fit in.

Very intriguing. So if I have taken the assessment, we’ll talk about this a little bit later, and I realize that I’m one way and I’ve been effective, I hear you saying that if I now take a new role in a new country, new organization, new culture, that I will now need to flex my skills and learn a new way of operating as a leader?

Exactly. You may be a bull in a china shop if you’re transplanted to some other country. And you’re going to have to temper that if you want people to really work with you and be on your side. So you really have to be sensitive to some of these cultural variations on these skills. And the good news is we’ve documented a lot of these differences in the EQ Leader. So you can actually see in a number of different countries which are the key skills that are stronger for leaders in those countries.

Okay. So clearly, I am discovering that I have a missing resource in my library, my toolkit. So I’m going to have to grab that myself [laughter].

Fair to say.

Now, something else that comes up oftentimes. I hear this a lot. In my work with some leaders, they have said to me very clearly they avoid talking about emotions because it indicates that somehow they’re just not tough. And one leader said very clearly, “I don’t have time for people’s emotions. I have a business to run.” What would you say about that kind of thinking?

Well, there’s a couple things around that. I mean, one is talking about emotions and the other is being aware of emotions. So let’s start with the awareness part. If you feel as people used to say to me way back when that there’s no room for emotions in the workplace, well then you’re going to be in a lot of trouble because emotions don’t stay at home when you show up at work in the morning, right? You don’t lop off half your brain and say, “Hey, I’m leaving you behind. You’re not coming with me today.” So things happen whether you like it or not, and if you want to be effective as a leader, then the least you can do is be aware of them. So when someone working with you is not performing or is very upset about something, you can ignore it and suffer the consequences of that which is continual bad work or miscommunications or whatever, or you can choose to be aware of those emotions and really help that person get through or get past it and perform much better at work. So the first part of it is being aware. Great leaders are acutely aware of the emotions of the people around them because you need to do that in order to motivate them. How can you motivate someone if you don’t know what gets them excited, right? You can talk about, “Oh, I’m going to give you more money and increase your pay,” but that person might be interested in more recognition and being identified more as a leader or as a high performer. So you have to understand where people are coming from.

The second part of what you’ve said is the ability to talk about emotions. And it really isn’t expected that you spend all your time talking about emotions. I think what’s really useful is if you acknowledge emotion. So if you come to me and I see you’re angry about something, I want to acknowledge that. I’ll say, “Hey Eddie, you seem to be upset with me right now. What did I do that caused that? What’s getting you so upset?” So I’m acknowledging the emotion. I’m discussing it, and we’re going to deal with it because burying it under the rug isn’t going to help either one of us. You’re just going to get angrier and angrier, maybe leave, and I’m just going to ignore you and get mad that your work is bad and not understand why your demeanor is so bad.

Very interesting. So I like how you broke that into two separate areas. So thank you. This is a fascinating conversation I’m having with you Dr. Stein. And so we’re talking to Dr. Steven Stein the founder and the executive chair of MHS and the author of many books on emotional intelligence including The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success. We’re going to take a break at this moment and have a word from our sponsor.

Okay everyone. We’re back. We’re talking to Dr. Steven Stein. Dr. Steven Stein is the founder and the executive chairman of MHS and the author of many books on emotional intelligence, and he’s been telling us about the importance of our emotional intelligence and the difference between our IQ and our EQ and why it matters for leaders. So Dr. Stein, can you tell us a little bit more? We’ve talked about MHS, but please tell us about MHS as an organization.

Sure. So we started MHS back in 1983, my wife Rodeen and I, and in those days computers were brand new. The Apple computer IIe had just come out.

I remember those.

So our original mission really was to take standard psychological tests and automate them, put them on computers, because I was dealing at that time as a clinical psychologist with a lot of kids who were having real emotional difficulties, serious difficulties. And we were doing research is that area and I found that a lot of those kids didn’t like the traditional testing we did.

Really?

They were really excited and I was able to get all the results I needed. So my work sort of switched from clinical treatments in the mental health area to assessments and understanding what it is that makes good assessments, understanding people. One of the things that really triggered interest was the fact that I was finding in a one-hour computer interview with these kids I was learning about things like sexual abuse, drug abuse, physical abuse, things that psychiatrists and psychologists who’d been seeing these kids for months had no idea that they were willing to reveal stuff to a computer that they wouldn’t tell the human beings that were working with them.

Isn’t that something?

So, yeah. So that was my first transition into we set up a company and started looking at that and that was in the clinical market, then we got involved with some colleagues in the public safety area predicting dangerousness, people [inaudible]. We had one of the first risk assessment scales and that became sort of the second wave of HMS, the second area that we really excelled in. So in the clinical area, we became number one in the world and still are in the area of attention deficit disorder. We had the first test ADHD, the Conners’ rating scales. Then when we moved to the public safety area we had the first risk assessment tool, which is the LSI, Level of Service Inventory-Revised. So we became pioneers in both of those areas. Then, as I mentioned, in the early 90s we came across [inaudible] and his work in emotional intelligence and we were the world’s first test of emotional intelligence that we came out with. And, again, we’re still the leading most widely used test of emotional intelligence in the world, the EQI 2.0. So MHS really took a leadership position in the three different areas that we really operate, in the clinical education area, public safety area, and in the talent area, and what makes us unique is that for 36 years now we’ve been focusing on measurement and accuracy of measurement, especially in high-risk decisionmaking. So our emotional intelligence tool is heads and shoulders above anything else out there because no one has that background and measurement and assessment and really being cautious about how you do this and accurate in how you do this. No one else in the world really has that background that we have.

