“IT DOESN’T HURT LESS. YOU JUST GO FASTER.” Adam Kreek is back! In this engaging episode, he and Tyler discuss pain, coaching, hard skills versus soft skills, deliberate practice, values, motivations, relationships, conflict, the workplace, leadership, and more... Learn more about Adam: https://www.kreekspeak.com/ Gallup CliftonStrengths: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/home.aspx
Tyler Small: Hey, this is Tyler Small on Hacking Emotional Intelligence. And I'm back with Adam Creek: part two! And we're calling this episode: Pain. That is what it's all about sometimes. We're also going to talk about coaching and coaching people through pain.
So Adam has received world-class coaching - and you heard his story last time. He's got a gold medal. He's won the, the Olympics and, uh, and rowing is specifically a sport which - so I hear - is basically a pain contest. So we're going to talk about that.
But before we get to the pain part, we're going to talk about coaching people. Since this is the podcast about emotional intelligence, we're gonna figure out, um, what that has to do with emotional intelligence and how, how you might, uh, be able to manage your own pain as you're developing emotional intelligence.
But in this first part, we're going to talk about hard skills versus soft skills and how. How, um, the coaching differs because Adam currently is a world-class executive coach. And so we're going to listen to a little bit of his insights on how coaching hard skills versus soft skills is, is different. How is it the same...
Welcome back, Adam!
Adam Kreek: Well, it's great to be back. It's great to be back, and I'm excited to have this conversation, 'cause I think it will, it'll be quite valuable and, you know, I’m excited to jump into hard skills versus soft skills.
When I think of them - it's, it's actually kind of interesting when you present it like that because I will, I will coach my client through both hard skills and soft skills. And sometimes I prefer to call soft skills uh, "professional skills". Because by calling them soft skills, sometimes it, uh, it can undervalue them in the mind of a listener, especially if you're more of a hard skill oriented person, because of just because of the metaphor associated with it. You think that soft skills are a little less important. So you can say, you know, technical skills versus professional skills, uh, is a different way of framing it.
Because as you move up and through your career... I think most of us when we start in our careers, we start with the fundamental hard skills to do the work, but then as we, you know, as we learn and as we grow, we have to be more collaborative. We have to be more empathetic and, uh, and use the professional style of skills, um, more effectively so that we can get more of what we want and less of what we don't want.
Tyler Small: Right. Right. And our audience, particularly, um - we have a lot of people who are in the workplace and a lot of people, the reason they listen to this podcast is to help them move up, like you said. And so, um, adopting this type of, um, this type of skill and understanding like, Oh, okay. Soft skills. Um, what, what are they really? And where do they come in handy? I think that's a great preface and background for us.
Let me just break right into it. Adam and I have talked about this before and I just wanted to bring this conversation in - something that's super fascinating to me. There's this thing called deliberate practice. And, um, Adam actually knew exactly what it was because he's so into the coaching realm. And deliberate practice is this really, um, it's, it's this thing that people use a lot in, in coaching, um, musicians and athletes and medical professionals. Um, a lot of the time use it in, um, chess, masters.
And it's this very repetitive process of setting specific goals, you have a coach or an expert, who's there to give you feedback. And you practice the thing, and then you have this very specific part of the scale that you're working on at a time. And then, and then you do the thing and then you, you self-reflect and you get feedback and then, and then you do it again and you do it over and over and over and over again, very repeatedly. And, um, and, and Adam, tell me what this looked like in the rowing world, just to give our audience a visual of what this looks like with, with hard skills, with technical skills.
Adam Kreek: Yeah. So deliberate practice is directly correlated to an increase in what we call hard skills. So let's go back to the idea of rowing. And rowing, when you think about it, is a fairly simple motion. Uh, you, uh, you're on a sliding seat. And so you slide your seat up so your heels are close to your, your bum, your knees are sticking up, your arms are pushed forward. So you're almost in a Cannonball position with your arms forward. You put your blade in the water and you push with your feet - or more accurately with the pads of your toes and the top of your feet - while lifting your arms ever so slightly. And the blade then locks into the water and it creates a mound of water, and the water has enough resistance that you can then leverage the boat past that point in the water that you locked onto.
