5 REASONS, 5 STARS - Tyler shares why he started the “Hacking Emotional Intelligence” podcast, and why he created the 5-Star Approach.
I'm Tyler Small. And this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.
Why did I get into this? Why did I start this podcast? So the first reason is because, uh - I've told the long version of this in the first, one of the first 10 episodes I go through. I reached a point where I was very frustrated with my industry, leadership development, because there wasn't a quantitative measurement that one could apply on a regular basis. And it was really tough to know if you're making any progress when it came to developing leadership ability or emotional intelligence, social skills - whatever you want to call it.
Creating that and sharing hacks - how to shortcut this process, how to accelerate it, how to boost your emotional intelligence. That's that's what I wanted to do. I looked around for different podcasts on this topic and I didn't find a lot. I actually looked around a ton a couple of years ago, and couldn't find anything. Since then, I haven't found much; I haven't done an extensive search, but, I am always on the hunt for emotional intelligence specific podcasts. This is Hacking Emotional Intelligence, right? So it's all about emotional intelligence.
The third reason that I wanted to create it was because I needed, uh, as the founder of the 5-Star Approach, as the leader of this company, I needed a way to create and distribute a huge amount of value. A huge amount of, of information really rapidly. And we've been able to do that. We've been able to crank out a whole bunch of value.
I would say that reason number four is because I wanted to meet super cool people and I've met some super cool people on this show. Just to name a couple of the highlights: Adam Creek, who is another executive coach and who is also - he says "in a former life", he kind of downplays this - he was a gold medalist, um, for the sport of rowing. Super cool guy, tons of positive energy. The day we recorded, I was just, I was really feeling down that morning and I was like, Oh my goodness, what am I going to do for this podcast. And, uh, I pick up the phone, I call him, he picks up. He kind of says, Hey Tyler, like he, he started off - he laughed before he even said the first word. And my heart just, just lifted. It was such a great experience; totally changed my day around. I totally recommend talking to Adam Creek if you have a chance.
Another highlight has been Elizabeth Leiba. Super cool lady. She does the Black History and Culture awareness - um, it's like a university of sorts. It's a, it's an online, um, it's a subscription. You go and you, you can watch and read, learn all the courses that she has there. It's fantastic. She's an activist and she is a mover and a shaker in the world of diversity and inclusion and belonging and equality. She has a wonderful voice for giving perspective to the history of our country and the current reality. We had this amazing two-part podcast and I gained some real awareness and have through looking at her website, the courses there, and also through her posts on LinkedIn, you can follow her there. I learned a little bit about privilege, just through kind of thinking about it a little more...
So those are my four big reasons for why I started this podcast.
I just wanted to jump into the story of one of the benefits that I've seen myself from this podcast. So I was jogging with this friend of mine, who's almost ready to graduate his psychology program. He's doing a PhD in psychology and getting ready to do his residency this summer.
Super cool guy. I've been running with him for a while now. And this week, we decided to do a run in the evening when our families were awake. And so we said, hey, let's take our youngest kid with us. We used the jogging strollers, and off we went on this jog. We're running side by side and we're thinking, I've never seen another couple of guys running with strollers. You know, I've, I've occasionally seen a guy running with a jogging stroller. But seeing two, um, I'd never seen that before to my recollection and maybe I've seen it, but it just, it didn't, it didn't clear the, the noise level for some reason. Just extremely rare, right? You don't see that around much.
We jogged by this lady and she's looking at us, just staring. Her dog's taking, uh, doing his business on the lawn and she's just staring at us as we go by. She's watching us just like, and you could tell she's thinking, are those two men stealing babies or something? You know, what's, what's going on there? Why are these two guys jogging with babies? It's just so odd. We don't do that. So at first we were like, Oh yeah, we're, we're awesome. Dads. We're running with a kid, you know, we each have a kid - isn't that just the coolest thing.
And then we were like, wait a minute, how chauvinist of us? And we, we realized like, we, we, we're on, we're both these white dudes, right. White guys in America. And, uh, and we're like, Oh my God, goodness, we take so much for granted. If you saw two women with jogging strollers, you'd say, Oh, there's. There's the women, they have their children, they're supervising their children as their, you know, their, their mother, their motherly calling. And their they go with their jogging strollers. They're just getting their exercise in. And of course they have their children with them. Right. Um, but why, why is it such a strange thing in this country to see, um, to see guys with jogging strollers?
And, uh, I was just, I was just amazed. They were like, Oh my goodness. Like. There's - I do see more women actually running and cycling now and even hiking, than I see men. So it's interesting that women, uh, it used to be probably 15 years ago. Now this is, uh, in Utah and I go hiking at least once a week. I go, I go running several times a week, so on the trails, I see a lot of people out and I've noticed, yeah, more women than men. It used to be predominantly men, almost entirely men, 15, 20 years ago. Now it's completely a flip-flop to where there's, there's more women. However, like you still don't see, you know, I never saw two guys pushing that I can remember.
