 Alright, so I only have like 43 minutes left and so I'm gonna go ahead and jump into this thing if y'all don't mind. So right now there are some sticky notes being passed around. I'm asking all of you all to take two sticky notes and keep passing the rest of them throughout the rest of the audience because you will need them in about a second because this is how we're gonna do a fairly quick poll in the room to determine how the rest of this time we spend together is. And so as we begin the topic of emotional intelligence this session is designed to be interactive. So there may be moments that I may say Chief Massar and Tony Bostick will you go to a microphone or I might say Chief Massar and Jamie Munn will you move to a microphone so that you can breathe some life into this room then that'll be like your moment otherwise y'all got to listen to me the whole time and I don't know that y'all want to do that. So in this process you may have seen on the schedule that it listed out as emotional intelligence. We are going to in my opinion take it a step further and not just talk about the intelligence portion this session can be termed emotionally connected. And so as we get ready to begin I have what I like to refer to as three simple asks. Ask number one is that you find one thing that you can accept. We will cross many paths during this time that we have together there will be things that I say there will be images that come up on the screen. There will be moments when your teammates will move to a microphone and they will say some stuff and in that whole process you don't even have to agree with it a hundred percent you just got to hear it you got to see it you got to experience it and say I guess I can accept that. That's ask number one find something that you can accept. Number two find something that you can begin to practice and that in my opinion is the major difference than a lot of the things that you may experience finding purposefully and being intentional to find one thing that you see experience here and say I'm gonna start practicing that. If you are anything like me you have been around some of the smartest stupidest people you ever met in your life where you're like man they wicked smart and then you were rounding for a moment you like you're looking around like you're my being a punk like there's no way. And so that's how we stop that from happening to y'all because otherwise you would just be emotionally intelligent you just know some stuff but not necessarily do some stuff and so finding something to practice transitions you into a practitioner because now you are intentionally finding one thing going out and practicing it every day. Ask number three I've been given an opportunity to stand on this illustrious platform to be here with you all today to talk about being emotionally connected and I know what some of y'all are thinking because I walked back and forth up here you're like yo I see the SF thing on his shoulder son right right and right then in there you was like ain't nothing this defender finna say to me gonna make sense because he don't know nothing about being emotionally intelligent because defenders ain't emotionally intelligent. I know that's what y'all think wrong because it's up to you to choose what you accept what you begin to practice and on this third one here in this moment if I do okay then I'll pour something into you but if I do my job well then I'll pour something into you and then you will go out and pour it into someone else if I do it phenomenally then I'll pour something in you you'll take it back to your unit and pour it into your senior NCOs and your NCOs and then they'll go and they'll pour into their airmen because better people make better airmen and so I have thought about the product of the product of the product of the product so find one thing that you can share that's it three simple asks something you can accept something you can begin to practice and then something that you can share with someone else and then I got one standing rule of engagement and that is that you give yourself permission to interrupt me yeah yeah you you get to Kanye West me now I'm not gonna say go up there on the stage and do it but you get to walk over to a mic and be like yo Dee Dee Dee hold up I got something and then you can breathe life and share it in this room so you can give yourself permission to Kanye West me this afternoon if it's burning in your chest and you just got to get it out I learned from the last briefing y'all better get y'all ass up move to the mic because the people up here don't like it when you try to do it from your seat so stand up move to the mic and then breathe some life into this room that's it one thing you can accept one thing you can begin to practice one thing you can share with someone else and then give yourself permission to interrupt all right everybody has two sticky notes at this point or something similar to that there are some butcher block pieces of paper on the sidewalls and I know you can't see what's on there right now I did that on purpose because then you can't see it until you get up on it so don't worry about that part but you have two sticky notes we're gonna take a moment and I'm gonna ask you to hop and your DeLorean with me and I want you to go back to the future and I want you to stop at a negative toxic disruptive a bad leader that's the place where I want you to be I want you to see him I want you to remember it I want I want you to feel it you know who that person is there is a word that you would use to define that leader their attributes their characteristics how they did business what made them so toxic there is a word that you would use and it's your word your sticky note you don't have to write your name on it so you got you can be anonymous so you can write down pretty much anything you want and so now it's your turn to write down what that word is on your sticky note that one word that you would use for bad negative or toxic leader that you've had in the past so I have been as y'all right that what's that it only his question was PG 13 all rated or does it matter it don't even matter your word nobody gonna know but you and maybe your creator if you believe what you wrote down on that piece of paper today and just so y'all know I keep all of the sticky notes hold up no no no I know you I know the guy you talking about here you go whole stack just for you all right and so now that you