And so as you're leveraging the boat, you first, you engage your legs and then your butt and your core and your back and your arms. Then you drive every single piece of your body to the finish in as linear a motion as you can. Tack down at the finish, go around the finish using your outside hand, and then, uh, slowly glide up the slide again on the recovery, being as relaxed as possible to gain as much recovery from that part of the stroke as you can, as well as taking advantage of the glide in the boat so that you can then take that stroke again. And this becomes the stroke cycle. There's the catch where you put the blade in the water. There's the drive where you've locked onto the water and your leveraging past that point in the water. Uh, there's the finish at the end of the stroke, and then the release where you tap down and around the finish, uh, and start going back up the slide for the recovery.
So when we talk about deliberate practice and what. What sort of deliberate practice we would do to perfect that role in your stroke. There's a number of different drills that we could do. Uh, the first one that comes to mind is simply sitting on a rowing machine. Uh, when you sit on a rowing machine, the boat is stable. Uh, if, uh, or it's not a boat, it's a machine. Yeah. When you're in a boat, the boat is very long and skinny for maximum hydrodynamic, you know, to reduce resistance. But on a rowing machine, there's no wobble. There's no wobble back and forth. And, um, it's pretty, uh, it reduces the complexity of the stroke. So we'll hop on the rowing machines to, uh, to train power and to, um, maybe fix some other technical issues.
Another thing that we'll do is something called a slide progression. And so we do a slide progression on the, you know, in a boat or even on a rowing machine where you break down the stroke into smaller pieces. So you'd start out by just rowing. Using your arms, and then you'd start pivoting with your hips and using your arms and back. And then you'd start moving your slide and you use the quarter slide, and then half slide, and then three quarters slide, and then a full slide. So you break the rowing stroke down into smaller bits and practice those bits until you, uh, you've done it properly.
Um, another thing we'll do is. When you put the oar in and out of the water, you'll feather and you'll square the blade. So you'll take the blade out and not feather at all, so it stays squared to the water and, uh, which increases the difficulty of going up the recovery, but decreases the difficulty of, of entering and locking onto the water and decreases the difficulty of releasing from the water. So you consciously increase the difficulty of one part of the stroke, while also decreasing the difficulty of other parts of the stroke to help you gain a better understanding of what a true stroke should feel like.
Tyler Small: Oh my goodness! So you're, you're describing, so this is probably if I picked up a, a textbook on, on rowing or, or if I asked a, a real rowing athlete: Hey, how deep is he going? They'd say, Oh, this is just the very, very surface. Right? Is it, is that right?
Adam Kreek: Yeah. I'm trying to explain it in a way that, that the average listener can, can understand, but I'm still probably using too much jargon.
Tyler Small: No, no no... So this is, I think I'm following perfectly. I think you're, you're, you've, you've reached a balance here that's really, um, that's really helpful. Because you you've given us the context of what's happening here exactly. And, and I think most people have seen, you know, uh, on a show, on a show or movie or a commercial, or maybe they've, they've happened to see a rowing team in the water, um, or on the Olympics... Like, it's pretty cool to see, but I don't think that most of us understood what was, what was happening there in the rowing cycle. And I'm just curious. So with, with the context that you've given us, what is, um - just really quickly, what are some of the types of advice or feedback that a coach would then give a rower?
Adam Kreek: Well, a coach who's coaching the rower would look for different cues, um, cues that, that, um, that they can observe that the athlete can observe and the athlete can feel. Here's two examples that I'll give you: One, you know, for example, your blade, when it goes into water should lock and it should stay at the surface of the water once it locks into the . But a very common mistake is for the blade to dig, dig deep, too deep into the water, and that's called digging, dig it.