What a fascinating background. Thank you for explaining that. And there’s something else interesting about your tool that I often use in promoting its value and that is it is the only scientifically validated emotional intelligence instrument. Can you explain what that means?

Sure. And to sort of corroborate that, we’re the only tool in Buros Mental Measure Yearbook, which is sort of the good housekeeping seal of testing that the American Psychological Association refers to. So what it means is a number of things. The first is when you have a test or measure anything it’s got to be well norm, it’s got to represent the population. Anybody could throw a bunch of items on a napkin and give them to somebody and say, “Oh, you’re high in this,” but what does that mean, right?

Right.

If you don’t have a norm, if you don’t have a comparison group, it’s meaningless. So we have to know what the distribution of each of the factors that we measure is in the population, and not just any, in North America, as you mentioned, Canada, the United States, in Europe, in Asia, South America, or everywhere we go, we have to have a sense of how does the population score. So that’s one aspect. Another aspect is it has to be reliable. I can ask you a couple of questions today and then ask again tomorrow and they could be completely off, completely different. Well, if they’re that far apart then that’s not a reliable test. We can’t really put much weight into it. And the third one is validity. We have to know that what we’re measuring actually matters, it actually relates to something real. We’ve actually tied it to work performance. We’ve actually tied it to leadership. We’ve tied it to we retired to some real-world measures that we use, real-world behaviors. So because we had a 20-year head start over everyone else– actually, this was originally part of [Baron’s?] doctoral thesis in 1985. That’s how far back the research goes on the EQI 2.0.

So because we followed this path– there’s a lot of copycat tools out there. It’s easy to kind of look at something and say, “Oh, I can do this.” And come up with a bunch of questions. They don’t have that validity. They don’t have that reliability and they don’t have that normative sample. Developing a quality tool like this can cost you up to $1 million in terms of just research and development and reevaluation. And the American Psychological Association puts out a whole book on the standards for these tests. For example, if you don’t have a manual, a detailed scientific manual, that outlines how you got those norms, how you did that reliability and validity. Psychologists are told not to use the tool. Right?

Yes. And so, not only is your instrument scientifically validated and you’ve gone through that rigor and you have that authoritative stamp from the American Psychological Association but your instruments are used in medical facilities all over the world.

Oh, absolutely. They’re used with physicians. And the other part of this is the scientific publications, peer-reviewed publications. There’s over 200 peer-reviewed publications on the EQI in many of these facilities. So everywhere from the Mayo Clinic to all kinds of healthcare facilities are using EQI as part of development, leadership development, working with physicians. I’ve worked with many healthcare groups. I work with anesthetists, nurses, and other groups. Because they’ve all found that emotional intelligence and especially as measured on the EQI 2.0 are important factors in their ability to avoid burnout in order to be a successful leadership position. So the healthcare industry has really come on board with this. Just think of the doctor-patient interaction, how important emotional skills are. You could be a genius mentally in terms of understanding diseases but if you can’t communicate with your patients you’re going to have serious problems.

Absolutely. And so, just to give my listeners a glimpse into the depth of how far you’ve reached. It’s one thing to say that someone is global which could mean that you’ve got two locations, three locations around the globe. And you probably have later numbers then what I’ve received. But this instrument has been translated into 45 languages. More than 1 million people have taken it in 66 different countries.

Yeah. We’re probably over 2 million people at this point. I think some of that might be dated on our website.

Okay.

It’s over 2 million. And we have at least 45 or so partners around the world working in a multitude of different languages. We’re working throughout Africa, we’re working throughout Asia and many parts of Asia. So yeah, we’ve done translations, we’ve done cultural adaptations to ensure that the populations that we represent, whether it’s in China, whether Hong Kong, or Malaysia, or some of these other countries, Singapore, are in sync with the local populations there. So it’s really been amazing to me personally to see this idea spread to so many countries around the world and be embraced in so many places around the world in so many different cultures. That’s been amazing. Because you look at IQ which has been around for over a hundred years. 1906 was the first IQ test. A hundred years and it still has problems with many cultures. And in many places around the world, it has tremendous controversy around it. Whereas, emotional intelligence- -these skills are universally accepted by so many different cultural groups. I work with Cree natives up in northern Canada. And they said, “Wow. This is like our medicine wheel, like our ancient culture. These same skills is amazing, right? And those kinds of things blow me away working in Africa, with our partners there and finding the acceptance in so many of the cultures, it just blows me away. Because we don’t see that very often in western sort of creations or inventions.

