Every Day Business featuring Jem Fuller
back everyone i'm tony lontis and this is the everyday business show i'm going to do it to the best of my ability because if i fail that means i feel for my entire female nation i call it is that possible that was the question for myself and it is absolutely possible good afternoon australia and good evening america welcome back to the everyday business show i'm your host tony lontos and before i introduce you to our amazing guest today here's what you need to know if you're listening live on linkedin facebook youtube twitch or twitter we have peo ready and waiting online to take your questions and comments and provide you links with anything that we discuss on the show today if you're driving just remember you can jump onto tony lontis.com click on the guest tab and we will have links to our guests today and including their website so a reminder too that if you miss any of these shows and you want to catch up anytime jump onto binge networks usa or the tony tv channel app available on all roku lg and samsung smart tvs across the planet now our normal welcome to gumtree goes a little bit like this i want to respectfully acknowledge the people of the yugamba language region the gold coast queensland australia the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and broadcast and pay my respect to the elders past and present and all aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples here today now our extra special guest today is gem fuller and gem coaches and fertil facilitates ceos senior leaders across government private and non-profit sectors across the globe he helps develop more mindful unconscious leaders and a healthy workplace culture jim is the founding director and facilitator of his own international leadership retreat company and he takes leaders away on conscious leader programs to remote indian himalayan bali and kimberley and costa rica coastlines gem has led an amazingly colorful life from years of barefoot back backing around india subcontinent to senior leaders with an int multi-international company he has been to the extremes and back and all the way in between he's worked as a reflexologist a chinese masseuse a reiki practitioner a kindergarten teacher a global tattooist a fire dancer a motorcycle courier actor singer songwriter travel consultant and prior to commencing his coaching work has been in senior corporate leadership jim has studied extensively in the healing arts coaching neuro linguistic programming and human behavioral profiling welcome back to the show gem i'm delighted to have you here today oh thanks tony it's really lovely to see you again and geez i'm a bit exhausted listening to my intro i'm like i think um have we still got time left to actually have a chat we do we do i just wanted to share with the audience um gem and i have become um friends uh i guess in this space and jim and i were talking about um what his partner wife does and the synergies around some work that i used to do corporately both of us come from a corporate perspective but now are leading our own companies and doing our own business and jen was telling me before we got on the show about his psych excitement around a new space jim can you just share with the audience because that's really exciting news for you and your wife talia yeah absolutely and it's it's literally hot off the press i mean the lease agreement only got emailed to us half an hour ago yeah so we're about to sign the lease uh on on a a big beautiful property in our local town here um that will we will be sharing and my partner talia is a birth worker she's a clinical pilates instructor a doula and also a hypno birthing consultant and so she's going to have some big beautiful spaces in there for community her business is called village birth and her her kind of logo is it takes a village so she'll be bringing in all sorts of wonderful women who work in the birthing space and nestled in the middle of these amazing rooms is my studio where i'm going to be able to record and coach and do what i do and i'm going to be nestled amongst this beautiful mothering nurturing new life energy and i can't think of a better place to sit and work every day yeah and entirely particularly yeah go on sorry jim and particularly from your coaching and mentoring space that creates a beautiful energy to do that work from doesn't it absolutely and because you know part of what i do i mean i i don't really say this to my corporate executive clients because i'm coaching i'm coaching executive ceo clients in government departments right yes i don't go in there and and kind of say hey i'm going to help you access your feminine and be more soft and gentle but that's what i'm helping a lot of that's right especially men i'm i'm helping them access their more human-centric sensibility their their feminine wisdom and you know and helping them because it's powerful feminine is super powerful and it's super intelligent it's it's very very wise and it's it's an element that there's a lot of opportunity for us to expand with our senior leaders whether they're in government or whether they're in the private sector there's a massive opportunity for our leaders to expand into their feminine sensibility their feminine wisdom right and um anyway so for me to be coaching these leaders nestled into the part of this beautiful space is i think it's perfect yeah i i when you told me about it i was just so excited for you and i thought it's important to share sometimes people don't don't realize the spaces and places that people work from at that high level and you are working with high-level executives and ceos and along that vein i'm wondering jim your life is this beautiful big kaleidoscope of all and things you've done lots of things had lots of different life experiences and i actually am wondering that that if that unique and broad life perspective helps when you're coaching executives and ceos does it give you that broader balance that you can bring to their lives yeah absolutely yeah yes it does and um you know i think