And, uh, there's a number of different reasons why this could happen. One of the reasons that that causes it is, uh, the body opens too soon at the catch, um, and so what a coach might say to stop the body from opening and to stop the blade from digging - the coach will not say you're digging the blade, and the coach will not say your body is opening too early. What the coach will say is, I want you to think about your hand at the catch, which is where the blade catches the water and locks onto the water. What do you think about your hands at the catch? And when you catch the water, I want it to feel like your hands have been left behind. I want you to think about your hands and feel like your hands are left behind when you catch the water. So it feels like there's a tug through your body and through your shoulders and your back. And there's a stretch...
Tyler Small: Oh.
Adam Kreek: ... and you push with your legs. So the, the athlete will think about leaving their hands behind at the catch. Whereas the coach wants the athlete to stop digging and to hold the body angle. And those two other things happen naturally; or can, they can happen naturally, I'll say, um, if that sort of cue, um, works for the athlete. And if that leaving the hands behind doesn't work, maybe the coach will say, hold your body angle to the catch. Or maybe the coach will say, push your legs down at the catch. Or maybe the coach will say, sit up tall at the catch. Or maybe the coach will say, relax your shoulder at the catch. Or maybe the coach will have put you through a drill where you put the bottom one inch of the blade - the blade is probably about six or eight inches tall - to put the bottom inch of the blade and push down with your legs and watch the blade catch itself. Now replicate that, that feeling that you felt, um, again.
And so by trying to achieve one thing, there are dozens and dozens of ways to communicate that one thing to the athlete. And another way that is very verifiable is to hop in the boat. And I remember when I, you know, I coached a lot of these guys at Stanford University and, um, that was even more effective - partially because I was very fit and I was an athlete at that point in time. And I could just say, watch me do this. And they said, Oh, okay. I can do that. And so as a coach, you can like, you can show them and you can tell them in, you know. And it's trying to be as creative as possible because everyone learns in a slightly different way and understands in a slightly different way. So can you be creative in your explanation - creative enough in your explanation so that the, you know, the student, uh, the athlete that's receiving your coaching can understand it.
Tyler Small: So this is, this is amazing. So, um, it's, it's the technical world of, uh, rowing is of course so much more, um, more more complex than I, than I, than I could have imagined when I woke up this morning, right? And you're just, you're just leading us through the very, most simple parts of it, but it's it's Oh my goodness. There's so many, um, there's such a chain reaction of events and um... I thought you were going to say, Oh, the coach would say stop digging. Right. But you're going, you're going in. And you're, you're going several layers back and you're, you're helping the, the rower to think about doing things that, that then downstream kind of will, will influence their, their movements in certain ways.
So tell us then, um, what, what the, the, the congruent similar thing would be when you're coaching an executive on their, um, on their emotional intelligence, on their soft skills. How would you, um, how would you help somebody who was, who was having an interpersonal issue?
Adam Kreek: Well, and again, we're starting to move from hard skills to soft skill. So, coaching on those are, are different. Because a hard skill is very direct and very well defined. And you can create a model on which you can then build the layers on top of it.
And you want to do something similar with soft skills. Um, however, the, um, the best way to... So if you're having an interpersonal conflict, the question is to figure out what sort of model do you want to approach that interpersonal conflict from? And the way that I would approach interpersonal conflict is I'd want to rule out, um, a values conflict. Uh, and I'd like to go back to first principles.
So each and every single one of us, you know, we have an emotional state and a, uh, and we have an instinct that we follow. And the, the first step of logic in all of us is to make a value judgment, and we all make value judgements in the actions that we choose. And we make value judgments serving our core motivation, and we either have intrinsic motivations or extrinsic motivations.
Extrinsic motivations are very privy, very familiar for us. We want more power. We want more wealth. We want more sex. We want to be more beautiful. These sorts of extrinsic motivators tend, you know, If, if people are driven too much by these in a highly competitive environment, they can be, they can actually be very, become very toxic. And sometimes that, um, that, that becomes a conflict that's very difficult to rectify.
