In this episode, Allen Larsen joins us and reviews some of his best tips and tricks from working as a leader in the US Army, Convergys, and Teleperformance (over 100,000 employees). He is currently the Managing Director of Global Learning and Development at Continuum.
EQ Assessment --> https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/ei-quiz.htm
Tyler Small: Welcome again to Hacking Emotional Intelligence today, we have a special guests, Alan Larson, who just started at Continuum Global Services as the Managing Director of Global Learning and Development. Alan has worked for many large companies, including Converges the Us Army Teleperformance Guidepoint, and he has a wealth of experience in learning and development.
[00:00:28] And specifically in helping individuals and companies. To develop their emotional intelligence. So welcome, Alan.
[00:00:38] Alan Larson: Thank you. I appreciate the invite.
[00:00:41] Tyler Small: Yeah. So just to get started here, I was wondering what originally interested you in a career of helping people to develop, the way they learn the way they lead, the way that they interact with others, professionally, basically , how to do the emotional intelligence thing, hacking emotional intelligence.
[00:00:59] Like , this is the most fascinating thing in the world to me. And I'm interested. How did you get into this line of work?
[00:01:06]Alan Larson: I appreciate you asking me that question because that's really what started my career off in the first place. And I was a trading officer in the United States military.
[00:01:18] I actually served 12 years in the Navy and then the remainder by 27 years of my career was in the United States Army. And I was with military intelligence. I started off as a training officer and really realized that, Hey, back in the eighties emotional intelligence was just starting to be something that was talked about and I'm really big on self-development.
[00:01:40] So that's where I discovered emotional intelligence. At least the starting discussions of it. It intrigued me because it was all about what. My values are, and that is connecting with people. And in order to do that, I need to understand what motivates me and what causes me to react a certain way. The same is true in military intelligence.
[00:02:01] It's all about building a developing relationships with individuals to Be collaborative and to achieve an end goal together. And I started applying emotional intelligence into that position and that's what allowed me to be successful as well. Now that I'm in corporate America, I'm really trying to help the organization to understand the importance of emotional intelligence.
[00:02:23] But in order to do that, I need to start with the individuals. The new hires and help them understand as individuals what emotional intelligence is and how to measure each of the different skills that are associated with emotional intelligence.
[00:02:38]Tyler Small: Fascinating. Alan, as we were talking before we started the recording, I remember you mentioned that it was really important to help organizations realize how important emotional intelligence is.
[00:02:50] And in my mind, I, and I told you, I was thinking of course it's important, but it is indeed. Like it's something that we need to push and help people realize. And I was wondering like, what is one of the big obstacles in, in people's minds when you're working with stakeholders and you're saying, Hey, like we need to help these people become more emotionally intelligent, improve their relationships, improve their interpersonal skills.
[00:03:12]What is the, one of the big obstacles in people's minds when you tell them that.
[00:03:15]Alan Larson: I would definitely say that it's an understanding of what emotional intelligence is. But I think that it's important from my perspective to demonstrate what the ROI is or the return on investment.
[00:03:28] And I think this to all of the individual employees as well, when I'm training, when. We're working with them to help create their plan for improving their emotional intelligence skills. And and I basically talk about it in this way, so a good sales person, they can always get in front of somebody.
[00:03:48] It's their perseverance that gets them in front of someone. However, if they do not have good emotional intelligence. They're not going to make that connection with the individual. The same as with a customer service agent, right? They take those calls. They enjoy taking those calls, but if they do not understand emotional intelligence and how to leverage the skills in emotional intelligence, they're not gonna make that solid connection that they need to make in order to achieve the desired result the organization's looking for.
[00:04:19] So it does impact the bottom line and the financials for. The company, but it also impacts the success of the individual employee or the individual person. , if an individual does not understand good emotional intelligence and applies the skills effectively. It impacts the family life and impacts the friendships out there because this is all about interacting with people and really generating positive results , for you as the individual and those individuals that you've come in contact with.
[00:04:53] And so that's how I leverage it to really develop that ROI, to get them to become motivated around the emotional intelligence.
[00:05:01] Tyler Small: Ilove that. And I feel like we couldn't be more on the same page and at the same time I wanted to ask, so what about those people who say why would our salespeople, or why would our customer service people.