because i've been in so many different situations with so many different types of people i really was in my younger years i just had this first to experience uh cultures and peoples that was life you know that was so different to me i used to think of myself as a bit of an experienced junkie i wanted to try everything yeah i just wanted to try everything you know and i've tried many things and a lot of things i've tried only once and i was like radio kick that off the list i'm not doing that and some things i've tried many times but you know certainly to answer your question having you know a really broad range of different experiences and different connections with different types of people means that i can connect with a lot of different people but also having worked in the corporate space i understand their language and their lingo i understand the pressures that are driving them you know and that old school kind of underlying pressure to grow in the private sector to grow net profit growth quarter on quarter on quarter and that is a relentless pressure that is pressure within you know the capitalist system yeah and it is what it is i'm not saying it's good or bad but it is there and it's a very real pressure for leaders and then also in you know in government departments to um to make sure that they're getting the results that they're you know that they're there to get key indicators yeah so i mean i understand the pressures but i can bring to them in a way that's accessible for them i can bring to them concepts like mindfulness i can bring to the concepts like more conscious communication leaning into a situation and and seeking to understand rather than driving and just telling people what to do um you know so look i think it lends itself really well and once once my clients once we have some rapport to be honest happens very quickly yes but once we have that rapport and they trust me then i can guide them to places in their leadership that they've never been to never been before i think that's the role of a coach is to to guide people to places they haven't been to before right yeah and jim because i'm so familiar with the coaching space in terms of i would not be here without constant coaching and mentoring i understand the importance and the power of what a coach can bring to your life because you're living and working in your life and often you need that external perspective of how you're reacting behaving communicating you need an external person to go okay do you think we should try this or have you thought about this because no person should be an island should they jam even at those highest levels they should never be or feel like they're an island and trying to do this alone yeah absolutely and for various different reasons we we don't feel that we can lean on other people around us for that role that coaching role you know if it's colleagues sometimes it's not appropriate for us to sometimes it is but quite often it's not appropriate for us to be seeking that coaching advice from a colleague or from a report or from a loved one and in fact when our when people around us who care about us come to us offering advice we quite often for some reason in a reflex way we kind of tend to defend against it you know we don't want to hear it absolutely but when we're paying someone for that where all is it's like i'm paying you good money right now give it to me what am i gonna do what am i gonna do what am i gonna um jim just going back to uh earlier part of the conversation where we talked about um you know the the capitalism uh or those sorts of ideals that permeate um corporate and and high level life um i'd love to know that some of those spaces are changing and that we can look forward to a future where it's not all about dollars and uh reaching certain milestones that we are starting to move towards a space where humans as humans are considered in that equation and that the way that they work best is a consideration and so um from my personal perspective i back when i was working in in corporate office there was the the idea that uh working from home was completely unacceptable and employees couldn't be trusted whereas we've sort of been thrust into a new world via coved where people have had to work from home and i think that those things are really important considerations in in life so do you see that the corporate um ideals are slowly changing yeah yes they are yeah they are and i i think leaders at least the leaders that i come into contact with and and coach are starting to understand that rather than can i trust my employees to clock on and clock off and do the work it's can i find a way to for them to spark their intrinsic motivation so something that they care about doing and find alignment between what they care about and what the the organization's mission is because if you can find that they don't need to trust that they're gonna lean they're intrinsically motivated to do good work and make a difference so you need to really as a leader and i think leaders are starting some leaders are starting to get this yes can i trust my ability to to coach them to find what their own intrinsic motivation is and align it with the organization's purpose and put them in a role where they feel like they can play to their strengths and then just let them go and be amazing yeah because that's the thing humans can be incredibly amazing given um the right circumstances and the right motivation humans can accomplish incredible things and so it's really encouraging to hear jim that you are um coaching the next level of the next um cohort of leaders in this way that's from my perspective is incredibly encouraging um i want to digress a little bit and talk about the new book the art of communication for thoughtful men and it's already receiving rave reviews across the planet and i know from talking to you before the show that there is a lot of interest across america in particular which i'm delighted to hear it's well deserved but i wanted you to share with the audience um about the inception of the book why did