Right. So. Um, so it's just such an interesting thing. If you think about this, why, why is that? It's because we have this underlying belief in our society, like, Oh, like if the man wants to go exercise, then the man just goes and exercises, right. If the woman wants to exercise, well, you gotta take the kid. Um, and, and that's such a strange, such a strange thing.
Um, I do, I do take my kids hiking a lot. I take them rock climbing a lot, um, to give my wife a break because she is like, it's literally only a break for her. Like if, if, if you know the rest of the time, if I'm not taking them out, like she's, she's doing it. And I work a lot. So, um, you know, so I try and do that, but it's still, it just, it's just surprising to me and how, how much it caught me off guard.
Oh, my goodness. Like, why is this such a rare thing? It's because it's so strong, so prevalent in our society - that, that the man should not be responsible for taking children, taking a child with them. And then if he's going to jog with his buddy, like he's not going to, they're not going to both take a child. Like, that's just strange. So they're probably, you know, they're probably stealing children if that's the case. Anyway, we had a longer conversation about it, but. I thought that was interesting.
Here's another interesting thing and probably something that's gotten me thinking in this direction. So shutterstock.com Shutterstock I would say is, is one of the largest - and there's a few sites that claim they're the largest, so I don't know if they're the largest - but Shutterstock is one of the largest stock photo sites in the world. And when I say stock photos, like they have pictures of people doing stuff that you use for marketing, you use it for, um, e-learning, you know, instructional design. When people are putting together training courses - I've done a lot of this. When people are putting together marketing advertising - I've done a lot of this. Then they go to Shutterstock.com and they're, they're usually not taking their own pictures. Occasionally they'll take their own pictures. If it's merchandise, if it's, uh, a product that they need to be, you know, if it's a shirt or a dress or a hat or whatever... sunglasses - they're going to obviously take some custom photos or video of the product.
But if it's not, um, merchandise, if it's, if it's an experience or a concept or a service, then they're oftentimes using stock photos or stock videos. And then they're just, there's generic, you know? Oh, it's a couple of walking in the sunset, you know, or, Oh, it's a bunch of people in an office. That's what I - usually I'm looking for pictures of people in an office and they're doing a meeting or they're shaking hands. You know, you've seen these pictures before. If you've been around corporate America had done any kind of training or, or seen a lot of marketing advertising.
And, uh, so what I noticed about Shutterstock - and I'm using them specifically because I've spent, I don't know for sure I've spent hundreds of hours on Shutterstock. Okay. So this is not a small sample size, um, hundreds of hours looking at tens of thousands of images, maybe over a hundred thousand images. Scrolling through hour after hour. Um, looking for the perfect images, you know, for my, for my trainings and stuff like that, presentations, et cetera.
And what I've noticed when it comes to these, these images, especially of the workplace is that, is that there's a class system, there's a class system in America. And a lot of people know this, but, um, but, but I would say that most people probably don't know that it's as defined and clear, um, and, uh, and really enforced so much by our media.
And so Shutterstock is where a large portion of the fortune 500 - of large companies, medium companies, even small companies - get their, their stuff. So I would say medium and large companies, they're getting their, their stuff by which they train their employees and they put their, um, and they get there, they do their advertising and so on.
And, and so Shutterstock represents this, this body of images that people see a lot - I'm talking probably hundreds of millions of impressions every month, I would guess, that come from Shutterstock because they have millions and millions of photos, right? They have, I'm not sure how big the company is, but it's this huge, huge piece of the input that we see of our perception of corporate America, as we experience it, as we see people's presentations, as we see advertising... So keep that in mind.
I've spent hundreds of hours looking at probably over a hundred thousand images, I'm guessing. Um, because I can look through probably 30 in a minute, you know, I'm looking through and I'm looking for, uh, you know, a small group of people with a very, you know, varying, uh, you know, some, some visual, some visually obvious diversity, and I'm looking for a balance of men and women, and I'm looking for.
You know, the, the happiness factor to be high, I'm doing this to the task I am facing. Right. So I'm looking through, and it's actually very difficult to find a, a modern, socially like socially appropriate image because Shutterstock - and this is not just a, not just a function of their company, but as a function of the contributors to Shutterstock - they enforce the class system. And the way that you know this, and you'll start to see this more after I tell you, but the way that they enforce this as is very obvious, once you see it. It's the white males at the top, the white woman is, is directly below him. And then below, below that is, is the quote brown people, the man first, then the woman. And then, um, somewhere, I'm not sure where, is Hispanics, Asians are are, are mixed in there somewhere. And then at the bottom African-Americans. And first the African-American man, and then African-American women.