Where values conflicts can be addressed and can be, uh, can be fixed is when we're dealing with intrinsic motivation. So we're talking about the better angels of our nature. The quote is a Steven Pinker quote. And, uh, we're talking about these character traits or core behaviors that we value and different cultures and different family origins will inculcate us with different values. Uh, so whether you've, you know, you grew up in a Mormon family in Utah, or you grew up in a, you know, atheist family in San Francisco, or you grew up in a Muslim family in Chicago, you will have very different values sets that, um, that guide you in your, in your work and your day-to-day life. And you'll place certain values above one or the other.
And so it's trying to understand what, uh, what values are driving the individual and then what values are driving the other person who's been in conflict. And so does someone place a very high value on, um, integrity? Whereas another person places a very high value on, um, speed of results. And, uh, one person that is just wanting to make sure that the speed of results occur; and the other person is wanting to make sure that integrity is maintained - and they're pushing for those different values. And they're making value judgments according to that. And I think there is them recognizing what the team goal is and what the rules are within the team. You can then use that value judgements framework to understand that the source of the conflict can often be that this person is seeing that their value is not acknowledged, respected or addressed within the context of the team.
And we also need to make sure that the team values are, are clear and that the team is, you know, everyone on the team is making value judgments in a similar way. This is why an organization will have values. So that everyone within the organization makes decisions in the same way. Uh, it's, it's fundamental to, um, you know, to human nature. But most people have not received education on, uh, on the utility of values and how to use them to, um, make better management or even career decisions.
I may be getting a little technical. Um, but I, I felt like I needed to, you know, talk about that from a, um, I guess in the same way that I've explained a rowing stroke and how a rowing stroke works. I'd explain how a conflict works. And so then if I'm coaching an individual , I would ask questions to determine, um, what values will be violated and then acknowledge and affirm which values were being violated so that the individual then had clarity and could put better words to the, to the conflict, and then recognize the solution.
At the end of the day, you know, a lot of coaching is, uh, is about holding space in a way that's respectful. And it's about, um, especially when we're talking the executive coaching realm, it's, uh, it's giving that one-on-one time to help marshal the thoughts of the individual. And so the types of individuals I work with, they, they don't need that much questioning or guidance to, um, to come to their own conclusion because they've been in the workforce for 20, 30 years. Often very overwhelmed and I'm working at a very high clip on a very high pace.
And this, you know, the executive coaching that I offer is it's, it's not cheap. Um, and it is very valuable. It's, you know, it is a benefit to these individuals, especially if they're, you know, high salaried individuals for an organization where people at the, you know, at the top of the organizational hierarchy need to have a well-developed emotional intelligence skill set, uh, if they are going to lead other people.
The coaching, you know, creates a space in which we can explore certain ideas and the individual who is being coached ends up coming to their own conclusion. And that's, you know, that's how emotional growth occurs is that we have to come to the conclusion ourselves through our own pathway.
And in the same way, when you're coaching someone who's rowing and you want to prevent the blade from digging, you can tell them that their blade is digging, but there's also dozens and dozens of different ways to tell them, to leave, leave your hands behind, hold your body angle, drive with your legs, flex your core... or whatever, sort of cues you want to give it to achieve that down the road. From a, uh, a coaching perspective, it's asking the questions and, um, and exploring the path that the individual needs to take to come to their own conclusions. And, you know, the, we all need to come to our own conclusion, at our own time at our own pace. Coaching simply speeds that up. And we're, you know, we're not repeating anything.
And I see this constantly where, you know, you can pick up writings from the Greeks or... What was I seeing... some writings from Andrew Hamilton? Uh, one of the old American presidents being cycled around talking about, you know, the divide of the house and how people were playing politics and putting one against the other. And it just seems so poignant and applicable to our times. But it's applicable to all times, because as humans, we, we all have a human nature that needs to be nurtured. I think the benefit of coaching is to nurture that, that human development so that we can gain, um, an extra level of maturity quicker and be better leaders, add more value more quickly and more effectively to the organization and, you know, achieve our career goals and life goals.
Tyler Small: Fascinating. So how would you recommend when, when we're talking about rowing or sports? Um, a lot of times the things that need to be corrected are, are all visual. Sometimes it's more of a feel, um, But how, how do you help people when you're coaching them to bring things like values that are underlying, beneath the surface, to make them more visual?