the idea come up and why you thought it was important to share and write from this perspective yeah absolutely so the inception and and then um the conception and then the delivery of the book came i started writing a few different books i always knew i was going to write books and and i had started writing a few different books but was kind of getting stuck in them and then i stopped and thought and this was in the first towards the end of the first year of the pandemic and i thought yes jim what do you think really will help what can you write that will help you know i want to write something that hopefully will help people and one of the biggest stumbling blocks that i come across um as a coach is communication you know and whether it's communication in a relationship where two people love each other but they trip up in their miscommunication or whether it's the communication from a leader to a team so the community the leader is frustrated because the team is not engaging in in what the leader wants them to engage in and quite often it's not because they've got the wrong people in the team or anything like that it's just that the nuance in their communication you know or or into departmentally in a larger organization where the sales department and the compliance department are at loggerheads over something and forgetting that they're actually both attempting to serve the same higher purpose of the organization and it's falling over in the communication and then also in recent years tony you know as as a lover of humans right i just have this love for the human race despite our dysfunction and despite the fact that there are psychopathic people doing terrible things on global economic levels yes yes yes but love humans right and so it makes me sad when i see humans shouting at each other across these digital divides of difference you know you've got humans who have identified with one political idea or ideological concept and and people who disagree with them and they're just shouting at each other and tony you know this is not helping evolve the situation this is not creating doesn't help at all you know and these global problems like pandemics and global warming and inequality they don't discriminate that's right global global warming does not mind whether you are provacs or anti-vaxx it doesn't it doesn't care we're all gonna cop it that's right and for us to solve these global problems we have got to improve our ability in conscious communication so that's where the book started from and then i engaged a book writing mentor and yeah a wonderful author and and writing mentor susan pierce from sydney in australia and and she said to me gem i'm loving this manuscript i think it's great it's too broad you're writing from everybody you need to pick a niche you need to pick a demographic and she said you know i think this book would be really good for men yeah and so i just took her advice and i went okay and so i started tailoring the book for men specifically yes and so it became the art of conscious communication for thoughtful men and i do feel really passionate about this because you and i have spoken about this before tony as much as we need to continue the mission of empowering and getting women into decision-making roles which is so so important that we continue to do this at the same time we need to be evolving the quality of men and the systems that we're bringing these women into to to be open to this feminine wisdom this feminine sensibility that's what so we need to help the men evolve as well right so there's yeah who projects that need to happen at the same time same time you know and so this book is is to help to give men the tools to lift each other up and evolve the brand of men you know to change the old stereotypes that we've been culturally indoctrinated into you know as boys we were taught man up toughen up you know suck it up don't cry like a girl like all these things can you believe we raise our eyes like this so we've created you know generations of men who don't even know how to really access their emotions let alone communicate them yeah or understand um women when women are coming with this wisdom that is an intuitive deeply ingrained thing and men are shutting it down but they just don't know how to do any different so i think it's time to um to give men the tools to evolve and i'm hoping that's what this book does i'm so glad that you've written from this perspective because you know i talked to multiple women across the planet and we still experience some of the same things that have been happening for millennia however having said that there does feel that there is um a change afoot so to speak um but for women to get to the the place that we need to get to we need to be supported by men so this is not a a women against men or men against women this is about empowering men and women to live and communicate in the best way that they can i know um from speaking to you previously about the book that you've had a really wonderful response from women can you tell us about that jim yeah it just i mean i kind of thought this might be what happens yes it looks like it's women that are picking the book up off the shelf so to speak or you know or getting the book off amazon yeah um women i from my experience of running open public workshops in the past around self-development around personal development it's 90 of the people who come to my workshops are women yes and i think women are just more open to expanding into their potential they're more open to being vulnerable they're more open to saying i don't know everything let me learn some more yeah men traditionally and i am generalizing here but but i think generally speaking men and more about i'll read a book if it's going to help me grow my profit or i'll read it i'll read a book if it's going to help me win i'll read a book if it's going to help me um be better at my better at golf i'm using that but read a book about how i can be more in touch with myself and and function better as a human they tend to not pick the books up so