[00:05:14] Need to create a connection with a customer. Why would a or even someone who's internal, who's helping employees? Why would they, if it's just a short, transactional interaction, why would they have to create a connection with the person? Why is that necessary?
[00:05:29]Alan Larson: That's another great question.
[00:05:31] So when we're talking about the the outsourcing business, right? All of our clients expect a certain level of customer satisfaction because they want their customers to always be happy. I'm going to use customer satisfaction because it's very simplistic to talk about. We can train these individuals on customer service training, and we can test them on it.
[00:05:53] We can do roleplays, we can do everything we can to set them up for success and they can also be coached once they hit the production floor, start taking calls. But if we have no way of measuring their performance or measuring those different skillsets that relate to customer satisfaction. Or be able , to rate their emotional intelligence skills, making sure the right connections are being made, that we have no idea how successful the individual is that the customer is either going to like them or not like them.
[00:06:28] We have no valid. Metrics to be able to help someone that's struggling to improve. So that's why the quality department is so important because they look at those quantitative metrics. And provide feedback based off of those metrics on what needs to be done at an individual level at each of the different skill levels to be able to drive that improvement.
[00:06:54] Does that make sense?
[00:06:56] Tyler Small: Yeah, so it seems like the ultimate success of the department that the customer satisfaction scores are going to be riding on whether or not that connection is made in large part.
[00:07:09] Alan Larson: That's absolutely correct. And and again, I want to stress because you may have individuals that are not concerned about business, but are looking at maybe some challenges at home.
[00:07:21] It ties in to home relationships dissonant effectively. I'll use me for an example. Let's say my wife, she's just very upset with me and she's not understanding what it is that I'm trying to communicate to her. And it makes me very frustrated. And so I need to be self-aware as to how I becoming frustrated and what is frustrating me and how am I approaching her based off that frustration.
[00:07:50] What is my delivery method in communication. When I'm frustrated, I need to be in tune with that. Just like an agent. Wouldn't be to be with a customer. If I'm not in tune with my own self-awareness then of course it's going to, it could make things worse or things will not improve. And a lot of people just look to hope things blow over, but that they're really doesn't improve anything because nobody is developing their emotional intelligence
[00:08:16]Tyler Small: I'm right there with you. And I think anyone who has relationships can identify with the concept of being frustrated at times and feeling stuck. And when you described this situation I think it would be easy for us to assume wow, like all the factors that you mentioned, it could be very overwhelming.
[00:08:39] So what are some of the emotional intelligence hacks that you've discovered over the years that, that you implement in your organizational trainings and that you encourage individuals to do and that you use yourself?
[00:08:54] Alan Larson: Yeah. And I'd like to approach it. And let me just briefly talk about each of the emotional intelligence skills act, the hacks each, what are them, because individuals that have been listening to your podcast probably already know what emotional intelligence is.
[00:09:10] So we don't need to go back and rehash that they also know what the skills are. So I just want to touch on the skill and then I'll talk. Talk to you or, I'll talk about some of those hacks that I've used in my own life and the hacks that I educate others on using to help improve their emotional intelligence.
[00:09:27]Number one is self-awareness in order to understand somebody else, we need to be self-aware of ourselves. So what I mean by that is we need to be in tune with ourselves and our surroundings in order to be in tune with others. And to be able to understand where they're coming from.
[00:09:45] So it goes back to what I talked about. That example I gave about me and my wife. Maybe she's not understanding something I'm saying, I becoming frustrated. One of those hacks that I've learned that is very valuable is to carry a journal around. It just needs to be a small, it could be a piece of paper, but I like to use a leather bound journal.
[00:10:06] And I carry that on a daily basis. And when I run into situations that cause emotional changes, I write down what caused that emotion change of what was the emotion that I was experiencing throughout the day. Now, of course, I also will take it annotated there. How did I overcome that emotion? Did I just, if I was frustrated that express the frustration or did I step back and think about it for a second and then redirect by response, taking into account what I think the receiver, what their response is going to be.
[00:10:42] So that helps me become more self-aware of my own emotions. And Willie better enabled me to become in tune with others. Another big one. And I learned this in the military was, during really rough times this is where emotional intelligence really comes in because when you're under fire, you're really ramped up and everybody's scared.