Adam Kreek: Well, it's conversation base depends on the person and what issues they're working through. So for example, If that is identified as an issue, we need to work through - if I'm seeing like values misalignment, for example, in the way that someone is is acting or that it's causing issues within their professional or personal life - then we go through an exercise in which we would articulate and affirm that individual's values. And some, uh, some clients are open to doing that in a formal process, and others we need to go through a more informal process because that's that they're not interested in working through a formal process.
And so once these values have been articulated and affirmed - and it's been shown that all it takes is one values intervention in an individual's life for them to have a drastic change in their outcomes. And it's also been shown that leaders who are clear on their values are perceived as being 40% more effective; and they self-rate as 25% more effective. There is an increase in leadership efficacy. When you can lead from your values and live your values - you're more likely to be in a state of flow.
And so then when we're trying to bring that to surface, it's conversational based in the interactions I have with the individual. And then, and so simply asking questions, uh, you know, in, you know, in the same way that an organization should have rituals around the values that they hold. So I have a team and my team values, um, open, open dialogue let's say, this is one of our values. We have open dialogue. Then you have a ritual that every second Wednesday at our meeting, we have the, you know, we talk about open dialogue and how we can keep the, keep communication going back and forth. We can give feedback, receive feedback, and that sort of thing.
And then bringing it back to the personal. So the individual needs to create certain rituals in, um, in their life to revisit their values. And, um, we think about the values because it is, um, it is a psychological concept. It's a, it's a mental concept. So it's not something that you can necessarily see and feel, unless you write it down. One of the ways that I've seen it used is to create a, um, a goal sheet, personal strategies sheet. So the individual is writing out their personal and their career goals. And in that strategy sheet, they have the values that they hold dearest. And, uh, they review those values on a regular basis, along with their personal and career goal sheet. And that reminds them of what they want to, um, you know, how they want to live, how they want to work. How they want to achieve. Because a value you cannot achieve, um, it, it, you know, it's how, um, how you show up in the process of achievement.
Another way that I've seen quite effective is a journaling practice. So you would write down your, um, your three values, your top three values, your top five values. And I wouldn't recommend having more than five. And then at the end of the day, or throughout the day, you just track, when was I expressing that value? And just being aware of that and noticing that when certain values are expressed, noticing your emotional state and your response. And when values are missing, what was your emotional state and what's your response. And values are very close to, um... I think Gallop put together this, you know, and Clifton put together the "strengthsfinder." A strengthsfinder, if you've ever done that, is very closely related to values.
And so the idea is, you know, living within your strengths and, um, using, uh, using your strengths to solve a problem... you know, they're cousins, I would suppose, I would say, um, in, uh, in how you approach, you know... Values are just a little bit more in the Greek tradition of, uh, philosophy.
Tyler Small: You pointed out three really, um, really specific things that we can do. I think one of them was, um, creating a value sheet, writing down what are our values. Picking them that, that are, that are meaningful to us and, and incorporating those into our goals and linking the two.
Uh, secondly, you talked about journaling and writing down, how did I show up with my values today? How did I, how did I execute on these? Not that you can ever accomplish a value, but, but how did I, how did I exemplify these demonstrate my values today? How did I not demonstrate my values today?
And, uh, and the third to think about strengths and, um, StrengthsFinder is great. I can include a link in the description for a free StrengthsFinder. It's, uh, the light version, but you can take a really, if you're, if you're wondering what your strengths are and what, what Adam's alluding to there, you can, um, it helps you see what your, what your values are and what your, um, what you're best at, which is great to lean into. So I'll include that in the description.
This has been really good, Adam. So we have these, these three specific action items. I think I'll continue this as a, as a theme in, in the podcast here of, of hard skills and soft skills. And, um, how can we make emotional intelligence skills more visible... Using models to think about them...
You mentioned that using models for hard skills and for soft skills is helpful for the brain to kind of figure out, okay, what are the components here? What do we need to change?