yeah it's women that are picking it up and reading it and emailing it and saying oh my god amazing book it's so great i'm gonna force my husband to read it you know or my son or my brother or whoever so yeah and i don't i'm not sure that women always realize that position that they have to influence the men in their lives with gentle um persuasion and conversation and it comes back to that conversation doesn't it if you communicate with the man or men around you in the right way you have influence to get them to perhaps pick up a book that might be helpful or look at things that they may or may not be doing i think that we sometimes forget that that we have that influence if we use it correctly and that that communication is a key to to driving all of that um in terms of um life and in business communication is really an essential part of what an executive does that they're communicating all day with the people around them with their teams with their higher ups etc what are some of the key things that you recommend for those senior executives around communication what are some of the key themes that come through when you're coaching and mentoring those senior executives jim i think really to start with and i designed a process that's you know detailed in the book but the first step in the process of communication is to understand why for what purpose am i intending on having this this piece of communication so if it's some communication that that is coming up and you're intending on having then there's some preparation that can go into it and the extent of the preparation depends on what context and what it is but the first step to be aware of is for what purpose am i having this communication so for example if you're um you're going into a performance appraisal we used to call them i'm encouraging leaders to call it something more like a people partnering session because performance that's what already is old school and it's like i'm going to tell you what you're good at and not good at and where you can improve and it's all data and numbers and you know perform basically but if it's a people partnering session i.e i'm going to coach you to expand into your potential so when you're going into this session and you're thinking well so why am i having this meeting with this person who reports to me well it's to give them feedback is it really is that the purpose of the communication well why are you giving them feedback oh because i want them to improve oh why do you want them to improve well because i want them to thrive right so now we're getting closer to the question that's where you start so the purpose of the communication is i i want to help this person thrive it's not to go in there and tell them what they're not doing well enough that's not the purpose of that's part of the how let's start with why or for example let's put it into a an intimate relationship you know your partner might be very upset and you know they're exacerbated and they're upset and they're expressing themselves emotionally and there's a lot of words coming out of their mouth in that moment you might be thinking you might be taking those words literally and trying to understand that they're telling you that you're not good enough or that you never help them or that you don't you're taking it literally you're missing the point of the communication why are they saying these words because it's probably not about the actual words if they're very emotional what is the purpose of the communication so let's look a little bit higher perhaps in this moment my partner is expressing that she's completely upset and she's upset because she wanted me to help her this morning with this particular thing and she wants to feel supported maybe maybe in this moment the purpose of this communication is because she wants to feel safe oh wow that's the purpose of the communication right yeah so that having that conscious level of awareness of the communication is going to elevate the the quality of the communication right whereas if we're down on the lower levels of you know thinking it's something that it's not then then we're not going to be as effective in the communication so just having a an awareness you know and tony the the word communication comes from the latin noun communicatio which means a sharing and the latin verb communicare which means to make common so as a leader as an executive to come back in answering your question when you think i need to have this communication with my team so it's a sharing i'm hoping that they will i can share this with them this information or this inspiration or motivation i can share this with them to make this common so at the end of the communication i'll know if it's been successful because if it has been successful we'll all be on the same page yeah that's the purpose of this so it's not about the individuals involved it's not about my ego needing to be right yeah yeah yeah prove you wrong it's about us coming together to a common understanding that's what communication is yeah yeah and it's it it's such a powerful thing to get right and to do right because communication can start great conversations and achieve great things if it's done in the right way so if you if i dare to take the current invasion of ukraine what if there'd been some communication between the invader and his thoughts what if someone had been game enough to say hey we think that you want to do this because but actually it's about da da da da do you think that that high level communication has capacity to change big huge events across the globe unfortunately no matter how good you are at communication yeah what sits underneath it all is is intent right now i work with leaders who are what i call normal people yes right and when i say normal people i mean people that are not megalomaniacs people that are not psychopaths yes yes right and and normal people don't wake up in the morning thinking how can i um go and create havoc and harm and pain to other people to to further my own power most people don't think like what's his face over