 Happy Thursday, everyone. Welcome back to Geeks R Sexy. We have all of our guests back this week to do our panel discussion. We're going to talk about emotional intelligence. But one more time before I do that, I'm going to mention our sponsor, 5amglobal. And the big area they do the most work in is public relations. So if you are a company, you need some PR help, or you're just looking to expand your presence, expand the knowledge that people have of you. They'll do your press releases. They'll do your media management. They'll even put you in for awards that you didn't even know you could get. So they'll do awards submissions. So Sean and her team at 5amglobal really have it handled. But I want to welcome back our guests now, Christine, Christoff and Suzanne. Thank you all for sticking around for our panel discussion. I really think this is the most fun part of the show. And I think it's the most important part of the show because we get to hear your perspectives on what we're talking about today, which is emotional intelligence. And I want to start with, we'll start with you, Christine. What is emotional intelligence to you? What do you think it is and why is it important? So emotional intelligence, to me, it's really important because of the self-awareness that comes with it. And it's the main aspect of it. So the way that you occur to the world is based off of not just how smart you are, but it's how you are engaging with other people. So that's the importance to me. Emotional intelligence, that's what it is. Suzanne, what do you think? One of the things I learned, and I've actually read books about emotional intelligence and being an owner of some businesses, sometimes that can be intimidating to the employees, right? And so I've had to actually learn to come across in a different way, sit eye to eye, not stand over people. Watch what you say, you know, and not just be critical, but also complimentary. So there's been a lot, even for me, a big learning curve, you know, to make sure that your employees understand where you're coming from because you're passionate about your business, you're passionate about the customer service and everything that you're doing, but you need to come across and think some, I've actually had to learn, speak before, think before I speak, right? You have to kind of take that deep breath because you're sort of wanting to eat food. I love that. I love, I love how you're talking about, we get wrapped up as emotion as an internal thing or a kind of a vibey kind of thing, right? We talked a little bit about this in your segment, but you talked about, you know, your physicality conveys that emotion as well. If you're standing over someone, if you're much taller than someone like I am, right? No matter what your emotion is inside, that physicality can also convey an emotion you don't intend to convey. And even by text message, right? I learned to stop texting your employees and stop texting co-workers, get on the phone. Right, absolutely. That's more important, the verbal one-on-one, walk down the hall, go talk to them, rather than send them a text or an email that's going to get absolutely not understood. Absolutely. There's no tone in text except with emojis and I really don't use emojis. This fits in exactly with what you talked about in the book, emotion and energy. You know, I like what you said, so it's about self-awareness. I'm going to take it, so the next step is combining with what you just said is awareness of the other, right? So when I do training, I have three main points. The second point is read your guests or read your customers. And I said, and how do we read? It's these different things, it is physicality, it is body language, it is tone, it is emotion, it's facial expression, it's all these things. And you know, we're taught in sales, you know, to, you know, you kind of analyze the process, right, which you don't read a book by its cover, but we always do, we still judge a book by its cover. But the other side is, I say to the, you know, people that might be sitting in an audience, if we can read our customers, then what does that mean? What can they do? They can read us, right? So we're like, read your customers, read your customers. And so people don't realize that, you know, like, I always talk about the restaurant business because we all understand it. The server or the bartender will be annoyed at the high maintenance come, you know, customer that's complaining. And then what do they do? They go in the back and complain about the customer that's complaining. And then they come back to the table and they put on the fake smile, like, come on, your customer can read you just like you can read them. Absolutely. Yes. You know, and I love that we're talking about this because one of the big trends in business right now, especially bigger businesses with lots of resources, is personality testing. It's your Myers-Briggs or your disc or your big five or I'm blanking online. It's your cue. Yeah, I'm mostly so. And one of the things we learned in the military, first, the government's not going to pay to personally test everybody. Some people got tested, some people didn't. But I love this idea of reading because that was a skill we all had to learn. We had to learn to read other people because we didn't have, they didn't, they didn't pay to test everyone. So Suzanne, what are some of your methods for reading people, whether it's in your business or in your life? Well, I see if people are what they say are, are you your word, right? Do you show up on time? Do you do what you say you're going to do? Are you accomplishing the things that you say that you will accomplish? That's huge. And, you know, in the businesses that I am the founder of, you know, we watch our new employees, do they show up on time? Are they wearing, are their clothes pressed? Is their uniform? Do they wear their name tag? Is their hair pulled back like we asked? If people don't follow those simple little things, they're not coachable, so they don't last. You know, it really matters that you follow the rules if you are an employee, or even if you have a friendship. I'm not friends with people that are not their work. You know, I want to, I want to always be on time. If my friends invite me to talk all night on Tuesdays at seven, I'm going to be there at seven. I'm not going to show up at eight when I'm supposed to bring some of the food. Yeah, I hate being late. That's, some of that's being in the military, but I hate being late. If I ever have to be late, I feel worse than everybody else does. So, Christine, what are