[00:11:06] Everybody's nervous, but we've learned to control that, but. We need to learn how to meditate, and we need to take 15 seconds in that moment to just meditate when you're in a safe environment or in a situation that's really intense. Find the means when you've got that availability to take 15 seconds to meditate.
[00:11:25] Think about the situation you're in. Think about how you're feeling, think about what you need to do to recover from that situation to improve the way you're feeling, know that you can do the job that you were meant to do. And this applies in your daily life here in the civilian world, just like it did in the military.
[00:11:44] That's what allows our military to be very successful is because we have that capability to doing that. And then another one is always use self positive talk, right? You always want to speak positive to yourself and about yourself to others. Avoid self-defeating talk. If you apply, self-defeating talk, then that is going to correct yourself awareness.
[00:12:09] It's going to keep you away from being able to improve make sure you're setting goals. You're monitoring them daily and you're following up and making corrections to their goals to get to your end result. And most importantly, pursue your passions. Don't let anybody stop you. Always pursue your passions.
[00:12:29] Find a job that you love hanging out with those people that you love hanging out with and do not allow anyone to persuade you from your passions. You must always pursue your passions.
[00:12:43]Let me ask you a question. If you ever been asked that question, who do you admire? I've been asked that question in your lifetime.
[00:12:52] Tyler Small: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say Alan Larson.
[00:12:56]Alan Larson: Oh, that's flattering. No seriously, because yeah, that, that's a good question. You ask yourselves, everybody that's listening. Who do you admire?
[00:13:06] Think about what their qualities are and their core values are for life. How aligned are you to that individual that you admire them. You look up to them, you look at them as being successful, someone that you would like to follow their path strive to do the same, and that will get you to where you need to be.
[00:13:27] Tyler Small: That makes sense. I like it.
[00:13:29]Alan Larson: Let's again, I probably spent a little too much time on that one, but let's look at self regulation really quick. Again, keep your journal, but this is your ability to identify and modify or adjust your own personal thoughts and feelings and behaviors. And always look at your opportunities as challenges. I'm always telling those individuals that report to me, Hey, this is just a hiccup. Yeah. Things got messed up. And yet you did some things you should have done, but look at this as an opportunity, not as a reason for for crucifying you or by any means.
[00:14:04] But look at it as a challenge and an opportunity to improve, pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. so can always annotate those down. And also when you're in communication with somebody and you're under intense situations, always make sure you collect your thoughts first before you respond.
[00:14:22] Think first. Then respond too many people, just blurt out what they feel and that just makes the issues worse or the issue worse and causes more problems than it's worth. So think about what you're going to say. Think about how the receiver is going to respond to what you're going to say. Adjust your message accordingly that communicate your thoughts.
[00:14:47] And then if you need to recollect your thoughts. And so those are some of the acts that you could use under self regulation.
[00:14:53] Tyler Small: Very cool. I like to see challenges and opportunities. I think some of the people that I coach, it probably surprises them.
[00:15:00] Sometimes it's coaching somebody. Last night they were having a really rough time with the work situation. And I said, know, this is great, cause this is a really awesome opportunity for you. She thought she was at the end of the road, she thought this was it. And it permanent damage, so to speak.
[00:15:18] And I love presenting that as this really positive opportunity like this is an opportunity to show growth, to demonstrate to others, do, to have a starting point that here's where you are now. And this is just a starting point. So I love that.
[00:15:36] Alan Larson: Yeah, most definitely. And you brought up something important.
[00:15:39] You taught, you said the word coaching is important in your own personal life, as well as in the corporate arena. So coaching, the intent for that is, is to help another individual look at things differently, look at a situation or a person or a relationship and help change its meaning.
[00:16:00] In other words, steering the person to a different result. That is better. So that is another one of the key elements that you can apply for self-regulation is make sure you're creating a different way of looking at the situation, the person, the relationship, and change the meaning or the outcome. And so I'm glad you brought that up.
[00:16:23]That's right on the money.
[00:16:24] Tyler Small: Cool.
[00:16:24]Alan Larson: Just got motivation, empathy and social skills. Very simple. Motive motivation. You need to be emotionally intelligent in order to be emotionally intelligent. You need to be motivated by things other than what one normally thinks as success.