That is illuminating information. Thank you for sharing that. And just, wow, something you should really obviously be very proud of to see what you started and how it has blossomed and how many people it’s impacting.

My wife [Rhodene?] says we have to pinch each other every day just to realize that happened [laughter].

I imagine you do. Yes, absolutely. And so then you have a bunch of folks like myself that are out there, issuing the instrument, and assessing the results of people and then working with them to coach them around those results. So if people want to find out, they contact us, but how often should they be reassessed? That’s always the number one question.

Well, it really depends. In some situations with coaching, there’s actually published studies on using EQ, IQ in coaching. And in some cases, they found that in eight months, there’s significant changes in people; their ability to relate to others to be more aware of their emotions. With the right coaching,–they’ve actually used the EQ edge in some published research studies with control groups looking at change over time. So I would say anywhere from six months to a year, year and a half, two years, we’re doing follow up studies on very specific groups where we’re tracking him down. And what I love about this as we look at people on the sort of high end of society and people in the low-end society. So we’ve got a number of groups we’ve been following who are homeless people who have mental health challenges, who have been unemployed for significant periods of time. We have large samples of those kinds of people in most situations. On the other hand, we have people who are successful CEOs, successful physicians, successful lawyers. I’m working a lot in the arts. We have people who are musicians, and who are personalities on television and other places. And we’re following these people up to see how they progress in their emotional intelligence skills and how that affects their ability to to perform.

Yeah, and I imagine you have all kinds of success stories. And as I mentioned earlier, some of those are in those case studies that you’ve published. But is there one success story that really just kind of stands out top of mind that you make reference often that you can share with us?

It’s hard to really point out one, although there is an individual I wrote about in the EQ leader, Lisa Grahame, who I found really interesting. She contacted me. She’s the head of this large– become a large nonprofit program for homeless women caught up with women. And what I found intriguing was when she contacted me was the fact that on her signature line, it had that she was in the Guinness Book of Records. She was the first woman to pull an airplane. She actually pulled an airplane. So that intrigued me.

That is intriguing [laughter].

Yeah, but when I got her story, and basically it was a very sad story to begin with. She was homeless herself. She had gone through a number of traumas in life, lived on the streets and the city, had to fend for food and beginning. And a number of different traumas, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and she rose out of it. And the story you’ll have to read because we don’t have time to go through it all. But she rose out of this poverty, got herself a job in the high tech areas in sales. Found she had a knack for sales, and work your way up now where she manages this whole organization. And it’s been a tremendous story, a turnaround story. And she talks about how have these emotional intelligence skills were a key part of her ability to transform her life. So that’s one really fascinating story.

That is a fascinating story. Thank you for sharing that. Wow. Well, we mentioned earlier that you’ve written several books, and so if someone is listening to this interview, and they decide, “Wow. I want to start my journey on the road to becoming more emotionally intelligent as a leader,”which of your books would you recommend for a beginner?

Well, a beginner, I think, would start with EQ Edge. We wrote the EQ Edge early on, my co-author Howard Book and I, because there was no book at the time that told you what to do about emotional challenge. Dan Goldman’s book was the first one out there, and it sort of said what it is, but in that book there’s really, A, no definition of it, and B, it doesn’t tell you what to do, how to increase it or what to do about it. So that’s why we wrote the EQ Edge, because it clearly defines emotional intelligence, and it clearly gives you suggestions, homework assignments, things you can do to improve in each of the areas, whether it’s empathy, assertiveness, emotional self-awareness. We have exercises that people can take and actually change their– I get emails from all over the world of people who have changed their lives as a result of using some of these exercises. And as I mentioned, there’s a peer-reviewed study published that documents in coaching situations, where people have used these exercises and made significant changes. So the EQ Edge would be my first recommendation to introduce you to the topic and to start you moving and that moving towards increasing your EQ.

Well, I can personally testify to the power of this book, and it’s extremely well-written to your point. Lots of good meat in here for those who just want to read and improve, but also for the coach practitioner. And, of course, you have a PhD and your co-author, Howard Book, has an MD, so he’s a medical doctor. It’s not light reading, but it’s good reading, and it’s a solid read that I highly recommend. So what about for the advanced practitioner? Which of your books would you recommmend?

Well, for the advanced one I look at the EQ leader, because this gets into a little more of the scientific stuff, some original data that we’ve taken from our databases of over 2 million people worldwide, and it helps you define leadership, what are the key emotional intelligence skills that [inaudible] the focus. We didn’t just look at very great and successful leaders. We look at failed leaders too, because you really want that comparison. You really want to draw the contrast, and in EQ Edge you’ve got some great data on how do failed leaders differ from great leaders, and what are the emotional skills. And we break it down to four pillars, that if you want to be successful as a leader today, you’re going to have to excel in these four pillars to really make it in today’s world.

Wonderful. Well I tell you, I could talk to you for hours. This is just fascinating, and especially for me as a practitioner, who’s using your work almost daily, this is just really a gem and really a treat to be able to speak with you. And a summary of our conversation, I think, would be that emotional intelligence has become a key ingredient for successful leadership today and tomorrow. Would you say so?