Um, some of the big similarities . I'll probably, um, continue that theme - I'm so interested in opening that up for people.
At this point, um, I wanted to dip in a little bit to the Pain Contest. So, um, specifically, I remember last time you were telling me like that rowing specifically is a sport where it's basically who can endure pain the longest and how much of it you can take. And so you're kind of competing against other people who are, who are also in pain. There's no working around it. There's no avoidance of this, of this pain.
And so what I was really curious about is what's the corollary in emotional intelligence. What, what kind of pain can we, um, can we take on and manage in our day-to-day interactions in the workplace, um, when it comes to pain. What, what are some painful, emotional, um, interactions that we have and how can we, how can we handle that and manage that in a productive way?
Adam Kreek: Well, in the sport of rowing, you're dealing with lactic acid and you're dealing with real, um, I'll say real physical pain that can be, um, can be tracked with in biomarkers and can be trained to, and you can be trained to actually sit in more pain. You know, some people would look - a junior athlete for example, would look at an Olympic level athlete or a Tour de France cyclist and say, well, like you go so fast, it must not hurt as much for you because you're so much stronger and you're so much fitter. But the truth is it hurts more and you just go faster.
Tyler Small: See, I didn't know this until you told me until you revealed this in our last conversation, I was like blown away. I was like, wait, what? It still, it still hurts? I know that I've watched a lot of professional rock climber videos. I'm, I'm into climbing and, and I, and they're like, Oh yeah, like it's all, it's all in your head; most of it they say is in your head and it's all about how much pain you can handle. And I'm like, wait, what? They say like, I'm not that great at climbing. I'm just, um, I'm just good at handling, you know, working really hard and, and handling the pain. I'm like, what? I just, it's just like - I think for a normal person, who's not a professional athlete who, hasn't been there, it's, it's a, it's just an odd concept to, to understand.
But now, now I've, I've heard this from multiple places. I'm starting to believe you Adam. How does, how does that relate though, too, like, um, emotional intelligence. Like, you're having a, you're having a conversation with someone, um, you're having an interaction and, and what type of pain comes up for people and how do you, how do you help individuals to manage and endure more pain in a productive way.
Adam Kreek: Well, um, Pain can come up from boredom. It can come up from having difficult conversations. It can come up from, um, having to flex your values. It can come from not being able to use your strengths. It can come from violating some of our core drivers - you know, as humans we're motivated to, you know, pursue pleasure, avoid pain, conserve energy.
So if anything in our work is, you know, less than pleasurable, um, requires more effort than we think it should require. Uh, if it's, um, is emotionally painful or laborsome ... We experience that in, um, in our daily working environment. And, you know, often as knowledge workers - and I'm assuming most of the people listening to this are knowledge workers - there is emotional labor that we undergo. When we talk about emotional intelligence, it takes a lot of labor to manage people to be empathetic, to, um, to change the way you think, and to collaborate and to, uh, you know, to work with other people. So it's, there is a real physical load when you are flexing your EQ, as it were.
I think it's important to acknowledge that. Um, so when we're talking about dealing with pain, it's, you know, it's understanding that it's not going to get easier. And a lot of the complaints, you'll have, especially people who are parents will say, Oh, I have to manage these kids at home, and now I've got to go to the organization. And I feel like I'm just managing more kids in the organization. You know, I'm tired, I'm tired of managing all of these people. But when you move up the ladder, it's the same way that - you know, the top rowers or the top cyclists would say: it doesn't hurt less; you just go faster.
Part of moving up the organizational ladder is learning to deal with the pain and frustration of managing people and learning the techniques. And yes, you'll get more effective and yes, you'll get more efficient. But as you learn the basic techniques, you start to peel down the layer of the onion and, uh, have to learn more complicated techniques and you have to dive into nuance.
And I think that's, you know, that's where executive coaching becomes very, um, effective, not in teaching the basic skills, but when the basic skills are mastered and you're starting to have issues with some of the finer points that you'd need to figure out the most effective way to deal with... to deal with these interpersonal issues; to have a safe sounding board in which you can explore, uh, the best way forward.