there i don't even want to say his name but anyway you know i was trying not to say his name to him we all know who he is right but he's not he's not alone there's other people no no yeah i'm talking about normal people and normal people don't wake up in the morning like that normal people wake up in the morning and think oh my god i hope i can do a good job today i hope i can get a good result today i hope i can be the best version of me today most people are like that right people most people don't wake up in the morning going how can i go and execute my evil plan right so i'm i'm helping people normal people communicate better no and so communication and and the the the magic of powerful communication can be used in evil ways can be used in very evil ways you know high-level communication we can be tricked by very clever communication propaganda and misinformation you know algorithms are doing it now the algorithms that are designed to keep us scrolling are communicating with us in ways that are completely subversive and have us addicted to these platforms because they're putting the right things in front of our brains that fire up our brains that's clearly a part of the brain and we're captured into this world that is being fed to us through communication used in a used in a not so nice bad way so it's not the it's not the it's not the communication itself that would stop the world events unfortunately that's the nasty people behind it yeah but but when the communication is when we can get better at communicating then people like you and i and the people that we care about and work with and help and and people like us we can get better at rising and evolving and creating a collective and that's why i think it's important that's why i love chatting with you tony because you you facilitate important conversations with real people and hopefully there are people listening to this and this will help them have these conversations because the more we talk about this stuff in functional ways we will continue to create this positive change yeah um i just that the whole idea of communication has been highlighted this week my darling husband loves watching maps married at first sight and i watch because usually i'm just at that point of time when it comes on it's just it's on and so anyway evident on that little little show uh some communication that is so bad and so wrong that i find myself having to leave the room and think why is someone not calling out that behavior in a way that empowers that person to see just how wrong that is and show the glo the the national audience that this is the right way to do that i find it i i find with traditional media that there's not enough producers managers of shows doing the right thing in terms of communication and going well actually no you can't yell and scream at someone when they don't agree with you this is how fruitful and constructive communication looks and i worry that the traditional media that we many people see more often than what you and i do in this place which is i'd term as non-traditional media i would love this sort of stuff to be in more people's places and more people's faces so they get to know okay that's better and a better way to do it that's a better way to say what i'm trying to say um and we're not seeing enough of that so i grateful that i get to work in this space with amazing people like you and have these conversations and along that um ideal of of talking about executives um i'm wondering too that the executives of today are they embracing more spiritual perspectives in their executive life because i there's not a lot of people that you see or i talk to that are readily open to that spiritual conversation so i'm curious to know from your perspective about the executives you coach and how they implement spiritualism in whatever format that looks like if they're thinking along those lines if they're it's if if mindfulness is a part of what they talk to you about is it if it's a part of what they like to encourage in their teams i'm really curious about that aspect of what you do yeah look i think in in older generations that are still in executive roles the the percentage of them that are open to this stuff is very small and then as you come down through the years and and get into younger generation of senior leaders and you know younger people that are coming in now fresh into executive roles they're way more open to it but having said that i went to um the global mindful leader forum back in 2014 so eight years ago and and already then there are some of the most senior leaders in the world that can contract and measure you know they can get roi on investing in people's abilities in the space of mindfulness and so that you know there's that's phenomenal yeah it's awesome yeah like the world leaders of the world bank and leaders of um you know some of the leaders in intel and google and places like this investing millions of dollars into mindfulness programs for themselves and for their people because they understand that it helps us with our functionality um so look at it yes there's a there's a massive movement happening happening for sure and look um i don't know if this sounds a bit wrong but the older leaders will retire and and it feels like there's almost a passing of the old guard it feels like we're ushering in a new generation of leaders and a new global energy that is better for humans in general yeah and i think really the important difference between now and in generations gone by because there's always been a handing on of the garden there's always been the next generation coming and there's always been change you know and to every generation it seems like the change is coming with the younger generation a massive you know it's always felt like that i agree the difference now is that the technological advances that have been happening over the last 30 years are exponential they are aren't they and our brains are not wired to understand exponential growth we can comprehend linear growth one two three four five but we can't comprehend