I would say absolutely.

On the Keep Leading podcast we like to give leaders a quote that they can use to keep leading. What quote or advice would you share?

So the quote I’d give you is that leadership is taking actions that influence the thoughts, behaviors, or feelings of one or more people in your world.

Wonderful. I like that. Leadership is taking actions that influence the thoughts, behaviors, or feelings of one or more people. That’s powerful, so thank you for sharing that. That will absolutely help leaders keep leading. Where can people learn more about you, Dr. Stein?

They can come to the website of MHS, www.mhs.com, or to my own, to drstevenstein.com, and they can learn about emotional intelligence and some of the other areas that we’re working in in the corporate environment.

Wonderful. Well, we will be sure to include that in the show notes, so that my listeners can find you, connect with you, and start to follow you and MHS. Thank you again for being on the Keep Leading podcast.

Well, thank you, Eddie. It’s been great talking with you.

And thank you for listening. Well, that concludes this episode, everyone. [music] I’m Eddie Turner, the leadership accelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So whatever you’re doing, always keep leading. [music]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator.In the world of leadership development, there are many options for developing leaders. Today I want to talk about how leaders can support leaders using an approach pioneered by Dr. Dorothy Siminoivtch – Gestalt Coaching And Awareness IQ. Dr. Siminovitch is one of the few Master Certified coaches in the world through the International Coaching Federation. So she truly is an authority on this subject and she will talk to us about this subject right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.In the world of leadership development, there are many options to help leaders develop. Today, I want to talk about leaders supporting leaders using an approach pioneered by Dr. Dorothy Siminoivtch – Gestalt Coaching And Awareness IQ. Dr. Dorothy Siminoivtch is an author, a speaker, and an international leadership team and organizational coach. She is also an International Coach Federation mentor coach. She is the founder and director of training for the Gestalt Coaching Program and a co-owner of the Gestalt Center for Coaching. Dr. Siminovitch is the author of the book we’ll be talking about today – A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Toward Awareness IQ. She’s also coauthor of the Awareness 2020 Leadership Awareness Instrument.

I am so excited to have with me today all the way from Canada Dr. Dorothy Siminovitch. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast.

Thank you so much, Eddie.

Please tell my listeners a little bit about your background, Dr. Siminovitch.

Thank you again and please call me Dorothy. And to everybody, hello. So I am from originally Montreal, Quebec, which is eastern part of Canada and is considered the French part of Canada. And somewhere early in my adulthood I got married and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, did my graduate training there and started my professional career. And it really is in Cleveland at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland that I had the wherewithal, this moment of true inspiration to blend Gestalt Thinking which was mostly used in the world of therapy or consulting to marry it to coaching as a vehicle to serve leaders and those people that really wanted to add better quality to their life. So for the past 20 years I would say that I’ve been really going around the world, a lot in Istanbul, Turkey, and teaching Gestalt Coaching to those who want to learn how to be an executive coach and also an applied coach but mostly those who want to learn how to be executive coaches to leaders who carry so much importance in our world and also mystery about how to serve them. It’s a little bit about me. I live part time in Toronto, sometime in Cleveland and a little bit in Istanbul.

All right. Well, you get around.

It’s quite lucky, I think.

Well, I feel quite fortunate to have met you. I met you just a short time ago because you and Dr. Marcia Reynolds ran a coach mastery workshop there in Canada where you live. And it was one of the most transformational events of my life. And I don’t say that lightly.

Thank you. It honors me to hear you say that. And it was a wonderful workshop. It was our inaugural version of those people really wanting to take their coaching to a higher level of mastery. We were thrilled that you came and the group that arrived. We say that those that came were the right people. Thank you.

It really was and we are all still connected and still meeting and messaging each other and helping each other continue to grow that level of mastery and it was a fantastic workshop. And so got a chance to meet you. And you are truly not only a global thought leader in coaching and one of the premier experts, especially in gestalt, but you’re just a down-to-earth, warm genuine person. And so you really melted our hearts and you really gave us outside of your expertise deeper reasons to feel connected to you and model ourselves as executive coaches and leaders after your leadership.Now, something else I neglected to say that is pretty important about what you do is you’re not just a regular executive coach. Can you explain to my listeners the level of coaching credential you hold?

Yes, I’m glad to be able to say that I’m a Master Certified coach through the ICF, which I think is designed to stand for the best that we can do with level of certification.

And so for those who may not know, ICF is the International Coach Federation, the largest and the most recognized credentialing organization in the world. So to hold the MCC, that’s not a light credential. It is the top credential. And not only do you hold an MCC which less than 1% of coaches in the globe have, how long have you held that MCC?

Well, you’re asking the big question. 2004. Actually, I applied in 2004. I think I got it in 2005. Every three years you have to renew your credential. And to do that you need to take 40 hours of coach training. And, again, I think that’s a commitment to ongoing learning. They say the expert sees but the novice always sees with fresh eyes. And I think no matter what level of mastery we have, we have to keep asking ourselves “Am I still learning?” I’ve renewed four times since getting the credential and I have a PhD and I think I’m just as proud, if not prouder, of the MCC. Isn’t that interesting?