[00:16:40] So I E money, fame, recognition, right? When someone else is recognized and a question I've got for others, think about this. When you've been working on a project and then someone else has called out and recognize for a good job, outstanding job, but you were not recognized. Did you feel offended by that?
[00:17:04]Does that make sense? So that goes against emotional intelligence because an emotional intelligent individual can go with the flow. They will accept it if it's given, but they don't need to have it in order to motivate them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Now let's look at empathy really quick.
[00:17:28] Empathy is basically feeling other's emotions, right? Putting ourselves in their shoes. And I've heard that so many times of my life. And like I said earlier, Competitive competitiveness is what gets you in front of others, but it's going to be empathy and emotional intelligence. That connects you with those individuals.
[00:17:50] That's, what's going to allow you to get that job. That's what's going to allow you to get that promotion. That's what's going to allow you to improve your marital or other relationships. So that's going to be very important is learning how to understand what others are feeling and then being able to respond in a like kind to help support that.
[00:18:15] And then of course, social skills is the last piece of the puzzle. That's a huge one. So let me ask this question and it goes back. Do you praise others for a good job? Do you find yourself apologizing a lot, even for things you have no control over. Do you keep your commitments? Do you stay away from what I like to call blame?
[00:18:42] Shame justify. So when something happens, do you take responsibility for that? Are you saying. No, you blame someone else. Shame on you. You shouldn't have done that or, yeah, I did it because it needed to be done justifying it. Those are just some of the things that you need to look at. And the last thing that I want to say is ask yourself, do you prefer working by yourself or with others?
[00:19:06] Because it intelligent a person that has emotional intelligence. Loves working with others because it's about relationships. It's not about styling yourself from other people. You're open to always learning new things. And you're going to learn those new things from developing those relationships and working with other people.
[00:19:28] Tyler Small: And that's some of that has to do with introversion versus extroversion. And everybody might have their own time to work on their own and have their me time, so to speak. And then. And then also need to be willing at certain points to do the social skills with others. Is that what you're saying?
[00:19:46] Alan Larson: Yes, definitely. Most definitely. Let me look at it from a training perspective and I'm sure everybody on this podcast as part, but we've been to a training session, but there's always one person in that class. It gets likes to be the center of attention. They'll always say they'll always come across as I've done it all.
[00:20:07] I know all the answers, so I'm going to respond to every question. And then there's those other individuals raise their hand and they ask important questions to generate thought to be able to answer. Questions that they're unsure of. That is an emotional, intelligent person, not the first person that we talked about.
[00:20:29] So a person that could sit there and think through the questions that they want to ask, and then wait until it's the right time and ask those questions. That's another key element to emotional intelligence.
[00:20:42] Tyler Small: It's interesting
[00:20:44]Alan Larson: that stand out everybody's has had that experience and seeing those individuals.
[00:20:50] Tyler Small: Yeah. And Alan, I'm wondering it seems like sometimes when I am trying to learn from somebody as a, as I'm trying to learn from you right now, and I'm taking notes on my paper here and I'm I realized like I have two different modes. One of my modes is I'm in learning mode and the other mode is, and I'm teaching mode when I'm like when there's no guest, I'm just doing the podcast on my own.
[00:21:11]And I find it hard to switch back and forth between give mode and receipt. But right now I feel like I'm struggling because I'm in receipt. I'm just totally trying to absorb all of the things that you're saying and thinking about.
[00:21:22] Oh, that's so interesting. And how does this relate to my prior experience? And so do you have any tips on how to bounce back and forth from that learning mode absorbing and giving mode in order to work with somebody in collaborate on an assignment.
[00:21:39] Alan Larson: Yeah, definitely. And again, it goes back to the other skills, right?
[00:21:44] It goes right back to the self regulation and knowing what to say, when to say it, how to adjust your thoughts and feelings. It also, it goes back to self-awareness because you need to be self-aware of how, you need to be. Let's put it this way. You feel positive about yourself? You're motivated you, you look well upon yourself rather than negatively, you are able to self regulate.
[00:22:09]All of that is important to be able to do. To be able to focus on what the other people need to achieve. So for example, in the trading environment, and this is something that I hold my trainers and staff accountable for is we monitor the progress of all of those individuals. They train.