exponential growth which is when the technology doubles discussion capability yeah that's right it goes through the roof so we don't know what things are going to look like in 2050 if we're still here we've got no idea what that's going to look like but what it is doing is that it's it's forcing us as a species to open our minds to possibility to open our minds to different ways of doing things because there are ways of doing things today that weren't even possible just the other day i know you know um so yeah look i think i think the change is happening faster now than ever before and so with that change hopefully our leaders you know the emerging leaders are also thinking it is becoming more human-centric it is becoming more about you know how can we all work together as as people to to do better work for humanity yeah it is happening because sitting behind that is is the idea that as humanity we can tackle big problems so we spoke earlier about climate change and it's not just climate change it's it's war it's um hunger it's um those bigger global issues that as humanity we could i believe we have within our grasp the answers to those bigger questions and ensuring that our grandkids never experience war ensuring that our grandchildren never have to deal with uh human trafficking etc etc i actually believe that humans have capacity to solve those big problems completely completely and your belief tony well and your belief is not a pie in the sky idea it's your belief is is founded with evidence you know i mean for example the world has never been as safe as as it is now homicide rates have never been this low ever in human history it's very hard to commit a crime and that's a good thing it's never been this safe to walk the streets globally speaking right but the you know as we know the mainstream media and news we know that they feed off the negative so we know that all the news is negative so that's fine but in the meantime if you go looking for it and you don't have to look very hard if you go to um uh future crunch is some mates of mine here in australia and they've got a global platform that focuses on all the positive scientific news and advancements that are happening in the world and they they put out positive news fighting there's so much good stuff happening and if you go and look at the real data of what's actually going on in terms of you know the advancements that we're making in technologies to help with global warming and pandemics and all this sort of stuff you're 100 right tony we can do it we can do it and i think the more we focus on it the better so go and look for the positive news there's positivenews.org i agree they send out positive news as well um so look it up it's right there and it's available but yeah you're right we are we are heading in the right direction and we can do it we can turn it all around unfortunately there are still um some losers who are digging their heels in and and their own agreed reasons uh claiming that climate change isn't even real um yeah yeah and having been exposed to the effects of climate change right recently yeah massively you can't there's just i've never seen so much rain never experienced so much rain so that's you know and i know from reading the science that that is about the amount of water that um leaves the earth and goes up into our clouds because of climate change um and it's something else that just dropped into my head jim is um i know for a lot of people um and this is a little bit of a controversial subject i guess but the whole idea that we created a vaccine in such a short amount of time in a global pandemic i actually see as an incredibly positive human achievement what that means in my mind is that at one time the whole globe was focused on solving a single problem i.e a vaccine to keep people safe so if we can do that in a pandemic we can do that for cancer do you know what i mean like that's how i see the world yeah we can do that for global warming yeah yeah absolutely unfortunately for us we we don't tend to all come together and kick into gear until we're right in the thick of it being a massive catastrophe exactly and so you you and your people in your communities that have just been massively flooded have all had to come together because it was catastrophe but people who live somewhere that don't get flooded they're like oh global warming it's something that's going to happen in 20 or 30 years yeah i don't want to think about it right now because it means i have to change the way i'm living in some way i have to do something so unfortunately humans a lot most humans yeah don't take action until it's really at the last minute at their global warming because it's such a big thing you know if we leave it till the last minute it'll be too late yeah i agree so i agree yes we can do it i reckon we can you know i reckon we can i reckon we can do it but we've got to do it we've got it we've got to do it now yeah the other thing about um our recent flooding incident was that it's actually caused us to think about how we live our life and what we might do going forward so does that mean we don't need a big property we don't need a you know we just need a little space that is ours and that's okay like it just causes you to think of other alternatives that have um implications for the climate and implications for the way that in which we live so that idea around being self-sustainable having our own water generating our own electricity all those things are starting to come into play in a bigger um as a bigger conversation in just our lives so if that's happening for us i'm hoping that's happening in a greater space across the planet for many more people than than just us um jim i'm hoping to that we in talking about generations um tapping out i guess effectively that we will actually see the rise of wonderful um emotionally intelligent leaders and i wanted to quickly touch on the subject of emotional a talent intelligence and what it means for you jem from your your thoughts what are your thoughts around emotional intelligence it's