It is very interesting and I says a lot about the rigor and the prestige that credential holds for you to say that. So, yes, not only are you one of the top coaches in the world but you’ve held that credential almost as long as it has existed. And so that’s not something to take lightly. That’s a pretty powerful thing to be able to say and all the more so why that workshop you and Marcia Reynolds held was so important and so pivotal for those of us who are privileged to attend because we were able to learn from to the best in the world but there’s something about you that stretches outside of just general coaching and your credential as a coach. You took things to another level and you’ve pioneered something where you married two worlds – coaching and, as you mentioned in your introduction, the practice of gestalt. So can you tell us what is gestalt coaching?

Well, in some ways you gave the answers. It’s two worlds that come together. The first world is really this new world, it’s now some 20-22 years old basically within coaching. What is coaching? It is a collaborative encounter between the client and the coach in service of the client’s learning agenda, very democratic learning experience, which is very needed in today’s very demanding world but gestalt thinking has been around for actually some 80 years, even a little longer, with the early studies in perceptual psychology. And gestalt thinking has been mostly used in the world of therapy or consulting. And I had the kind of moment of, I would call it, entrepreneurial rumination, where I truly envisioned gestalt married to coaching because gestalt thinking allows us in the coaching experience to understand the person and a whole system approach from an analytical approach, from the emotional approach, from the heart-centered approach, and also from the somatic approach. So it’s a way of being able, literally as a coach if you have gestalt training, to see the client in multiple dimensions. You see them from what you’re noticing but you also use yourself as an instrument to kind of get a sense of “What am I noticing about the client that’s standing out?” based on perceptual cues, somatic cues, emotional cues, and behavioral cues. And all of that has actual conceptual theory and tools from the Gestalt approach that assists us in reading the client. That’s pretty powerful. And when I say reading the client, Eddie, I don’t play cards but those people who play cards, think really about poker, it’s kind of an analogy, people that play poker are able to read other people whether they’re holding good cards or holding bad cards. This is kind of something they called a tell. I love those stories about that but that’s a very kind of interesting way of understanding the gestalt approach. We get trained and begin to understand ways of reading our clients based on the tell which could be perceptual, which could be emotional cues. The face, the eyes, the mouth, the movements gives us a sign what’s happening that we can read the kind of are they interested, we can read that, are they not interested, we can read that. Something just happen, no matter what they’re saying that we need to pay attention to because something shifted for them. Again, it’s something very small but we can be actually reading that based on these kind of cues that we get if we’re really trained from gestalt systems thinking.

Thank you. Now, there’s a couple of phrases you used I’d to break down just a little bit for our audience. Can you tell me where the word ‘gestalt’ comes from?

Yeah. No, it’s that question everyone always asks, Eddie, because it’s a German word. Gestalt is a German word that means the whole. And it’s pretty mainstream. People always use this phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” When we think of a face, you see the face, even if maybe you’re missing some feature of the face, you’ll be able to recognize someone’s face based on their eyes, the whole from a feature, or you just see the outline of a person’s face, the whole, you may not even see the mouth, you go “Okay, that’s Eddie’s head” because we actually think in wholes. So isn’t it interesting? You hear a little bar from music and you’re able to name that tune. Some people can name it in a very short bar. Some people need a whole cord because we actually fill in what we think is missing to get the whole. And gestalt is that concept that really describes that. So if you think of this phrase “Give me a picture of what you’re talking about,” that’s a gestalt. So when we say “What’s your gestalt?”, we’re saying “What’s your picture of this situation? What’s your gestalt of this issue? What’s your picture of this issue?” If you think about a picture is more than 1000 words, the idea of “What’s your gestalt?” means there are so many parts. It captures the so many parts of the whole. And the reason people keep saying “What does it mean?” is because the word gestalt stays German. So people keep saying “Well, what is it?”

Yes, yes. So I wanted to make sure we just gave a little bit more clarification around that. And I love your illustrations on how you brought that to life.And then another phrase you were using, and for those who may not be in the coaching world, they may not readily recognize it and that was ‘Somatic’.

Yes. Well, the idea of being able to read a person’s kind of relevance of what’s happening in the moment or even their character based on the way they’re standing and moving. We know that the way a person stands already conveys a lot about their life story. Do they stand a little bit forward and slouched over? Do they stand backwards and kind of apprehensively waiting? Right there we can already tell a story. They say that biology, the way that you’re feeling about something becomes biography. So somatic gives us kind of the eyes of being able to recognize what’s going on with a person just by how they are embodied, how they’re standing, how they’re sitting, how they’re eating, how they’re looking. It’s the embodiment that we start reading or I would say this, the lack of embodiment. Someone says to you “I really care about something” and you hear the voice and you go “Okay” but then they say “I really care about something” and you think “Where are they?” Because you don’t hear that in the voice, they’re not embodied in their voice. The somatic tells us kind of at a visceral level what’s happening.