got your word it's your word just so you know I keep all of the sticky notes because I've been collecting the data for two and a half years not just where people put their sticky notes but also the words that they use if they were defining good or bad leaders so now you have your sticky note you've written down the word for that bad leader when you put it to the side and I don't want you to stay there now hop back in your DeLorean and I want you to go back to the future to that place of a good leader someone who poured into you or people around you maybe you stole some of their swag and you infused it into your own leadership style and it helped make you who you are there is also a word that you would use to define or describe that good leader write that word down as well so you should have two sticky notes and by the time you're done you'll have two words minimum one bad word on one sticky note a good word on the second sticky note for that good leader and once you have that you will notice in the moment in the moment I'm gonna ask you to pop tall and move to where those sets of paper are hung you're gonna notice that there will be three quadrants when you get over there one quadrant and I color coded them to help you all out because I know like how it is sometimes green is for the good leader red is for the bad leader so when you move to the chart if you got your two sticky notes and you get all confused you just remember green good red bad see already thought about y'all once you get up there there are three quadrants one labeled IQ one label tech one label EQ or EI in this instance we're talking about being emotionally connected good or bad doesn't matter where you place your word is up to you but if you believe your word belongs in the IQ section and you'll just post it up in IQ we're just talking about cognitive capacity how wicked smart someone is in a good way or possibly in a bad way when we're looking at technical or technical ability that is how well someone does the job that's it they're a subject matter expert they're a technician or tactician or they are not but then when we look at EQ that's about being emotionally connected emotionally intelligent good or bad and so now remember two sticky notes bad word good word red green three quadrants go post them up all right all right we got everybody moving back towards their seats now and so during the next break please take a moment to go back to the charts to check out what you all have said what you all just did in this quick down and dirty survey is what I've noticed over the last two and a half years when I first started this what I had expected to observe is that given the opportunity to write a good or bad word in the process for us what we would think was most important was technical ability the mission first mission always first foremost people kind of sort of sometimes eventually if there's ever time when we get back to I mean we're still trying to stop this work like balancing so yeah we'll we'll get back to you but keep cranking away keep defendering keep turning jets keep flying and keep doing the mission and so initially going into it I said it's going to be technical ability but the thing that I've begun to notice as I've done this over and over again and it did not matter the audience whether it was airmen or chiefs general officers field grade officers airmen guardian soldiers sailor marines coasties it did not matter two percent of the time well like 2.7 so almost three percent of the time those sticky notes went to IQ five percent of the time those sticky notes went to technical ability but overwhelmingly 92 percent of the time and this is a small microcosm here in the room 92 percent of the time we defenders of America said that emotional intelligence is important that it's making or breaking our leaders but we haven't invested as much time in it in the past we hadn't been evaluated on it in any sort of way in the past and now that's changing chief boston I see you next to the mic is chief muns in here chief muns anybody you know she like hiding out I mean it's okay I was standing in the back I went through the roster I know some of y'all up in here like so she don't want to show up next version up on the list chief uh McCracken chief McCracken I know you up in here Natasha you know I'm talking to you where you at where you at chief McCrack and the people around you know you up in here too because they looking at you and you keep trying to act like it's not you I don't heard a name tape like it's not you hold up is that is that chief muns over or is that chief McCracken she like what man just come on with your class man come on with your class okay okay chief boston is your job to define emotional intelligence that's your job and I and I purposely didn't tell y'all what the question was going to be because I want you to be able to google it I wanted everybody in here to know how smart you are sorry boston represent for the defenders hey hey if you need some help just let me know I will okay define emotional intelligence so emotional intelligence is the is to have the ability this is what I believe it is is to have the ability to assess the situation not to get overwhelmed by it and to be able to act in a balanced matter to be able to recognize the situation and be sure you're not you're using the right amount of a force or a right amount of a non-force if I can say a better word in order you don't make the situation even worse so be aware you're around your surroundings and not overreact being aware your surroundings not overreacting for the defenders in the room when to use force when not to use force all right all right okay okay what he said that's ditto right no so the way that I that I see it is you know it's not only the ability to recognize the emotions of others and then to manage it within ourselves but it's also to learn from those experiences right to retrain your brain so as we have those experiences we learn from it we grow and we don't let it get us caught up in those cognitive traps or you know set us off and we go from zero to a hundred we learn over time that with each situation that we go through we can manage it overcome it and you know learn how to just progress and and be happy yeah with you got some more you got some mochi boston go ahead that is that is a non-compressor very good thank you yeah there's this cognitive aspect thank y'all y'all can have a seat everybody give them a