important and particularly its importance for leaders senior leaders senior executives politicians dare i say it yeah um yeah and before i talk specifically to to emotional intelligence the reason why i think it's important that this is happening is because we've kind of forgotten why we were making widgets in the first place so just say that there's a company and they make widgets right they've got to the point where they think that they're making widgets just to make money it's just about a transaction we're making widgets so we can make money hang on a second why did you why did this company ever first start making widgets in the first place because we thought people needed widgets well why did they need widgets because it made it easier for them to do a b and c so it was about tr people trying to make life better make life better for people or or the planet or animals or life yes yes so we're doing this to make life better for for this animal or for this forest or for these people yeah and we've kind of lost sight of that because it became all about shareholders and and growing the the market price of the share price of something right so look i think that emotional intelligence is massively important because it comes back to this human-centric um kind of purpose behind what we're doing why are we doing this we're doing this to make life better yeah to live better lives right so emotional intelligence really is just uh an understanding that there are people in the equation and whether it's the people that are working in the teams to create the widget that goes out to the people that are receiving but to focus back on the people involved in the equation the humans in the loop yeah rather than the numbers and the product and the bits and bobs and emotional intelligence is really the ability to um to experience empathy how does someone feel to experience compassion what what could i do to help that person you know to to experience the whole range of emotions which is obviously a vital part of being human because we've all got emotions so there must be an important part of it and emotional intelligence also an emotional regulation and then something that i'm you know i'm really inquisitive about continuing to develop for myself and for my clients is the ability to improve my functionality in relationship with emotions so that when it comes to motion is is um immediate and necessary in a moment and serves a purpose to to feel it to express it to utilize it and then when it starts to tip into being dysfunctional for me to stay stuck in that emotional state and it's not helping me serve myself or the greater good anymore and i'm stuck in anger or i'm stuck in despair or stuck in sadness the ability to actually be the driver of my own physiological bus and use techniques such as mindfulness to allow that emotion to beautifully dissipate and come back to a place of equanimity and serve again from a place of clarity and calmness you know so yeah so that's emotional intelligence as well right so in in simple terms it's things like anger and fury and fear they're all normal parts of a human experience but emotional intelligence is recognizing yes i'm angry i'm going to feel angry for this amount of time but when it gets to this time this is what i'm going to do to dissipate that anger is that an apt description jim yeah perfect and and also the ability to be conscious so right now i'm feeling anger and i'm going to allow myself to feel this anger because it's necessary i'm gonna process it i'm not gonna shove it under the rug and pretend it's not there or punch a wall or whatever right i'm gonna feel this anger but i'm also gonna have a level of awareness in the moment that i'm in doing anger i'm going to have a level of awareness to go do you know it's probably not the right time for me to pick up the phone right now and have that conversation yeah i'm going to feel this anger and i'm going to pause on the phone call i'm going to process this and then at some point in time when i've allowed that anger to dissipate then perhaps so that that being aware of that moment when you're in anger and then understanding that you can't stay it's not good for you it's not good for you for as a human it's not good for the people around you it's not it's just not good to stay and and realizing okay what do i have to do to get out of this jim what are some of the things that you do or you advise your executives to do in that moment when those big emotions are taking place what are some of the key things that you have you can suggest around that i know mindfulness is one and i know that we've talked about um meditative practices before which i find incredibly helpful what else what other things do you advise if you can create the ability to pause yeah or pause so there's an emotion that's taken over it might be extreme frustration yeah um you know or or or even anger uh or or disappointment or yeah um whatever it is sadness sadness yeah so the emotion has taken over pause for a second and come to a place of perspective because what we tend to do is that our ego our sense of identity latches on to the the visceral experience of the emotion and identifies with it i am angry so it's i am angry rather than noticing that it's really just a passing physiological state of being that will come and go yeah right but when we identify with something we hang on to it we grab onto it becomes our sense of identity when we're in our ego we take everything personally because for the ego it's all about itself right so i'm just i'm trying to think of a hypothetical situation one of the people in your senior leadership team who reports to you yeah they've completely disregarded the values of the organization and they've completely disregarded your directive as the ceo right and you are exacerbated you're like what are you doing i can't believe you've done that look at the mess you've created blah blah so you you're feeling disappointed and angry and frustrated when you identify with it and take it personally it's harder to let go of it when you remember