Yes. And so as coaches we’re trained in that and it’s something that benefits our client. How can that benefit leaders? If they’re not a coach, how can they benefit from this discussion that we’re having?

Wonderful. I think that in the last probably, really it’s been about since the ‘90s when Daniel Goldman wrote his Emotional Intelligence, and many people would always know emotions are important but in organizations and leaders emotions were considered to be troublesome in the way. And in the last 25 years there has been a paradigm shift of really recognizing that those soft skills, the soft cues, the emotional intelligence which is the intelligent use of your emotions, being able to become more self aware of that is so critical in being able to both manage yourself, be self aware, and also understand and work with people. So that’s where if I can read my emotional cues, then I understand what’s going on with me. And not only that, I will then be more able, if I can read myself, I will be more able in reading other people. And if I can read other people, it’s kind of like a line. I can then talk with them about where they are and more thoughtfully. And this is the awareness intelligence piece. If I’m aware of myself and I can read you, I then can use my awareness to maybe deliver my message with more understanding if they want to ask you to do something but I am aware that something about you either looks tired or distracted, instead of just giving the order or they request, I may even say “I’m going to ask you for something I’m not sure if this is the best time but I’d like to ask you given everything that’s going on. Would that be okay?” I might deliver my message as a leader with more thoughtfulness and more understanding of what’s happening in the moment that nothing else could give me except my emotional capacity to read the situation. And, Eddie, for so many business leaders, that really is the underdeveloped side. What do we notice in business leaders? We notice that most business leaders arrive at being a leader because they have analytical skills, they have strategy skills, they have deliverable skills, execution skills. And where do they need to develop themselves? The soft side of being able to read people, and here’s the other thing, read themselves.

Yes, yes.

And they have not really gone to school for that. And as a person becomes higher in their leadership status, what we know is that syndrome of more and more people telling them less and less.

Yes.

Yes, lonely at the top is an old syndrome that we know about but we see it enacted all the times where people would say, and I have clients who tell me, “Well, nobody tells me.” Well, they’re afraid to tell you. And also are you aware of your signals? Are you aware of your emotions? And this is where I think that we as coaches particularly, how do we co-create a very safe learning environment for our leaders, because leaders have so much pressure put on them to be strong and to take risks but not fail. Well, that’s a very impossible situation.

Yes.

Where is a safe environment for them to have kind of a dress rehearsal of “How could I look at that in a second way so that I don’t feel so naked publicly?”?

Very interesting. Wow! Thank you for sharing that and getting us off to a great start here, Dorothy. I’m enjoying this discussion with Dr. Dorothy Siminovitch and she’s talking to us about gestalt coaching and how we use this to help leaders support leaders.We’re going to pause for a word from our sponsors at this time and we’ll be back right after this.

We’re back. We’re talking to Dr. Dorothy Siminovitch and she is telling us about gestalt coaching and how leaders can more effectively lead other leaders.And so before the break, Dorothy, you were explaining the details about what gestalt coaching is, where it comes from, and why it matters for leaders and how it really is a leadership competency that you’re building in the folks that you run through your organization. And so we talked about the definition that your book was based on but there’s something else that you share in your book that I’d like to talk about. And you have come up with this phrase about Awareness IQ. What is Awareness IQ?

Well, thank you. I think, again, I’d like to identify what I think is happening as a paradigm shift in the world where it’s always been important to get knowledge and it still is but one of the things that we understand today that drives knowledge is in the moment we may have to be adaptive because even existing knowledge presumes history, something that we know and it’s already kind of formed and we have knowledge about something but the knowledge that we have may not have met the current circumstances that we are facing. And the current circumstance in the moment may have some emergent issue that the only way to recognize is through this phenomena called Awareness. Awareness is a knowing in the moment of something that is emerging that maybe we know something about or we recognize as something. And one of the pieces about awareness now is how do I recognize something in the moment and use that to deliver the knowledge or adapt the knowledge to meet the moment. And so, the example I could give is let’s say a business leader goes into a meeting and he or she has a message to deliver. Communication is one of the key deliverables of any leader, how to deliver this message, and they have the text really identified. And as they go into the meeting, what they kind of get a sense of is they can feel something is perhaps not quite right. They notice that people have a look on their faces, no one’s really looking at each other, and people aren’t even asking questions. That doesn’t seem to be the same strong greeting that he or she typically gets. And one of the cues that are coming is “Something is going on.” Now if time is tight, many leaders with good cause would say “Okay, this is the message I’m going to give” but later on they can go back and say “What was I missing? Why didn’t I ask “Okay, guys, let’s take a moment. I feel something is happening. Could everybody make a statement what’s going on here like an awareness statement?” And the reason I say that is it may be later on we realize something was going on in that meeting. And if the business leader didn’t ask or raises kind of sense of “I’m picking up some data in myself” or “I have a feeling. I’d like to check it out,” they may have missed a moment that was very authentic, it was very important, and perhaps creates more safety for the team to ask that question. So Awareness IQ is being able to recognize the kind of awareness cues that you’re getting either in yourself or something that you scan for the environment and acting on it. And when we don’t act on a cue that we have a sense of, later on we will feel regret like “Why didn’t I ask her? Why didn’t it offer?” And there’s a saying that it’s the things that we don’t do that we felt strongly about that we most regret later more often than what we did do that we’re sorry for.