some of the ways you apply your skills to read people in business? So, one of the bigger things for me is going back to self-awareness is when you know your own personality type, you should also learn about other people's personality types. And that way when you're talking to them, and that was actually one of the things that I was taught, is how to be able to tell when there's, even saying a conversation, or saying a story to you in a conversation, you can say, okay, this person is more analytical and I can cater to that. You know, sometimes it's not always having people match you, but how can you match them? That's a service to them in itself. And that's emotional intelligence, is being able to talk to someone and say, hey, you're different than me, but I want us to be on the same page, even if it's for five minutes, that we're going to be engaging with each other. So, that's kind of some of the things that I do is when I'm talking to people, is I'll just, I'll match what you're doing and, and learn from you, because that's how I'll get to know other people and not, and get out of my comforts with you. Very cool. I love that idea that, that doing this isn't just about benefiting ourselves or benefiting our business. It's about being of service to others. And you and I, in our pre-interview, talked a lot about that, about sharing our gifts with the world, right? And tell us about that. Tell us how, tell us how sharing our gifts with the world is, is actually being service to the world. So, actually, in both books, I have a little sub chapter where I learned a while back, somebody said in an event that was that, your gifts are not for you. What do you mean? My gifts aren't for me. They're my gifts, right? They were given to me. So, I really was kind of confused by that and they went on to explain that our gifts are given to us for us to be a channel to others, for it to fall through us, right? And the next step is, or the next thought is, is if we do not use our gifts to our potential and develop them and actually be a blessing to others, we're actually being in a cheat. We are stopping the flow of energy, of connection. We are preventing others from receiving the greatness that's inside of us. So, I mean, it's a very, to me, it's a very profound thought. And it's something we don't really think about or talk about that much. So, like, let's say somebody is a gifted, amazingly talented singer and they say, well, should I go whatever, you know, I'm American. Should I go do this? I don't think there's a question because is that your gift? Yes. Well, then you're supposed to share that gift. Yes, absolutely. And you get out of your comfort zone. I tell that to people all the time. You may not feel like you should, but when there's that little nudging, you know, like with coming up with my children's book, it was nudging at me for so long, but it's a message that I wanted to get out along with St. Haven. But it was not easy, but, and it made me very uncomfortable. But I'm glad I did it because it was nudging at me for so long. Get this story out. Tell your story. Tell your story. And so now I just go, yay, I've done it. And only you could share that story. Exactly. Yes. That's the power of one. Exactly. So, bottom line, share your gifts. Otherwise you're being a cheat. Don't be a cheat. Come on. Don't be a cheat. Share your gifts. One last question on the emotional intelligence stuff. I want to see what you guys think. I'm an engineer of my trade. I grew up science and math kid, very analytic. What's your advice to someone like me or someone who may not may not have the soft skills built in or from a young age to tackle their emotional intelligence? What advice do you have for someone in business who may be a little more technical and analytical and not as tuned in? I just, you have to be coachable. You need to get, you need to, you know, go download some audible books, you know, but you need to educate yourself. You need to be willing to change. Don't think that you're too young. Don't think that you know enough. But I listen to self-help type of personal development audio books every day. It's so important that you are always willing and learning to grow and to change. All right. Awesome. Kristoff. I don't think there's any hope really. Turn it off right now. Shut it down. You know, when you talk about the different personality types and different traits, one is not better than another, right? It's so important for us. And I've been in trainings in the audience where people would gravitate to one side and clearly, you know, there's 70% that is this. And then the, you know, 12% in this other group feel like, oh, well, we're not that great. We wouldn't know because that's your gifting, right? And I agree with you. It's important to be a learner, to just be open and to be willing to continually grow. Right. And I would definitely say first reading is a lot. It's a big thing, just like you just said, but also practice with the people around you and be willing to practice with in your business life and as well as your personal life because it just, people can tell when you're being genuine, you know, they can tell when you actually care about them or the conversation or what you're doing with them. So practice in personal and in business. And I think all three of you, based on our conversations, recommend travel as well. Did we all do that? You all talked about it today. So if you all talked about it in our previous interviews, okay. Well, we're out of time on that. Thank you for watching our thing on personal intelligence. Christine, tell our audience one more time where they can find you. www.socialdouthlv.com. Also LinkedIn, Christine Curtis, and any other social media. Like I said, I'm in millennial. I'm on everything. Yeah, we'll link it all up. You guys won't have to work hard to find it. Don't worry about it. Kristoff. Kristoff360.com, C-H-R-I-S-T-O-F-F360.com. I have one on you. I'm Suzanne Hobbs, 365. So yes, I will put all this information, the show notes, both on the social media and on my website. You guys won't have to work very hard to find it. Thanks again to our sponsor this month, 5amglobal. 5amglobal. 5amglobal. Thank you so much for helping us today or for this month. And thank you for watching. Come back next month. You know, I never know what the date is, so I'll have to, you'll have to check the calendar, but it's going to be the fourth Thursday of May. And we will have another set of great guests and we'll have another set of great conversations. I'm Jason Leduc. This is Geeksare Sexy. We'll see you next month.