ah this is not about me personally not about me this person has shown up in this way they've behaved in this way i'm going to create some perspective here there you go i hear you i'm just going to put you to the side for a sec i'm going to pause i'm going to put things really into perspective and go um just remember and i do this tony yeah yeah yeah and i asked my clients to do this can i just pause for a second take a moment to remember i'm a speck on a speck that is orbiting a respect tiny little star which is on the edge of a milky way galaxy which is 120 000 light years across and there's billions of galaxies billions of galaxies right yeah and and the other day humans didn't even exist and pretty soon they're probably not going to it's not going to exist again and right now i'm upset because my organization abc engineering you know is not going to deliver the right profit result because that leader didn't do that thing but and i'm getting all um i'm taking it so personally right yeah and i'm just going to pause and go none of this actually matters right back on a spec and now i'm going to come back to a place of equanimity because this is not about me this is about the organization and from a place of equanimity i'm now going to go forward and see how i can best support this person with holding them accountable so the way that we've all agreed to show up here at abc engineering is right so i'm going to lead from a place of calm centeredness not from a place of outrage because it just doesn't get as good results yeah that's powerful stuff gem powerful stuff um and powerful practical examples of how you can do that and it just just takes awareness doesn't it it's and practice really quite lots of practice yeah it's easier it's simple and easier said than done oh god oh god yes but it gets easier with practice yeah definitely and easier with practice because every time we every time we um engage a new way of doing something we're we're firing a new neural sequence and setting up a new pattern for the first time they fire for the first time and it takes effort and awareness and it's clunky and not not very easy to come out of your anger and get centered and it's but then the next time you do it and then the next time it gets better and then right because the neurons start to wire together and then it becomes habitual and then you it really can become a superpower where you've practiced it so much that something can happen you react necessarily because you're human where you get triggered by something you're furious and then when you become aware that you're furious and it's not going to serve you anymore you can go from furious to calm really quickly like that powerful stuff powerful stuff i know um jim we've got one minute left and i'm gonna finish i know i love these conversations with you in this one minute i want you to tell the audience about your bigger vision for the future what does that look like for you jim fuller wow bigger vision for the future it the the the scales have tipped the balance has tipped where the people that are emerging now that do care about humanity and each other and the planet and the bigger picture that has tipped ego has taken a little bit of a backseat it's still there but it's not the thing that's driving us it's really to be honest it's more spiritual and i'm doing that because spiritual can mean whatever to anyone but it is more connected we are more aware that we're part of a bigger system it's not all just about me it's about us that's my vision for the future oh that's a beautiful vision for the future and i actually can see that very clearly and i've actually i think that i can feel that as well jim like the response for ukraine it's it's not just about the people of ukraine but it's about the global community feeling what those beautiful people are feeling and joining with them and going gosh this is really not okay and and believing that there will be a better outcome very soon that's my hope yeah i agree with you i i think so and if i can just leave one last message here for listeners connect connect connect go looking for good people doing good stuff and reach out to them and connect for no other reason to just bolster your hope because we connect with good people it bolsters our hope we go oh yes there are more people out there doing good work and there's plenty of them there's plenty of people doing good work so go look for them and reach out and say hi and you will find them when you set the intention that you want to be connected to like-minded people and good people because i know because i wanted to see good men and gem and many others have been introduced to my circle and i am incredibly grateful for that and that was because i said to the universe please show me good men i'm feeling really distressed i need to know that there's good men in the world and that there's good men creating other good men and that's what happened so i want to encourage the audience today jim fuller is a good wonderful amazing human being please jump onto his website jenfuller.com reach out connect he loves chatting to people and if you're an executive ceo listening and you think that elements of what we talked about today are really important for you and your organizers organization and your company please reach out to jem have a chat and talk about what you might need in your environment in your company and within yourself because we need better men now jim thank you so much another delightful conversation it's a privilege to have you on the show and i know that we'll continue having further conversations both live and off air um and i can't wait for the future it is exciting me no end yeah tony thank you so much yeah thank you for having me on my pleasure that my wonderful audience is your everyday business show this week we'll be back next week join us then thank you gem and bye for now i'm going to do it to the best of my ability because if i fail that means i feel for my entire female nation i call it is that possible that was the question for myself you
2022-03-31 07:14
