You Are More Than What You Do

SUMMARY

Are you constantly being judged by your ability, your ability to do what it is that you are an expert in?

Let me help you understand that you are much more than that.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach. Today, I want to continue the conversations around the shifts you need to make in your personal leadership by helping you look at your intelligence in a different way.

A lot of people in professional services focus on their technical ability. Not only do they do this, but those who are recruiting them and having them in their firm judge them that way as well. However, there is another type of intelligence that you really need to focus on. Unfortunately, it is not valued as much as it could be. In fact, a lot of people will tell you that it is a soft skill, that it is not important, and that it is not going to get you the results you want.

You need those hard skills, those technical skills. While they are necessary, these other forms of intelligence are what will help you achieve your results in a healthier way, sustain that over a longer period, and have others enjoy the process alongside you.

The type of intelligence I am referring to helps you shift from a singular focus on your technical skills to embracing the multiple competencies you already have that are valuable and will help you be the leader you are called to be.

The two types of intelligence I work on here are emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is your ability to be aware of what is going on in the moment with your emotions.

One of the first things I want you to understand is that emotions are a good thing. They are a vital, important part of who you are. Never do you want to follow what many gurus have said over the years, which is to manage your emotions. No. You want to navigate them. What you do want to manage is your response to them.

To do that, you need to understand your emotions. You need to have the skills and strategies to move from that initial emotion, through a series of feelings, down a path that is healthy for you and for others.

The second intelligence you want to look at here is social intelligence.

While emotional intelligence is about you, social intelligence is about others. It is your ability to understand what could be going on emotionally in another person, and then manage that relationship in a way that eliminates stress and conflict, and is beneficial for both of you.

So stay with me this month as we go through these topics. First, you will explore what an emotion is. Understanding what it actually is, rather than what you have been told, will help you realise how important it is.

Emotional intelligence is not something you can buy at the supermarket and consume daily. It is something you must learn and build incrementally. And I would love to help you do that.

By the way, if you have not yet got a copy of my new book Professional Services Leadership, you can grab it on Amazon. I would love to get your feedback on what you think. There is a whole chapter in there on emotional intelligence if you want to go deeper.

Stick with me. More videos are coming this week. I will see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you constantly being judged by your ability, your ability to do what it is that you are an expert in?

Let me help you understand that you are much more than that.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach. Today, I want to continue the conversations around the shifts you need to make in your personal leadership by helping you look at your intelligence in a different way.

A lot of people in professional services focus on their technical ability. Not only do they do this, but those who are recruiting them and having them in their firm judge them that way as well. However, there is another type of intelligence that you really need to focus on. Unfortunately, it is not valued as much as it could be. In fact, a lot of people will tell you that it is a soft skill, that it is not important, and that it is not going to get you the results you want.

You need those hard skills, those technical skills. While they are necessary, these other forms of intelligence are what will help you achieve your results in a healthier way, sustain that over a longer period, and have others enjoy the process alongside you.

Now, the intelligence I am talking about here is one that I did not possess at all in my corporate career, and in fact in my military career before that as well. I now know, as an expert in this field, why that was. I understand the underlying psychology behind the way I behaved. But I really wish I had been exposed to this amazing form of intelligence earlier, the intelligence that you also possess, so I could have developed it and achieved the results I needed.

The type of intelligence I am referring to helps you shift from a singular focus on your technical skills to embracing the multiple competencies you already have that are valuable and will help you be the leader you are called to be.

The two types of intelligence I work on here are emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is your ability to be aware of what is going on in the moment with your emotions. And here is the thing. Although people may tell you emotions are not relevant, or may even say to stop being emotional, that is physically impossible. Emotions are extremely relevant. Why? Because you are an emotional being.

In this age of AI, there is a distinction you need to maintain that helps you rise above anything artificial, and that is your ability to connect emotionally. However, if you are not taught how to use your emotions, they can become a roadblock rather than a resource.

Emotional intelligence allows you to not only know what is going on emotionally, but also to manage your responses to the things happening around you. What I will do this month is focus in on this area so you can explore strategies that will help you navigate your emotions in a healthy way.

One of the first things I want you to understand is that emotions are a good thing. They are a vital, important part of who you are. Never do you want to follow what many gurus have said over the years, which is to manage your emotions. No. You want to navigate them. What you do want to manage is your response to them.

To do that, you need to understand your emotions. You need to have the skills and strategies to move from that initial emotion, through a series of feelings, down a path that is healthy for you and for others.

The second intelligence you want to look at here is social intelligence.

While emotional intelligence is about you, social intelligence is about others. It is your ability to understand what could be going on emotionally in another person, and then manage that relationship in a way that eliminates stress and conflict, and is beneficial for both of you.

So stay with me this month as we go through these topics. First, you will explore what an emotion is. Understanding what it actually is, rather than what you have been told, will help you realise how important it is.

An emotion is a cue. It is a clue given to your body physically, a sensation you experience that tells you something is happening in your world right now. Unless you give it the attention it deserves and the time and space to pause and reflect, to ask yourself, “What is going on here?”, you will miss those cues. Just like driving down the road and missing a speed sign, only to get pulled over and receive a ticket.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to understand what is going on for you emotionally. I will teach you how to do that, because I know it is not something they taught you at university or in your technical training.

Once you identify physiologically what is going on, you then have the opportunity to make it mean something. That is the psychological. And the psychological determines your thoughts, which in turn determine how you choose to feel.

One of the big myths out there is that others make you feel the way you do. No. You choose. I choose the way I feel.

And it is because of that interpretation of what is going on physiologically, through that psychology, filtered through all the limiting beliefs we have discussed, the three universal fears, and everything we have talked about in identity. What you make it mean will determine where your behaviour goes next.

So emotional intelligence and social intelligence are both critical for everyone, because everyone is a leader. It is great that these are now being recognised as top skills for leaders in today’s world.

So what about you?

Have you ever done any work on your emotional intelligence?

If the answer is no, you are in the majority.

Stick with me, and you will go through this step by step. You will shift from relying solely on your IQ, your cognitive intelligence, to also using your emotional and social intelligence.

You need to understand that neither one is more important. You need both your cognitive intelligence and your emotional intelligence working together.

There is a lot of talk that EQ is greater than IQ, and I disagree with that. Because even to apply the strategies of emotional intelligence, you need to use your cognitive thinking and reasoning.

Emotional intelligence is not something you can buy at the supermarket and consume daily. It is something you must learn and build incrementally. And I would love to help you do that.

By the way, if you have not yet got a copy of my new book Professional Services Leadership, you can grab it on Amazon. I would love to get your feedback on what you think. There is a whole chapter in there on emotional intelligence if you want to go deeper.

Stick with me. More videos are coming this week. I will see you then.