And if you ever see a photo on Shutterstock, almost entirely with very rare, very rare exception, you see that if there's a group of people that they're all looking at the white male, um, or they're all looking at the person up the, up the chain from them upward in the class system that they're all, Oh, the white male is speaking, or if there's no white male present. Oh, it's the white female. Oh, she is so knowledgeable and fun and pretty. And so we all look at her, right. And, and as if to, you know, look onto the divine and we're all smiling and adoring, um, if there's, uh, if there's a man and a woman, typically the woman is seen in a, in a less, um, prominent manner. So she's sitting down, the man is standing up.
Um, oftentimes the man is. In a, in a, in a room, in a conference room and there's, there's these people around a table and the man is at the head of the table and he's, he's in command and he's doing his leadership thing, waving his arms around and pointing at some graph, um, or explaining a concept or, um, you know, if it's two women, the white woman is showing the, uh, is teaching the nonwhite woman.
Um, or the, you know, the, the black man is, is, uh, you know, having this dominant pose to the black woman. Like it's never, it's almost always, as I've seen it the class system is very well-defined and very well punctuated by, by these photos and, and in the, I should say the upper-class person and the lower class person and in every single image - I'm saying with, with rare exception, it is positioned so that the more prominent individual, the person who's the center of attention and the way that the, the way that the camera angle is that it's, it's showing their face and only the sides of the lower class person's faces. Then the upper-class person is is higher. The head, their head is usually shown as, as higher even, even if they happen to be shorter like that, person's head is higher than the other people. And, um, and people are deferring.
There's also, um, there's also a major difference in the whenever they're shaking hands, the, the upper class person's hand will be, um, on top of the clasp, there'll be more, more dominant, right? And their shoulder will be higher. Their arm will be higher. And the, uh, often the lower class person I've been, I've been using specifics up to this point, but I, it, it it's, it doesn't matter where you're at on the class system, it's demonstrated by, you know, these, the way that they're shaking hands. The lower class person will have this little, you know, their shoulders are kind of scrunched forward. Their head is, you know, maybe down a little bit, they might have a slightly more sheepish look on their face. The facial expressions are ridiculous and the hand might be this kind of limp fish, little kind of curved like, Oh, is it okay if I shake your hand now?
And it's, I know I'm, I'm getting a little bit, uh, I I'm carrying this out a lot. But once you see this, that the, the difference in even the, um, the amount of sophistication and confidence in a person's facial expression. You'll see that the upper-class person has a, a privileged higher, more prominent, more confident, more sophisticated look than the lower-class person.
And that's all I'm going to say about this. You'll start to notice this in, in a lot of different places now that I've described it to you. Um, but that sort of thing is, is something that took me - I went for years and years without noticing that I was having to look really hard for well-balanced, um, images where people actually look like they belong.
It's not just a subservient. Um, you know, Oh, Oh, mighty upper-class person. Now it's it's like, Oh, Hey, we're all here. We're all contributing. We're all on the same level. We're all equals here. That's, it's really tough to find that. And I hope, uh, I call out to all you photographers out there. Anyone who's making stock photos and submitting them to Shutterstock. Please show a balanced, a balanced, uh, image, a balanced representation of people in our society. Please, please buck the, the class system and, and show, show a, uh, an environment of belonging. Show an environment of people all using the 5-Star Approach to, to, uh, to gain each other's trust and respect. Um, And, uh, show, show images of equality.
And, and I, I push you all to, if you're, if you're selecting images to do your marketing or your training programs, um, your advertising... certainly seek out those few images out there where they're not making, where they're not reinforcing the class system. I challenge you to do that.
So, uh, just to go back to my original point, why did I, why did I create this, this podcast? I created this podcast series because I want to equal the playing field. I want to help people who are previously less confident, less able, um, less emotionally intelligent. I want to help you have an unequal advantage.
Um, any disadvantaged groups: I want to help you - individuals in those groups - to be able to build those skills rapidly. Um, I'll give a fifth reason that I didn't mention in the original four. I love to read books on emotional intelligence.
I love to read the academic articles and to take the trainings. That said, the reason that I created the 5-Star Approach - this system that can be applied on a daily basis so that you can see your progress day by day and know that it's working, even from one moment to the next - is because, despite all the reading that I did and the videos that I watched and the courses that I took, I, wasn't really able to substantially increase my emotional intelligence. I wasn't really able to get traction, to get my teeth into it until I really discovered this approach, and articulated it and started practicing and teaching people and, and seeing how it worked across companies and across individuals and roles and industries. And, um, I didn't really see a way to hack emotional intelligence.
And so I wanted to just have one way that I could share as much as possible, um, as quickly as possible to help others to hack their own emotional intelligence. That's the big goal: is to, to create small pockets of world peace.
All right. I've said enough. I am excited to see you in the next episode. I'm Tyler Small. And this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.