round of applause such beautiful definitions our ability to be in a situation not overreact to to understand cognitively that there are things happening not only with inside and to us but also the people that we are interacting with and then to be able to respond appropriately yeah that is what it's about and so so far we've determined that emotional intelligence is a thing i put quadrants on a piece of paper i gave you some sticky notes i said put it where you believe your word belongs and so far overwhelmingly a lot of y'all place your sticky notes in the emotional intelligent quadrant so it is a thing if it is a thing then we should be able to define it we just defined it if it's a thing and we can define it then there should be some elements or i like to refer to as ingredients that make it so i offer you three ingredients self-awareness emotional management and emotional connectedness working from the bottom up self-awareness that triangle that you see it's not just a triangle it is a prism that allows light to shine in to spotlight those blind spots to dispel those shadowy areas we have to allow light to shine in some of the light that i would offer you self-assessments self-reflection 360 feet forward that's just three simple things right off the bat that i would offer to you self-reflection that's where we pulled that mirror out what went well today what didn't go according to plan how can i be better in the next moment of my life than i was in this one what do i need to work on but we don't stop there the mirror is awesome but we can't put a period there gotta put a comma because if we are only pulling out the mirror then there are times where we may be trapped in the prison that is our own thoughts our own perspectives in our own way of doing things and can't nobody tell us nothing we pulled out that mirror but we don't stop there some assessments and i know there are a lot of them and y'all are like man i don't always agree with all the assessments it's a leadership buffet if it resonates if it speaks to you if it points out a tendency take it put it on your plate but no one should walk away hungry there's enough for all of us to be eating take those assessments Myers Briggs five love languages four lenses self-awareness is a major piece of it and then 360 feet forward while i was assigned here under air university i got a fabulous opportunity to go through an executive coaching certification and while i was doing it one of the things that i stopped saying is can i get some feedback i told y'all i'm a defender so i will go in i'll be like hey can i get some feedback you suck suck less can i get some feedback just keep doing what you're doing everything yeah just all that stuff it's all good just keep doing what you're doing can i get some some feedback you're just not our guy not this year well who's the guy the other guy well what is he doing the stuff that you're not doing but you told me to keep doing everything that i was doing yeah but i also told you you're sucking to suck less the stuff that you suck at it's it kind of like differentiated between you and the other guy so so what am i supposed to do suck less bro but the moment i learned to ask for feed forward can you give me one thing that'll make me better in the next moment when i have another opportunity like this the stuff i begin to receive very different than me just asking for feedback and then one of my favorite with this 360 feet forward who do you take light from somebody you look up to can they pour some light into your prism someone who you look at who's on your level who is your peer and sometimes that is the most difficult person to take some from because like you already feel like i'm a waste of oxygen and skin my zipper is like barely making it up over you know my coffee good i'm testing out the tensile strength in this uniform and my belt every day i come in my animal spirit because i took one of those assessments on facebook remember i told y'all assessments are important my animal spirit i'm a cheetah it's my animal spirit in case you don't know not doing my pt test but all the rest of the other time i'm a cheetah and now here we are and i come by to you and i got this plank hanging out my eye and i see a speck in yours i want to stop and give you some advice sometimes that's the hardest thing to be in a position to still receive something knowing that somebody else is all messed up but they want to comment on your stuff and then somebody who looks up to you can you afford to allow someone who looks up to you to hold you accountable to something who better you already told your airman your guardian what you wanted to be known for or known as who better to hold you accountable to some of those things than the people who are on the brunt end of every decision that you make when you decide to use force or to not use force jeep buster i'm with you bro allow some light to shine in and if we had time and we went around this entire room there would be more responses like my mom my dad my brother my sister all of it is light shining in and then we become illuminated and aware and the first block that falls into place emotional management y'all heard the definition earlier sometimes to stop you from going from zero to a hundred real quick don't mind it's just my faces i can't help it if i don't like i always walk around like something stinking here because y'all stinking here and y'all need some work i can't i can't help this and the truth is is i haven't practiced it i haven't intentionally thought about the way i look at people and how i go from zero to a hundred real quick and and that maybe i'm falling into some ethical traps of loyalty syndrome or my own personal drive for success how can you check those things and instead of being reactionary for everything take a moment to reflect to think to seek outside input before you go and advise your commander emotional management the next block to fall into place emotional connectedness how we connect emotionally with the emotions of others and i know i said emotions about fifty eleven thousand times and that one stream of consciousness but that is what it's about this thing of being emotionally connected it's a whole another language it's still a way that we communicate but it's just a different dialect you can learn this dialect and it doesn't mean that you'll be able to predict how people feel or what's going on inside of them but there'll be this