[00:22:32] Post-training 30, 60, 90 days based off of the key performance indicators or the goals that they could be achieving at those key points. And the trainers need to understand what is expected of the individual and what their own personal goals are as well. Not just what the organization's goals are, but what their own personal goals are.
[00:22:55] So as the trainer goes through training, They need to make sure that they're focused on each of the individuals throughout the training to make sure that we're on track with helping them execute their own personal goals. And that, that goes back to coaching that goes back to development, planning or success planning.
[00:23:13] Traders need to be doing that with each individual. Now trainers on the other hand, let's say when they're in the trading environment, they've got to deliver a certain message, that message needs to get out. But at the same time, they need to also reflect back to what their trainees want to achieve and tie that in because they need to motivate those individuals to learn so that they can achieve their goals.
[00:23:39]And everybody needs to work together and collaborate together to be able to achieve the organization's goals. And this is generated through poaching. We really need those learn to self-regulate so that we know where we need to stop talking and focus in on the other individual. Another way of looking at it is I say I'm having a conversation with my wife and.
[00:24:05] She gives me an indication through facial expression, and body posture. She's not happy with that decision. I know I've got a choice to make. I could continue trying to sell her on it, or I can take a step back and I could think about, okay, I've communicated my message. I noticed that she's not.
[00:24:25] Reacting well to that situation, it's time for me to stop trying to sell what it is I'm trying to sell to her or deliver the message that I'm trying to deliver to her, because I know that it's not making the time kind of groundwork, but I want it to make, therefore I need to re-look at the situation. I understand how she's feeling and give her an opportunity to communicate to me why she's feeling the way she's feeling so that we can come to a mutual understanding and then Pell an individual could do that in all of their relationships.
[00:24:58] They'll never ever be able to achieve emotional intelligence. Did that answer your question?
[00:25:04] Tyler Small: Yeah, it did. And you've listed so many little pieces of this puzzle. I'm wondering if you can share with our audience about a time, but some way to measure their own emotional intelligence.
[00:25:18] Alan Larson: Yeah. There's, there's several different solutions out there. I've given you the link to one of them to share with with those that are attending. That there, there, there are a lot of opportunities out there. You can go on the internet and you can look for emotional intelligence assessments.
[00:25:36]You can take free online and these are free or pay. And then there's also online self-reporting tests. This is where it's more standard on you and you're providing the responses. Yeah. Ask you about how you feel in a certain situation. It requires you to document that out, how you would respond.
[00:25:56] So you become in tune with your emotions the emotional intelligence test, however, will that the one that I provided you direction to has 15 questions, very simple questions that each participant can answer and it'll give them a good indication of where they need to focus. Once they've answered all those questions.
[00:26:14]. They take each question one by one, go back to the emotional intelligence skill in which it's aligned. And then look at some of those ways that they can improve in that area or. Help improve that skill. And then of course you can conduct a self analysis. A lot of people don't like doing that, but that gets pretty detailed, but I can really help people if they want to go down that route, you can feel free to have them send me an email and I can send them the information I had to do that
[00:26:44] Tyler Small: well.
[00:26:45] Great. Those are great resources that I'll include the link to the one you shared with me. Super simple assessment, 15 questions. Easy to go through there. And there's some other information on that page. You don't have to give your email or anything for this one. So it's a great a great free tool that has no barriers and no, no cost to entry there.
[00:27:07] So go ahead and grab that. Allen, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been very valuable for me. I've just taken tons of notes here in my papers. And I can't wait to apply some of the things that you've talked about. I'm going to go take the test right now.
[00:27:23] Alan Larson: Perfect. I really appreciate you inviting me personal, and emotional intelligence to me is one of the most exciting elements of my life.
[00:27:30] It keeps me busy. But it has allowed me to be successful and has allowed me to be good at what I do. And that was intelligence, actual military intelligence and as well being a training manager and director. Which I thoroughly enjoy. And it's all about relationship building and firming up those relationships.
[00:27:52]Everybody, this will get you there. If you're looking for a way to improve your life, this is it. And I think you'll be surprised let us know how things go.
[00:28:01] Tyler Small: Thanks, Allen.
[00:28:02]And again, this is Alan Larson and I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence. We'll see you next time.