Tyler Small: The nuances. Interesting. So you talked about, I just love what you, what you've, what you said there. Um, and it's, it's, it's just brought this to my awareness. I realized that personally, I think when I feel cognitive dissonance, when I feel that like, Oh, wait, I thought this, but this is not what I'm observing.. Or this goes against my value set. Um, I, I think that, um, for the most part, my natural inclination is that I need to either try and control it or, or avoid it - step away and be like, Oh, that's not what I want. I don't, I don't want to be a part of this or, you know, or, Oh, I need to change. I need to move this person to change what they believe or, you know, that's, I think that's my natural inclination. Of course, both of those are completely inappropriate.
Adam Kreek: We learn, right. We, I think we learned to, uh, you know, you. If you're battling against people's beliefs, you're not going to, a hard fought battle.
Tyler Small: Yeah. It's not going to happen.
Adam Kreek: It's not gonna happen, and it's the... You know, it's... If you'll excuse the metaphor - but it's kind of like mental masturbation to a certain extent. You know, when sometimes I'll, you know, you'll see the like... the atheists versus the theists debate... I believe there's a God. I believe there is no God. And then they debate, debate, debate, debate... And people who had already believed what they believed at the beginning will probably believe what they believe at the end.
Tyler Small: Right.
Adam Kreek: You're debating for the enjoyment of the debate and the thrill of the argument, but not for the actual change. So I think, you know, coming from a more utilitarian perspective, when you are engaging with other people, you want to use the behaviors that are most effective for achieving the goals of the organization. The goals are often quite clear and you've got to lay a cable or build a software, solve a problem, uh, get product from A to B. But then everything gets more complicated as you drill into the details and you're driving for efficiency and put ideas into action.
Tyler Small: So, um, that said the, uh, this, this pain, um, in, in, in interpersonal communication, it makes me almost eager to, um, to feel that again and have another opportunity to like consciously manage that, to go into a conversation and, and almost be looking for it and saying, Okay, Tyler, what, what level? What's my pain level, and, and how can I be more comfortable with that pain? And so that I'm not trying to pretend it's not there. I'm not running away from it. I'm not trying to put words in someone else's mouth or debate to change the way that they, uh... You know, the values that they come to the world with.
So, um, I, I'm really excited because I realized wow, pain isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just, it's just gotta be managed. If we're more aware of it, then we can go and we can, we can be more productive in our, in our relationships.
Adam Kreek: Well, it's all very true, right? Pain as an indicator. It's an indicator like anything else. But it's not an indicator, necessarily, that you should stop. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it's just discomfort. And we've heard it, you know: push your comfort zone, grow your bubble, get stronger, however you want to put it.
When you're, when you're comfortable with the discomfort, you become more grounded and I think you become, um, more influential. You'll be able to fit into your, into your truths more effectively, and respect other people's truth. So I think that's, that's a big part of emotional intelligence is being able to do that dance, um, you know, with discomfort in the mix.
Tyler Small: Yeah. Yeah. Man, I love it. I love it! So this has been Adam Creek and Tyler Small and Hacking Emotional Intelligence. We've been talking about the pain, the pain contest, and, uh, how we can manage that pain. We also talked about coaching hard skills versus soft skills, which will be an, an ongoing subtopic and, uh, invite you to go check out Adam Kreek's YouTube channel. What's it called, Adam?
Adam Kreek: It's Kreek Speak.
Tyler Small: "Kreek Speak". Kreek with a "K" - K R E E K. I've watched some of these videos. Some of them are just - the ones I've seen are incredibly entertaining and helpful. And, um, if, even if you're not an athlete, I think it, uh, it just, it just comes across... some of the metaphors you use and some of the humorous things, as well as the concise insights that you have there, they're very, well-scripted, they're very well-directed and, uh, I really enjoyed them.
So if you just need a pick me up, if you just need a little bit of motivation or a tip to get you through the day, Um, it's it's it's wonderful. Kreek Speak on YouTube - check it out. Um, and have a great day. We'll see you on the next podcast.