place where you recognize in order for me to walk a mile in someone's shoes i got to take mine off i got to put theirs on and then i got to ask them to travel this mile with me so that i understand the nuances that are their life that's how we start to move the needle that's how we care more about our people we got to start asking them those are three core ingredients that i'll offer you for being an emotionally connected not just senior enlisted leader not just airmen but human being because again better people make better airmen and then there's that fourth thing that doesn't land because for me it never does my personal leadership style because i am always striving to be self-aware striving to be emotional management striving to be emotional connectedness because what got me here won't get me there and so every day i strive so that you never encounter a defender who will come up and say a whole bunch of bad stuff about chief booth that if you took this same chart and you placed it in my organization and you said to everyone i want you to think about chief booth that that there would be very few bad words that they would say about how i treat them how i take care of them how i look after them how i advise the commander in the organization it doesn't mean that business doesn't have to get done because it does it doesn't mean that there's a lack in standards there aren't but i can still love you and care about you there ain't nothing you can do about it and i can still hold you accountable at the same time that is what it's about being a self-aware having some emotional management some emotional connectedness and allowing it to flow into your personal leadership style the image you see up on the screen now i like it i know there are some who don't subscribe to the triune brain theory anymore check roger that but for me it offers a great schematic as we go into where emotional intelligence lives because we said it's a thing we were able to define it there are some ingredients that make it on those green charts y'all have outlined some citizenship behaviors that need to exist inside of your organization so go back later take some pictures don't steal none of my sticky nose i told y'all i'm trying to like track some data so you can just take some pictures leave them up there i'll take them down later that's the stuff that has to exist in your organization the stuff that's in red counterproductive behaviors that's the stuff we want to root out of our ecosystems that are our organizations triune brain theory introduced in the mid 1960s we all have a reptilian brain that handles the survival functions that when we don't really have to think about it the body just does it automatically name some stuff that your reptilian brain and popcorn style just shout it out does for you that you don't ever have to think about breathing did somebody say moan drop sometimes driving home Roger that autopilot hey hey watch that guy over there he he don't know wait he just out here driving y'all that that that guy over in the corner okay breathing i heard her heartbeat i heard blinking any any any other one no taking the poo that's like my favorite one man taking the poo you ever think about it no it just happened for you sometimes at the worst moment right if there's a day or a week goes by and you haven't taken the poo you be like i don't think i took a poo then you got to go do something about it if the heart stops beating you hope i heard Chief McGee talk about how he be that ain't gonna ain't gonna put him on blast because chief master on the air force bass over there but y'all know what he said earlier right y'all remember what chief McGee told y'all y'all hope chief McGee was paying attention when he did that cbt you know the one talking about your heart side beating sir are you okay i hope he paid attention to that one if he didn't pay attention to none of them other ones i hope he paid attention to that one sir are you okay you call 911 you grab the a d sir are you okay chief McGee i hope you were listening bro i hope you paid attention to that one if not go back go back do it again you have to intervene and do something if it doesn't work reptilian brain it handles the functions we never have to think about then there's the limbic brain region i refer to that and a lot of folks do is the emotional brain and we'll talk about that in a moment and then the last part is the neocortex that is where strategically happens major project thinking prioritization reason objectivity it all takes place there but there's there's this thing this thing that that gets us first that emotional brain you can't you can't bypass it that's that first filter and inside of that emotional brain there are these two little wicked things called your amygdala they're shaped like almonds amygdala happens to be Greek for almond you got two of them one in the left hemisphere one in the right hemisphere of your brain and it is the center that prompts your fight flight or freeze the center that prompts it it absorbs your environment a hundred times faster than your neocortex it has a negative bias because it wants to keep you alive it also looks for belonging cues am i safe here is this my family do i belong and then there are moments when that amygdala fires and all bets are off it does not differentiate it doesn't care if you're in a combat zone if you're back at home with mom or dad or if you're inside of a conference room with a commander or chief who is known for like destroying people if the slides aren't right and you didn't you didn't you didn't update it and you always know those people because it'll come up and they'll be like I updated this slide those those numbers are those it must have been the secretary those numbers aren't right I sent I sent it in I was no I was having some trouble I was having some trouble with the team the team and the whole time their heart's beating fast their face is flush and their whole and their thinking run yep that's what happens and so it doesn't differentiate the same thing that would happen to you in a combat zone would happen to you inside of a conference room because it's designed to keep you safe and so what is it that we're fighting for that is the question that we have to ask ourselves that's this slide used to say what what are you afraid of losing then afterwards I would always get a bunch of folks that would come up to me and be like yo D bro I ain't afraid of nothing man