Now, is there a way for me to identify my level of Awareness IQ?

Yes, actually. Well, I joined ventured with Barbara Singer of Executive Core and we created an inventory called the Awareness 2020 which I’m so proud to say was created off of the dimensions that I articulated in my book, Eddie. I’m almost embarrassed to say I’m talking about my book before you asked but the book that I wrote, Gestalt Coaching Primer, one of the reasons why I wrote it was most authors who had written about gestalt thinking, and they were always brilliant, they always wrote in a very intense style. And one of the things that I wanted to do with Gestalt Coaching Primer was to make it very easy to read because the material of gestalt thinking is actually there’s so many dimensions that are happening at once, people can get confused. And so I wrote this chapter on something called ‘Presence and Use Of Self’ and that is “Who am I and how do I use myself in the moment?” And how I use myself is kind of a response to your question. How I use myself has to do with my own sense of “Do I know what my gifts are? Do I know what my limitations are? Can I recognize awareness across what I say seven dimensions?”The first dimension is the dimension of values and recognition of what’s important for me and for others. The second dimension of awareness is the dimension of creativity. We see things that are novel. Can we recognize what’s exciting and novel or do we just closed down? That’s an awareness dimension. The third dimension is the dimension of emotional intelligence which we’ve been hearing about but we keep hearing about it because it’s so important to recognize. A lot of people, when it’s too emotional, they go “Oh, too much” is a phrase I often hear but I say to people “Can you handle that? Are you able to hold the space for emotion?” The fourth dimension of awareness is the capacity for caring. Do you recognize when you need to care for yourself or other people need maybe more support and care? A huge issue that we’re hearing about in organizations today is the need for compassion, compassion around the things that we can’t change but a stance of compassion is so supportive to people. And so many people actually go “No, I’m going to save that for my family.” We say that really great leaders have emotional awareness around the need for compassion. The fifth dimension is the capacity for communication, recognizing the moment where something needs to be said or acknowledged. Communication is a critical awareness competency. The sixth competency is the issue of intuition. Can we recognize just a flash of intuition which is data that you have arrived at without hard work? And it’s interesting there’s new recognition of the need for intuition. You know why, Eddie?

Tell me.

Yeah, intuition is this sense of something that we need in an high age of uncertainty. So intuition was not something people really wanted to hear about in the ‘30s, the ‘40s, and the ‘50s. And lately we’re hearing a lot about your intuitive sense because there’s so much uncertainty in the world. And there’s actually intuition training that people can take, which is important because if people are trying to say “I have an intuition” but really is an agenda, that’s an opportunity for dishonesty. How’s that for interesting? I know that’s a huge sentence right there.

No, that’s very interesting because some people might argue or may wonder is the gift of intuition unique to one gender over another. You said there’s training but has your research shown that one group has stronger intuition than another?

I can’t answer that one but I can tell you something else. I can tell you that it seems to be something with birth orders. So my colleague Belleruth Naparstek wrote a lovely book called Your Sixth Sense and it turns out the middle or youngest child can be more intuitive than the oldest child because the oldest child typically has to follow the rules. And when you have to follow the rules, you don’t listen to your inner voice as much.

So that explains why my sister is so much more intuitive and smarter than me. I get it now, okay.

By the way, I’m not sure if she’s smarter but right now I am sure that you see her as more intuitive.

No question about it.

Isn’t it interesting that that’s behind your question man-female because your sister you already knew is more intuitive? Thank you.

No, that wasn’t behind the question but I know that at times when you were talking about certain skills like this and we’re talking about emotional intelligence, there’s been different research showing that one gender might exceed another but also that’s like the number one question that we get in our coaching process. When I’m talking about emotional intelligence or the ability for empathy and some of the different components of emotional intelligence, people always ask “Well, as a man, can I still do well in this area?” or sometimes “Is this only something that I can do if I’m a female?” So I asked that from that perspective of what genuine questions I’ve received as a coach.

Well, first of all, I so appreciate that you’re asking and I do think it’s already, I know something about you and your sister, but I would say something to add to that is I do think that the challenge for men to use themselves in this way, I would just say, even though I’m not a man, my dissertation was actually on male generativity. So I must have been very interested in male leadership because at the time when I was coming up and doing my research, there were more male leaders in the world and I was just really fascinated. And I do think that the shoulds that men receive about allowing yourself to be vulnerable which is this new wow in the world, Renee Brown who talks about vulnerability is courage, well, for many men it also feels uncomfortable like there was no support for it. And yet that’s what the new call for that is because we know that it communicates authenticity to people. It says “I am like you. I also suffer if my child is not well, if there’s illness in my family.” And yet for men that’s probably a challenge. For women there is a different challenge about how to maybe package our emotional cues without this kind of stereotype that puts out “Well, it’s female thinking.” In fact, when someone says “This could be me. I’m a female,” I always say “Stop.” How do you frame it as an opportunity but once we start focusing on the gender, what happens is we get sometimes exclusionary. How do we become expansive and say “Yes, I know this is maybe I’m speaking as a female.” And what do all the men think or how do the men access? One of the things we know from the great Carl Jung is he said that as people get older at midlife that men tend to kind of bring up more of their feminine energies or they allow themselves to bring forward their softer side. And interestingly enough, as women come into midlife, they go the other side and pull up their more male forces. And it’s interesting as women come more into the work world, the male forces really help them manage and negotiate the world. So I would just say for the men and the women, we learn so much from each other’s genders, rather than exclude we include.