look at this face does it look like someone who's afraid of anything no your slide is wrong when I changed it to what are you fighting for then everybody was like they were okay with that up there you will see autonomy value safety respect competency inclusion and those are just words until we take that prism and we put it at the top now it becomes a dial and depending on what we are fighting for in the moment we're turning that dial to fight for autonomy and maybe a little safety maybe it's like will a fortune and we walked in to work today and today's just one of them days and I'm spending that will I'm fighting for everything and if you don't like it fight club in the back I ain't gonna tell you where first rule of fight club is what you want you want to talk well I guess I already messed up didn't because I said fight because I said fight club in the back what are you fighting for first question you got to ask yourself second how does it affect you physiologically and then how does it impact your actions your decisions and your behaviors it's just like the oota loop what am I fighting for what's happening to me physiologically how is it affecting my actions my decisions and my behaviors because we all have those dominoes for me it's just where I work first time swirling energy in my chest is like bouncing around like I feel it doesn't matter what I'm fighting for the first domino to go swirling energy in my chest second thing is like everybody else in the room starts to kind of sort of disappear like it all like starts to fade away and then I like focus in on the perceived threat then I just want to punch you in your two-year-old baby face you no no no babies were harmed and and grabbing data for this class don't worry I didn't punch any two-year-olds in the face but you and that is my setting bouncing energy in my chest everybody else disappears I'm focusing in on you and then I begin to go to war to take my autonomy back or to take my respect back even if that means disrespecting you I'm gonna that's how I'm gonna take it back my autonomy you just violin told me to do something don't ask me for no slides early don't ask me for no read-aheads you'll get briefed when you get briefed the day that we have to do it what you what you mean you wanted something a week in it then why would you tell me three weeks from now you're gonna get it three weeks from now I'm fighting to take some of it back I can't control that I've just been violin told to do something but I can control how much effort I give to it and while I am fighting for it the other person is fighting for it as well you have to be intelligent you have to be good at your job but you also have to harmonize being emotionally intelligent what are your dominoes because if you don't start to pay attention what happens to you during that moment you'll constantly have this large loop the only time you can shrink it is when you start to pay attention and you start to hone in and you start to practice some of these elements because what you see on the surface the hostility the anger the frustration the happiness the joy that's just the fruit of it all if you follow that branch to the tree trunk down into the roots at the roots you'll find that somebody felt valued and that's why they enjoy being in the organization they feel respected they got tons of room to operate so they have autonomy or that person who doesn't feel like they belong they don't feel included so now then they don't feel safe and they and they don't even ask for anything so autonomy whatever I'm just trying to make it to friday I'm just trying to get through the week I just don't want to bump into chief boof today don't allow that to be you chiefs I got it I got it you just got here you just inherited this organization and you didn't do anything to cause the problems that exist check got it not your fault wink wink you you didn't do nothing wrong but guess what now it's your responsibility not your fault but now it's your responsibility how are you going to breathe life back into that environment how will you reharmonize it you all have these handouts as well this last part values car bingo you have these words up on the screen as I begin to close these are things that you can tangibly and freely give to me as much as you want you can give me as many or as few things as you want from this list so now you have these things that you can give to me and no cop outs not not talking about like the organization right like mission always I'm not talking about my airman or my guardians no I'll give everything because I love airmen no that's not what I'm talking about me the leader who doesn't value you how many of these things are you going to give to me zero value and I'm gonna keep that same energy I hate your face I don't really hate you and I don't want to punch you but you like right here and you keep like making eye contact with me it's like it's making me feel weird I don't know what to do with my hands now and so now I don't like you I'm okay with you you you back there like you my person and so you get all the autonomy all the freedom you want depends on the day with you you hit and miss man but you you can't get right how much if I don't value you how much of this stuff will you give to me the leader what if I told you I valued you at 50% man every so often you give right how much more would you give to me then what stuff did you hold back on because you were thinking I'm not valued man I'm not I'm definitely not giving that I'm not giving this there's no way he's gonna get this out of me that happens every day in our organizations sometimes not every time but sometimes our airmen give us basic stuff our guardians give us basic stuff because we have been basic as leaders that's why they don't feel valued they don't feel encouraged so why would they trust you why would they give you personal sacrifice I don't even feel valued here not your fault but now it's your responsibility I hope that along this time that we just spent together that you were able to find one thing that you could accept one thing that you could begin to practice and then one thing that you could share if you were able to do that then you chose your own path towards learning and you are in the process of being everything to someone that no one ever was for you thank you all for your time and spending this moment of your life with me I appreciate all y'all thank you Chief Massar and Air Force