Yes, very much so. And to the extent that we can do that we become a better leader and certainly a better society.There’s something else that I learned a lot about in your program, your workshop. You talked a lot about presence and you talk about that a lot in your book as well. Can you tell us how presence helps leaders?

One of the things about it is everybody has a presence. You, me, anyone listening, we all have presence. The question is how embodied in our presence are we. So, so often as we review the day and we think about how we were somewhere and we think “What was going on with me that I was so distracted, that I wasn’t there?” And so one of the aspects about presence is “How am I here embodied in all of my strengths and responsible for my limitations but available to this moment?” And one of the things that we know when people are really present, they are more available to use their resources in the moment to support, and we like to say, what is wanted, needed or missing. And so this is the real reason, Eddie, that mindfulness now as a phenomenon is really growing in the world and particularly in the business world. Some five years ago there was a World Economic Forum in Davos, global business leaders come there, and there was a workshop on meditation and mindfulness. It was kind of well attended but the next year nobody could get into that room because leaders now understand that actually someone by the name of Anthony Grant says “It’s not efficiency that we’re really after. It’s the management of attention.”

Yes.

And the job of a leader is to help people focus on something. And so the management of attention is a management of focus. And presence is the embodiment of focus. And how can we be in the moment in a way that we are present? When we are present, people will feel more engaged with us. When we are distracted and not present, people feel like “Hey, you’re not there. Why should I be here?”

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So presence is this ability to be here and now and more available to be engaged with you. And here’s the other thing. There’s this phenomena called Mirror Neurons. I won’t get into the whole neuroscience of it but basically it means that people are always picking up the cues in themselves about you. If you’re present, they will be more present with you. And right there that is a business case for presence.

There you go, I love it. And it shows true leadership when a person is able to do that and incorporate that into their leadership style.You talk about so many wonderful things in your book. So that definition that we opened up with, Awareness IQ, Presence, all of those things are applicable to anyone in a leadership role and certainly for those who are leaders trying to help other leaders but, specifically, if you are individual listening to this episode and you are a coach or you are thinking of become a coach, specifically certified through the International Coach Federation, you want to have a copy of this book because I believe that there are several tools in here from Coaching Agreements to Coaching Competencies to Markers that you need to look for if you’re trying to pass your certification. Dorothy has packed it all in here. This is just a phenomenal resource. And so I enjoyed it and I think that anyone listening will enjoy it as well.

Thank you.

So how would you summarize our conversation today, Dorothy?

Well, first of all, I think you’re a great speaker, let me just say. I would say that for the record, and very inviting, but I would add in terms of where and what relevance does awareness and Awareness IQ and being more mindful and present mean for the leader and for the executives who coach leader because choice happens in the moment. And our challenge today is to know how to use the moment. They say that history is past and future has not arrived at the moment we have is where people feel more awake and have choice. The great Maya Angelou, poet, said “I may not remember what you said but I will remember what you made me feel.” It is our capacity to use the moment that allows us to support people’s feeling and remembering – Were we engaged in the moment or were we distracted? And I say that because all of us can really learn to be mindful and stronger and being able to use the moments. And the moments are what our lives are created out of. So I would just say there’s a good case to be made for that.And the takeaway, if you may allow me, for today, Eddie, may I offer that?

Sure, please.

The takeaway is many years ago Carl Jung said that everybody was going to become more psychological. I would say that everybody needs to understand themselves and each other and more urgently because the world is so intensely demanding but I think that there is a case for awareness because awareness is what drives choice. And when we know that we have awareness, we know we have choice. So my mantra is awareness without action can lead to regret. And I would say for anyone listening what are the awareness moments that you would like to commit to taking action on that lead to more satisfaction.

Awareness without action leads to regret. Well, thank you for sharing that. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you today. Where can my listeners learn more about you?

They could know more about me at GestaltCoachingWorks.com. We are redoing our website but that would be a lovely place to get in contact with me or at DorothySiminovitch.com. And I thank you for the invitation.

Well, thank you. We will put that in the show notes so that folks can reach out to you, connect with you, and follow you in all of the great things you’re accomplishing across the globe with the different communities that you are helping develop their credentials and spreading the power of coaching around the globe.Thank you for being on the Keep Leading Podcast.

Eddie, thank you for the invitation. And to all of you listeners, I thank them for their attention and their awareness. Thank you.

Thank you.And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.